Legal Question in Family Law in California

I have spent almost $35K in attorney's fees in the last five years. I have an ex-husband who works in the IT department, where one of his tasks is to support the superior court judges. He has been consistent in bringing us back to court continuing his efforts to reduce his support payments. Our last adventure was a three day trial and I still owe my current attorney $13K for her services. Because we were outplayed, I ended up losing about $800 per month in spousal and child support. After an almost 13 year marriage, the spousal support was cut earlier than is typical because I was portrayed as a lazy woman taking advantage of the system when in fact I was at the time home schooling our two special needs children.

My ex husband has canceled court ordered life insurance, has not ever paid court ordered child care costs, is in arrears on medical co-pays as well as child and spousal support. He has not split his retirement accounts as per the divorce decree from 2010. His legal custody was temporarily taken away due to his inappropriate involvement in our son's special education plan and since he's gotten his custody restored, he's made a mess of our child's IEP.

At the time of the trial, my attorney said we could not bring up these issues but would do it "later." I've been asking my attorney to help me and she has refused stating I owe her too much money. Today I was given notice that I could sign an agreement as follows:

a) I would represent you on a limited-scope basis solely for the purpose of dividing the retirement

accounts per the Marital Settlement Agreement. During this time period, where I am only

representing you on a limited-scope basis, if you have any custody and visitation issues, you

would represent yourself on those issues.

b) I would reduce your current bill to $8,500, a savings of approximately 35% to you. A lien would

be placed on your case for the benefit of our firm, and this reduced balance would be paid directly

from one of the divided retirement accounts upon division.

c) Upon conclusion of the retirement account division, the balance for the fees accrued for this

matter between November 1, 2013 and the conclusion of the retirement account division would

be paid directly from one of the divided retirement accounts.

d) After the retirement accounts are divided and your account is paid in full for both the reduced

current balance and the balance for the retirement account matter, I would then be able to

represent you regarding any child custody and visitation matters you may have at that time. If you do need my representation for a child custody and visitation matter, we could discuss the

retainer for such a matter at that time.

She then says I can sign a substitution of attorney if I do not agree and will need to set up payment arrangements.

I am barely feeding my children at this point (I am not exaggerating) and have nothing left to cut to make ends meet. Is this an appropriate way to handle business? Basically as I understand it, I will have to pay penalties to cash out retirement funds (if and when they are finally split) to pay her for past services where we were outwitted and I lost a large portion of support and on top of that, I will have to pay her even more to recover those funds that were due to me from a basic MSA that my ex-husband has not cooperated to pay as originally ordered. And, if I need any custody/visitation help, I'm on my own. It's a small matter of time before he drags me into court for something else. In fact, we're past due by his standards.

Can you please give me some guidance and maybe even a little glimmer of hope for my future?

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