thank you. I'm actually not looking for legal advice here. it's why I stated in my post that I'm looking for recommendations for attorneys from people who have been through something similar.
the reason I'm looking for recommendations is because of what I've been through with my current attorney. he's a family law attorney who has been practicing for 25 years. I think he might have thought it would be easy to mislead an American who doesn't know Swedish law to make some money.
everything he said to me after I presented the evidence I had for my case led me to believe that he could present my case to the administrator in a way that would result in a fair and reasonable outcome, not just the standard 50/50 split. yet just a couple days before the administrator said she would issue her decision, he completely changed his tune, saying he believed she'd probably decide on a 50/50 split. and he didn't tell me until the day before that I would need to write a final statement to present to the administrator, causing me to panic and scramble for several hours to try and put something together and submit it at the last minute.
so again, to be clear, I'm not looking for legal advice here. I'm looking for recommendations or referrals for attorneys from people who have either been through a terrible mess of a property division, or from others who know of someone who has been through something similar and knows the attorney that they've used in order to deal with it. because despite my own best efforts in selecting legal representation previously, I obviously made a bad decision.
the really tragic thing is, at one point, my ex was willing to settle for less than a third of what the administrator awarded her, but my attorney advised me not to accept it, saying that what she was claiming in the amount that she was asking for was unreasonable because she was not only including her attorney fees, but an amount for wages that she speculated she could have earned if she hadn't been in a relationship with me and moved with me to Sweden. so now I really just feel like he intentionally strung me along throughout the entire process to earn as much as he could from me rather than letting me settle for a lot less when I had the chance.
also, at this point, I'm considering that it might be a better option to simply sue my ex for civil penalties on the basis of fraud. more than the amount that she's been awarded in this property division, I feel that she has taken advantage of me and deliberately manipulated me to extract the sum of about $40,000-$50,000 over the course of our relationship at times when she wasn't working for personal reasons, which were mainly that she was feeling depressed, or too tired, or that she couldn't find any job she was willing to apply for, despite having a master's degree and being qualified to work as a research librarian or a writer. instead, she preferred to work whatever hours she felt like putting in as a dominatrix because, as she put it, she enjoyed being able to flex her acting skills, and insult men for money.
I used to believe that she thought of me differently than her clients, or most other men that she lumped into "the patriarchy". but looking back now at all the evidence I have and everything that's taken place over the past few years, I realize that, to her, I wasn't much more than a walking, breathing paycheck.