Claud E McCoy Jr. - Lanett, AL

Claud McCoy Jr. is unethical and the worst attorney we’ve ever had to deal with. He was the closing attorney for a house we were trying to purchase. He included a rental agreement as part of our contract on the house we were purchasing and he wrote the contract so that the rent could be held in escrow, even though we had to make monthly mortgage payments until the owner moves out, which was fine because they needed to continue living in the home for four months after the sale of the house and we didn’t want to be landlords. It was done this way so they would be responsible for everything with the house until they moved out. He wrote a rental agreement making us landlords anyway, that stated that all the money that was paid for rent goes back to the owners when they move out. We asked him to correct it, then wrote his version of the second contract which stated that the owners have a say, and must agree to how much rent we receive after they move out. The Lender told us to move forward and close, because the rental agreement wasn’t supposed to be a part of the contract anyway, they were supposed to be separate. Then, after doing that to us with the incompetent rental agreement, when we paid our closing money to finalize the deal on the purchase, unbeknownst to us, they decided to keep some of our money and the Realtor sent us a Release and Cancellation of Contract form, which we didn’t sign, because we didn't agree to anything, it wasn’t even discussed. They just took our money and canceled the contract. I believe he’s racist, because everything was moving along fine until the contract got to their office. He received a copy of our ID and saw we were African American. I guess he didn’t want blacks living next door to him. Oh, yeah by the way, he’s the next door neighbor to the house we were purchasing, and no one ever disclosed the fact that he lives in the house next door. So, the jest of the story is he screwed us and stole our money, as we have nothing to show for it.