EL RENO, Okla. — June 9, 2026 (The Oklahoma Post)
Americans divorce at a rate high enough that you would think the system handling the fallout would have the process perfected by now, the way a factory perfects a part it stamps a million times a year. It does not. Roughly forty percent of first marriages end in divorce, more for the ones after that, and a large share of them run through family court with children in the middle, and yet the machinery still manages to fail the people it sees most often. This article is not about pointing a finger at either parent. People move on from each other. What is striking about Stacey Stanton’s case is that both parents, whatever their history, still want to be in their daughter’s life, and that is worth saying out loud and even congratulating, because plenty of children get less. The failure here did not come from a mother or a father who stopped caring. It came from the court and the licensed practitioners inside it, the people who are supposed to be the professionals in the room.
We have seen this before with this attorney, and recently. In January we reported on Julie Ann Kramer’s case, another Oklahoma mother who hired Rob Hopkins, this time to hold a protective order, and watched it come apart on a courthouse calendar. There the trouble was a hearing quietly converted from a routine place marker into a final trial on less than 24 hours’ notice, a safety accommodation denied, and a case dismissed three weeks before the Oklahoma Supreme Court was set to review the judge’s conduct. Different county, different judge, different facts, and yet the shape is familiar: a woman who paid for representation, a hearing that did not go the way a represented client’s hearing is supposed to go, and a client left to absorb the damage. Stacey Stanton is not the first person to walk this road with Hopkins. She is the latest.
When the Courts Fail a Disabled Child
This newspaper does not write about courts failing disabled children from a safe distance.
We, understand it firsthand. Our son began showing signs at age 11, and by 15 it was clear he was intellectually disabled. He completed only the eighth grade. The courts that handled his life did not account for what he needed. Peyton ended up abused and given a bad drug, and it ended in tragedy for our family. The courts then crawfished back into their hole as though they had caused none of it. We tell Stacey Stanton’s story, and we ask whether Oklahoma understands the needs of disabled children, because we already know the cost of an answer that arrives too late.
Oklahoma has a rule about what a lawyer is supposed to do with money you hand over before the work is finished. It is Rule 1.15 of the Oklahoma Rules of Professional Conduct, it is not complicated, and the only genuinely surprising thing about it is that anyone had to write it down.
The rule says money you pay in advance is not the lawyer’s money yet. It belongs to you until it is earned. Until then it goes into a separate account called a client trust account, usually an IOLTA account administered through the Oklahoma Bar Foundation. The lawyer’s money goes in one place. Your money goes in another. The lawyer is allowed to move it over to his side only as he actually does the work. If the relationship ends before the work is done, Rule 1.16(d) says the unearned part comes back to you. A lawyer is also not permitted to sit on disputed money to pressure you into seeing things his way. The undisputed part is supposed to be returned promptly.
That Is the Law
Stanton lives in Edmond and is a stay-at-home mother. Her 14-year-old daughter is severely autistic and nonverbal, and specialized care is hard enough to find that working outside the home is not realistic. In November 2023 she hired Oklahoma City attorney Rob Hopkins to seek sole custody of her daughter in Canadian County, case FD-2021-693, before Judge Lory K. Dewey. She is careful to say she was not trying to cut the father out. She wanted sole custody because of what she describes as his negligence, not to keep him from his child.
The fee was a flat $2,500. She paid $900 up front and the balance by June 2025. She says she never signed a written agreement. It was, she says, a verbal arrangement, which is a thing lawyers tell their clients not to do for everyone except, apparently, themselves.
For a while it looked like a normal case. Hopkins entered an appearance, filed the change of custody papers and, when the father would not answer the door for a process server, served him by publication. At a Dec. 29, 2025 hearing the father did not appear and the court entered the custody modification Stanton had asked for.
It came apart on March 26, 2026. Hopkins did not show up. The bailiff could not reach him, so Judge Dewey called him on her own phone. Hopkins told the court he had let his client know he had a medical appointment. Stanton, who was sitting right there, spoke up and said she had not talked to him in weeks. He also told the court his law license was in jeopardy, that he had to check his standing with the bar every day and that he was closing his firm. He withdrew that day. He is the same attorney whose courtroom collapse in a separate Pontotoc County case went around the world earlier this year, a detail Stanton would just as soon not have attached to her own.
How the Case Was Built
There is also a question about how Stanton’s case was built by Hopkins in the first place.
Hopkins served the father by publication, the method reserved for people who cannot be located or served in person, after the father, by Stanton’s account, would not answer his door for a process server. The trouble is what came next. The father has appeared at every hearing since and has argued his own case without a lawyer, which raises an obvious question about whether he was ever truly unreachable. Improper service is not a paperwork technicality. If an attorney misrepresents his efforts to a court in order to push a case forward, it can rise to a fraud on the court, and that is exactly the kind of defect that can unravel an entire case in front of a judge. That is close to what happened here. The orders Stanton won were vacated. Whether Hopkins’s handling of service was merely careless or something a court or a prosecutor would view as worse is a question his pending bar grievances, and the record, will have to answer.
