Divorce with Dignity-Alameda

Beware. Cindy was good but she is no longer here. The new document preparer oversteps her role in a very unprofessional way.

I hope to update this review with more details (and hopefully better results) once my paperwork is filed. Based on initial consultation though it seems that the positive service from earlier reviews is no longer the norm here. Our initial meeting was very generic and there has been no follow up on their end to track down the materials needed from me. I realized the other day it’s been 3+ months since I forgot to fax them my W2s and I suspect if I hadn’t remembered, they would pocket the deposit and never do anything on their side to push this forward. Not the kind of proactive or helpful service I was hoping for. I’m planning to send them the missing material and we’ll see…

Cindy is great and very helpful. She made my divorce smooth as possible considering the circumstances. I would recommend divorce with dignity to anyone. Divorce is horrible but they can get you through it. Scott Livermore ca.

Cindy is an amazing person, she is trustworthy, honest and above all she has years of experience in her field of work. When I was looking for someone to file my paperwork, I came across some paralegals who didn’t fully understand the process. It was stressful to find the right experience to do your paperwork, but I am lucky to find Cindy after months of searching. After talking to her, I was confident that she was the right person for my case. Throughout the whole process, Cindy was very cooperative. Emails and phone calls were promptly answered by her. I got my final judgment by mail, everything went well. I highly recommend Cindy (DW Dignity).

Highly Recommended when you aspire to ‘do-​it-​urself’. Cindy is very experienced with all the local courts and therefore you are in good hands. She is also knowledgeable at informing you of what you might or might NOT want the courts to get involved with. Given human nature to avoid conflict, this organization and Cindy in particular is adept at making this unpleasant aspect of life go smoothly.

After years of attemping to use the self help center at the Alameda County courthouse I’d had enough with their lack of knowledge and HELP! I looked up divorce on the internet found Divorce With Dignity and gave them a call. My appointment was set up pretty quickly… good thing for me since I was now beyond tired of waiting and just wanted it to all be over! Once in the office Cindy explained everything to me, looked through the mess of papers the Self Help Center made to decide what I needed and what could go in the trash. Needless to say MOST of what the SHC gave me went in the trash. Cindy explained to me due to the confusion with the SHC I may need to make an additional visit to the office however that wasn’t the case. She submitted my paperwork and a few weeks later the words I had been waiting to see for some time now were in the mail… DIVORCE FINAL! Thanks again Cindy :-)

So, all the paper work ended. It was a REAL long process, but we knew exactly what to expect walking into it, thanks to Cindy’s diligence in explaining in great detail all the steps and rough time frame from step to step. In most cases, where we expected it to take longer we would get a call from her letting us know we were moving on to the next phase.
Real happy with how she helped us, a real professional!

Cindy is kind and knowledgeable she made my divorce process very simple and fast.

Cindy Elwell is amazing. I had been on a difficult journey, first trying to do all the paperwork for my divorce, including custody and division of property, and then went to a really expensive attorney who did nothing. Cindy broke through the nonsense and got it done asap. She was incredible and had a way of treating us with respect; not siding with either one, but somehow showing us that not fighting over little stuff would be a win/​win. She is an absolute gem. I highly recommend Divorce with Dignity.

I need to say this was the easiest divorce I’ve ever gotten. I used Divorce with Dignity in Alameda in 2003. I only needed to come into the office once I recall and everything else was taken care of. If fact, my now ex-​husband used the service also. We did a divorce through bifurcation allowing us to be divorced but able to settle our property etc. at a later date. It worked well for both of us.

In complete agreement with the post above. The woman who owned DWD before was wonderful — responsive, fast, kind — my ex and I had a very good experience and divorced amicably. We needed to adjust our settlement agreement a year later, so we went back thinking it would be simple. But this guy Rick had taken over, and he was an absolute nightmare. Talked about himself, refused to respond with any sort of straight answers, would not get back to either of us, ended up pitting us against each other, immediately took the money, then provided absolutely nothing to us. He sent me a very mean email about how much of his time I had taken up, how I was difficult and uncooperative. ??? I swear, I know that part of the complete disintegration of my ex and mine amicability is due to this horrible guy. We are now having to hire lawyers, it’s gotten ugly — — and it was nothing like that when we were dealing with Cindy before. (By the way, the friend who recommended me in the first place also needed some documents done for his divorce, and he received the same treatment.) RUN FROM THIS GUY, HE WILL MAKE IT WORSE!!!

AVOID!
My ex and I were having an amicable split. This being a straightforward divorce and both being professionals and on the road a lot, we decided to use the filing service of the Alameda branch of Divorce with Dignity. The initial mtg with the rep (not an attorney by the way), was seemingly all right but for the fact that he kept mentioning his own divorce and how he felt ripped off in it. Figuring he was harmless, we signed a contract for the filing service.
After the initial filing we didn’t hear from him for more than three months. The guy required prompting from our end to get things moving… you could only leave voicemail and if lucky these would be returned after several days or a couple of weeks. The guy had no email and initially he cited legal/​privacy issues for not using email. Then one day out of the blue he got on email — no explanation but he was excited about how easy it was to use email (ok!). After 20 weeks of no clear updates or a status report, we emailed him for a meeting to understand where things were. The guy responded in unprofessional (and passive aggressive) language, that he was trying to help us because he was a good guy and then also threatening to terminate contract. We called several times and eventually got him on the phone — he claimed to terminate the contract, refused to repay the fees and refused to return our documents. We sent a certified letter requesting return of our file– no response.
Decided we had enough of this and went to SF Court to determine status. Here we were surprised to learn that there were many complaints against this and other similar services. The court staff also informed us of the free filing service and legal help provided by the family affairs office located in the basement of court bldg. Here we spoke with bonafide attorneys who got us all the remaining forms, advised on the steps ahead, and they even reviewed the final papers before submission. Then received the divorce a few weeks later. Luckily Visa card intervened on our behalf and got us a partial refund of the fees paid to the Alameda branch of Divorce with Dignity. Painful story short avoid these guys. If your divorce is fairly straightforward, one can even file online from the CA court website or if you prefer a friendly human, visit the folks in the SF court family legal services — they are legally trained, very helpful, generous with their time and real experts.