Back in 2022, I had a very bad experience with Amada when they had an office in Albany, CA. I asked…read morefor help in filing for custody of my child and decided not to go with a lawyer since the other parent was in agreement to give me full custody. I was a college student at the time, so financial resources were very scarce, but I needed help filing to take time off my hands so I could focus on school. She was very enthusiastic about taking my case and said she helped other parents before so she was fairly confident in the way she expressed her expertise. I paid $1,500 for her to help me fill out the documents and file the fee in the Hayward Court. She said that the fee is larger because the filing fee is around $500, but she also applied for the fee waiver (which was approved because at the time I was low income) so I'm assuming the full $1,500 fee was her take-home amount. She wasn't transparent about that though. I did sign the fee waiver, but chose not to address it since I just wanted to forego the headache of having to drive to the Hayward Court to file documents while I was in college. She was also the recipient address of all the court documents, so the least she could do was inform me if I had a court date to attend to for the custody hearing. After paying the fee, she gave me an update when it was filed. Lo and behold, I hadn't been receiving any updates from her for a few weeks. I was curious and looked at the Court website to see if there was a court date set - and like a movie I saw that the custody hearing for my child's case was THE NEXT DAY. Again, didn't receive any communication for her for a few weeks. She said she would contact me if there was an update. Also, if you didn't know anything about custody hearings, no-shows mean by default you give rights to the other parent in attendance. I immediately contacted her and said that the court date is already set for tomorrow and why she didn't let me know, since she's the person receiving the information and that the least she could do was inform me of the court date since she also didn't forward me any mail that she received about my case. I told her I was disappointed and I didn't even receive an acknowledgement that she made a mistake. She just said "I'm sorry you feel that way". And then after that, she forwarded all the mail she received to me AFTER I discovered the court date by myself. It's been years since this occurred, and just thinking about the fact that I could have lost custody of my son due to a non-communicative, incompetent person that I paid $1,500 to help me file and update me on court matters still makes me panic every time I think about it.