The Divorce That Wouldn't Stay Closed

Valerie Duncan's marriage ended like thousands of others do in Florida every year: attorneys were retained, a settlement was negotiated, a judgment was entered. The final divorce judgment in her case was signed on June 29, 2011. Her attorney of record throughout the proceedings was Curtis L. Witters, a family law attorney with no connection to the man who would later appear in her case file claiming to have represented her.

That man is Troy W. Klein.

According to records Duncan has compiled and submitted to The Ethics Reporter — and to The Florida Bar, repeatedly, over the course of nearly a decade — Klein's first appearance in her case file dates to August 2011. That is after her divorce was final. After the judgment was signed. After attorney Witters had completed his representation and closed his file. Klein, by Duncan's account and by the court records she has gathered, filed no appearance before that date, performed no work on her case, and is not named anywhere on the final divorce judgment itself.

And yet, in the years that followed, Klein became a fixture in her case file. He filed documents in her name. He appeared in two separate marital settlement agreements. He collected fees — fees, Duncan alleges, that were fabricated, never reviewed with her, and in some cases earned in hearings she did not know were taking place and did not attend.

Duncan is not an attorney. She is a litigant who says she has spent nearly ten years trying to get someone — anyone — at The Florida Bar to read the documents she keeps sending them.

The Bar's intake director, Shanell Schuyler, has dismissed her complaints since October 11, 2016. Duncan keeps filing. The Bar keeps dismissing.

The Attorney

Troy W. Klein is a real attorney. The Florida Bar's own directory confirms it: bar number 186643, practicing family and appellate law out of an office on Forum Place in West Palm Beach. His firm website describes him as "persistent, dedicated and detail-oriented," a cum laude graduate of the University of Miami School of Law. He has an Avvo profile, a LinkedIn page, a listing on FindLaw.

He is also, according to public records and Duncan's submissions, a convicted felon with multiple DUI arrests, drug and alcohol-related offenses, and a history of probation violations stemming from what the records describe as unresolved substance abuse struggles.

The Ethics Reporter has reviewed Duncan's attachments describing Klein's criminal history. The Bar, presumably, has also reviewed them. The Bar's directory lists him as an attorney in good standing.

That tension — an attorney with a documented record of DUI arrests and probation violations, facing allegations of fabricating fees and filing false documents in a closed case, who nonetheless remains in good standing — is not a commentary on Klein's rehabilitation. People recover from addiction. Felons can be and have been readmitted to the bar. The question is narrower and is the one Duncan has been asking since 2016: how was this attorney able to insert himself into her case at all, and why has the body that regulates Florida attorneys refused to look at the documents she keeps sending them?

The Judge

The case was presided over by then-Circuit Judge Amy L. Smith of Palm Beach County.

Smith is no longer on the bench. She retired in March 2016, after suffering an aneurysm the year before. Ballotpedia and the Palm Beach Post both document the circumstances: her term was set to run through January 2017, but following her medical crisis she sent her resignation to Governor Rick Scott and left the bench on March 31, 2016.

Four years later, in July 2020, Smith was arrested in Riviera Beach and charged with DUI after crashing her vehicle. The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office reported that she blew a .168 — more than twice the legal limit. She was sixty-one years old.

Duncan alleges that during the period in which Klein was appearing in her case — the years after her divorce judgment was final — Smith was struggling with her own substance abuse issues and was not following her cases appropriately. Duncan says multiple attorneys she consulted told her that Smith "made ruled inappropriately and was not well enough to remain on the bench." That characterization of the judge's state is Duncan's account, filtered through unnamed legal professionals; The Ethics Reporter cannot independently verify conversations Duncan had with attorneys. What is verifiable is the public record: Smith had a serious medical event in 2015, retired in 2016, and was arrested for DUI in 2020.

Klein, according to Duncan, took advantage of Smith's condition. He arranged hearings — some, Duncan says, without her knowledge or physical presence — and had fee awards entered against her by a judge who was not in a position to scrutinize what was being placed in front of her.

The Documents

Duncan's submissions describe a paper trail that, if accurate, raises serious procedural questions:

• Klein filed documents in her case three years after the divorce was settled by attorney Witters on June 29, 2011.
• He was included in two marital settlement agreements — agreements he had no part in negotiating, in a case he had no documented role in before August 2011.
• Fees were "fabricated," in Duncan's word, never reviewed with her, and arranged in hearings some of which she neither knew about nor attended.

These are allegations. They are made by a litigant without legal training who has spent a decade compiling her own case file. They have not been adjudicated because The Florida Bar — the body that exists to adjudicate exactly these kinds of allegations — has declined, repeatedly, to investigate them.

That is the part of this story that should trouble people more than any individual allegation against Klein or any characterization of Judge Smith's condition. If Duncan is wrong, an investigation would establish that quickly: the court docket either shows Klein appearing before August 2011 or it doesn't; the settlement agreements either bear his name or they don't; the fee awards are either documented and defensible or they aren't. These are not judgment calls. They are records questions.

The Florida Bar has had the records since 2016. It has dismissed the complaint. It has not explained, in any public forum, why.

The Institutional Question

This is the second Florida bar accountability story The Ethics Reporter has covered in recent months, and the pattern is becoming familiar: a complainant with documents, a disciplinary body that won't engage, and an attorney whose public record — criminal history, client allegations, procedural irregularities — raises questions that only an investigation could answer, answered instead by silence.

Florida's attorney discipline system, like New York's, operates under a veil of confidentiality that keeps dismissed complaints invisible. We do not know how many other litigants have filed complaints against Klein. We do not know how many other attorneys with similar criminal histories are practicing in good standing. We do not know whether Duncan is an outlier or one voice in a pattern.

What we know is this: a woman says her divorce case was reopened without her consent by an attorney she never hired. She says fees were taken from her in hearings she didn't attend. She says the judge who signed those orders was impaired. She has spent ten years asking The Florida Bar to look at the documents, and The Florida Bar has spent ten years declining.

Someone at The Florida Bar should read the file.

A Note on Sources

This article is based on documents provided by Valerie Duncan to The Ethics Reporter, including her account of the timeline, her submissions to The Florida Bar, and attachments describing criminal and court records; the Palm Beach Post's reporting on Judge Amy Smith's 2016 retirement and 2020 DUI arrest; Ballotpedia's record of Smith's judicial tenure; and The Florida Bar's public directory listing for Troy W. Klein. The Ethics Reporter has not independently adjudicated the underlying factual disputes between Duncan and Klein. The Florida Bar and Troy Klein did not respond to requests for comment before publication.

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