Brett N. Bender, Attorney at Law

I worked with Brett on a complex custody and support matter involving a young child. The process was emotionally demanding, but Brett brought experience, steadiness, and a clear understanding of Oregon family law. We ultimately reached a fair and workable settlement that avoided trial, resulted in 50/50 parenting time, and created a sustainable path forward. Brett was knowledgeable and responsive, and his preparation and negotiation helped position the case for resolution without the uncertainty and expense of a full trial. He stayed focused on outcomes rather than escalating conflict, which I appreciated. As with many family law cases, things evolved quickly, and there were moments where tighter communication and expectation-setting would have helped—particularly around schedule changes that had a real emotional impact. I would encourage future clients to stay engaged, ask clarifying questions, and remain proactive as circumstances shift. Overall, Brett provided effective representation in a difficult situation, and I would recommend him to anyone navigating a challenging custody or support case.

We were going through painful custody hearings when we retained Brett as our lawyer, I was impressed immediately by his calm, he made sense of the chaos we were going through. His knowledge of the legal system was more then impressive There were points we were unsure how to proceed but Brett mapped it out and he was spot on. I would refer him in a heart beat and actually have.

My husband and I retained Brett as a lawyer last year in March. It took just over a year for this case to be filed and done. Brett was difficult to communicate with. We found ourselves repeating our case to him every other month or so, which felt like he didn’t prioritize our case, remember it or understand what we needed and wanted with our petition to modify a parenting plan. He would take weeks and weeks to reply to our calls and emails and not much was moving forward until November/December of that year. At that point it took another 4 months to get the final order filed. We weren’t happy with the outcome at all as he didn’t do what we originally asked to do and said he could help with those challenges at the beginning—which is why we retained him initially. As a result, the other parent is still changing and moving around our time with the child, is still doing the same things she was doing prior to the new parenting plan and it’s as if nothing has changed. We were told one thing from the beginning by Brett and that changed as the months went by into something completely different then what we hired him for based on our initial consultation with him. We are back to square one and we spent $6300 on his services. The mother still does as she wishes and we can’t do anything about it unless we want to retain a new lawyer to give us proper insight and information regarding our situation with realistic outcomes and proper procedure. We’re a single income family, so, that is out of the question for us at this time. The mother also just served my husband two days ago with a petition to change the child support order and is asking for more money in child support and is asking that she get to claim the tax exemption for their shared child every year. This is a woman that is obviously withholding her child from her dad who is a fit father, and now as the gall to ask for more child support when she won’t even allow us to see her except when she feels he can see the child for a short time at her choosing. This appears to be a retaliation to the modification we made to the parenting plan that we ordered and now we’re hit twice with nothing to gain, but are actually loosing even worse now. We see the child less and now and the mother is filing for more money. We consider this an absolute loss on all fronts and Brett was instrumental in this by not being transparent from the get go about solutions to our ask and getting something filed to be done with it. No, I would not recommend this lawyer if your priorities are to work with someone with integrity and someone that communicates respectfully and within reasonable time frames.