While involved in a highly contentious divorce, I hired a Guardian ad litem in 2016 to help counter my wife’s attempts to hang a psychological disorder diagnosis on our 9 year old son. This guardian did good work for two years and produced a final report to be used for trial. Unfortunately, he fell seriously sick and had to close his practice. The trial loomed, I had to select another guardian ad litem to update the existing report as well as to provide testimony in court. I picked Shirin Rustomji. Upon selecting her and after paying the $3500 retainer fee, I told her that my finances were strained due to this unending divorce and I asked her to be mindful of my precarious financial condition and to not go over the retainer as I had already spent $10,000 on the initial report spanning two years. To my surprise, she did not abide by my request and ended up charging me a total of $10,000 to UPDATE the existing report. She knew she had me locked in as I wouldn’t have time to switch guardians this close to trial. The main issue though was to keep my wife from further damaging our son with more fallacious diagnoses. I showed Shirin the court motions she had filed, I showed her requests for admissions where she had admitted she considered our son to be mentally disabled. I even showed her motions to compel my wife had filed to have me incarcerated for being 10 days late on two $1000 support payments (due to a job change). I also showed her another motion to compel where my wife this time wanted our son to go to gifted school. In spite of all this court documentation, Shirin decided to side with my wife during her testimony because my discipline style was too harsh according to her. Our son had been disrespectful with some of his teachers and as a consequence, I had him write 10 pages of sentences for each occurrence when he was with me while my wife was satisfied just bribing him to not misbehave. I understand that a guardian may have a difference of opinion with me when it comes to disciplining my son but I was shocked she completely disregarded the lengthy court paper trail my wife had generated over the two previous years and which I had brought to her. The supplemental report Shirin filed with the court was full of typographical errors, furthermore, during her testimony in front of judge Hinson, she mentioned on two different occasions that my wife and I had “diabolically” opposed parenting styles. This prompted opposing counsel to ask her whether she meant to say “diametrically” instead of “diabolically”. The following anecdote is worth mentioning to show Shirin’s sense of entitlement/mental rigidity. During the same testimony, as she was sitting on the witness stand to the right of judge Hinson, she answered questions from one of my attorneys sitting on the left side of the court room. There was a small gong on judge Hinson’s desk , no more than 4 inches in height which appeared to hinder her line of sight to my attorney. Instead of moving her chair a few inches (the chair had wheels) or instead of leaning over, she interrupted my attorney and then asked the judge if he could move the gong. So judge Hinson obligingly got up and moved the gong so Shirin could have an unobstructed field of vision to my attorney. I sat on the witness stand the next day to give testimony and I noticed the gong was back it its usual place. I strained to figure out how that little object could have obstructed anything in her line of vision as Shirin was not much shorter than I was. As a conclusion, I witnessed Shirin display what appeared to me to be extreme feminist bias while handling my case, she just won’t let reality stand in the way of her ideology. Her written work and verbal expression are shoddy at best, I expect much higher standards for $300/hour.
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Upon selecting her and after paying the $3500 retainer fee, I told her that my finances were strained due to this unending divorce and I asked her to be mindful of my precarious financial condition and to not go over the retainer as I had already spent $10,000 on the initial report spanning two years. To my surprise, she did not abide by my request and ended up charging me a total of $10,000 to UPDATE the existing report. She knew she had me locked in as I wouldn’t have time to switch guardians this close to trial.
The main issue though was to keep my wife from further damaging our son with more fallacious diagnoses. I showed Shirin the court motions she had filed, I showed her requests for admissions where she had admitted she considered our son to be mentally disabled. I even showed her motions to compel my wife had filed to have me incarcerated for being 10 days late on two $1000 support payments (due to a job change). I also showed her another motion to compel where my wife this time wanted our son to go to gifted school. In spite of all this court documentation, Shirin decided to side with my wife during her testimony because my discipline style was too harsh according to her. Our son had been disrespectful with some of his teachers and as a consequence, I had him write 10 pages of sentences for each occurrence when he was with me while my wife was satisfied just bribing him to not misbehave. I understand that a guardian may have a difference of opinion with me when it comes to disciplining my son but I was shocked she completely disregarded the lengthy court paper trail my wife had generated over the two previous years and which I had brought to her.
The supplemental report Shirin filed with the court was full of typographical errors, furthermore, during her testimony in front of judge Hinson, she mentioned on two different occasions that my wife and I had “diabolically” opposed parenting styles. This prompted opposing counsel to ask her whether she meant to say “diametrically” instead of “diabolically”. The following anecdote is worth mentioning to show Shirin’s sense of entitlement/mental rigidity. During the same testimony, as she was sitting on the witness stand to the right of judge Hinson, she answered questions from one of my attorneys sitting on the left side of the court room. There was a small gong on judge Hinson’s desk , no more than 4 inches in height which appeared to hinder her line of sight to my attorney. Instead of moving her chair a few inches (the chair had wheels) or instead of leaning over, she interrupted my attorney and then asked the judge if he could move the gong. So judge Hinson obligingly got up and moved the gong so Shirin could have an unobstructed field of vision to my attorney. I sat on the witness stand the next day to give testimony and I noticed the gong was back it its usual place. I strained to figure out how that little object could have obstructed anything in her line of vision as Shirin was not much shorter than I was.
As a conclusion, I witnessed Shirin display what appeared to me to be extreme feminist bias while handling my case, she just won’t let reality stand in the way of her ideology. Her written work and verbal expression are shoddy at best, I expect much higher standards for $300/hour.