On May 7, in an order filed May 11, the judge vacated the December custody orders. The reason, stated in the order itself, was that those orders rested on information provided by Stanton’s then attorney, and that his conduct in March together with his later license suspension caused the court to question his reliability. The custody Stanton had won reverted to the 2022 divorce decree. She is now representing herself. The court found the case high conflict and appointed a parenting coordinator, Christi Chesley, whose cost the parents split, and the father’s child support obligation was reset to $421.89 a month, which Stanton says cut what she receives roughly in half. A family member, Ronda Stanton, sat in the gallery and watched the whole thing.
As for the money, Stanton calculates that $1,370.83 of her $2,500 was never earned and never returned. After everything was over, she says, Hopkins messaged her through the client portal asking her to pay what she still owed him. He had not sent her a current bill. The portal she did have access to, she says, was empty, so she downloaded what little was there before it could become even emptier.
On April 27, 2026, the Oklahoma Supreme Court suspended Hopkins on an emergency basis. The order, 2026 OK 26, case SCBD-8100, notes eight grievances pending against him and that he had been held in direct contempt of court twice. He was required to notify his clients of the suspension. Stanton says he never told her. The bar did not contact her either. She found out by reading about his case online while trying to track down his malpractice insurer, which is also how she found this newspaper.
When a Lawyer Takes Your Money
So what is a client supposed to do when a lawyer does not do the right thing with the money? Oklahoma offers a few doors, none of them fast.
You can file a grievance with the Oklahoma Bar Association Office of the General Counsel. These stay confidential until the Supreme Court issues a public order, which is why most people never hear about them. The bar can also ask the court for an emergency interim suspension under Rule 6.2A specifically to preserve and recover client funds, which is the provision used against Hopkins. Then there is the Clients’ Security Fund, created by the Supreme Court in 1965 to reimburse clients who lose money to a lawyer’s dishonest conduct. It is a remedy of last resort, meaning you are expected to try the other sources first, and it is paid for out of Oklahoma lawyers’ own dues. It has paid more than $4 million since 1965, and in January 2026 it paid nearly $147,000 to 10 people. Finally there is a malpractice suit, with one Oklahoma wrinkle: the state does not require lawyers to carry malpractice insurance. Stanton’s working theory is that Hopkins carried none, which would make a judgment against him roughly as collectible as a verbal fee agreement.
The reason any of this matters more than a refund is that the case was never really about $1,370.83. It was about a child who communicates by typing into a phone with no service.
For Oklahoma parents in that position, there are places to turn that are not a courthouse. The Oklahoma Family Network (oklahomafamilynetwork.org) connects parents with other parents and runs support and respite programs. The Oklahoma Autism Network, a center of excellence based at OU Health Sciences, works with families from diagnosis into adulthood. Sooner SUCCESS helps families navigate the system statewide. The Autism Foundation of Oklahoma (autismfoundationok.org), Autism Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Autism Center (autismcenterok.org) fill out the nonprofit side. On the state’s side, SoonerCare covers therapies including ABA, the Family Support Assistance Payment Program offers monthly cash help to families of children with developmental disabilities who are not on a waiver, and Developmental Disabilities Services administers the Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services waivers. DDS can be reached at DDS.Waitlist@okdhs.org or 405-500-1866.
Whether the state truly understands what these families need is a fair question, and the honest answer is better than it used to, and not all the way. For years Oklahoma kept families on the DDS waiting list for about 13 years, long enough that children aged into adulthood before their names came up. In May 2022 the Legislature put $32.5 million toward clearing it, the largest single increase in the program’s history, added more in 2023 and 2025, and by 2025 had cut the wait from 13 years to roughly one. The state now describes itself as working toward becoming a “no-wait state,” a phrase that lands differently depending on how long you waited. There is also a catch worth saying plainly. DDS serves people whose primary diagnosis is intellectual disability. Autism qualifies when it comes with that. A child who is autistic but not intellectually disabled can fall straight through the gap.
And then there is the part no statute covers. A custody case is supposed to be about a child. Stanton’s became a hearing where her own lawyer was the problem, an order undone because a judge could no longer trust what he had said, and a system that now wants a paid stranger to come into her home and decide which parent is the better one. We would like to believe the courts understand their job is to hold families to their children, not to sort out whose attorney told the more convincing untruth. Stanton is not waiting on belief.
“I’m not going to go away,” she said. “I want my money back.”
Rob Hopkins was contacted at his firm before publication. He is suspended from the practice of law and his firm has closed. Any response will be published in full. The Oklahoma Post has previously reported on Hopkins and on former clients who described similar experiences.
Writing By: Robbie Robertson | Editing by Robbie Robertson
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is based on court documents, audio recordings, and investigative reporting.
Sources
Oklahoma Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 1.15 and trust account duties, Oklahoma Bar Association Ethics Counsel Trust Accounting FAQs. https://www.okbar.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/trust-account-faqs.pdf
Oklahoma Bar Association Ethics Opinion No. 317, on advance fees and the duty to refund unearned fees under Rule 1.16(d). https://www.okbar.org/ethics/ethics-opinion-no-317/
Oklahoma Bar Association Clients’ Security Fund, purpose, last-resort standard and claims. https://www.okbar.org/gc/clients-security-fund/
Oklahoma Bar Association reimburses client losses, January 2026 payout of nearly $147,000 to 10 clients. https://www.tahlequahdailypress.com/news/state-bar-association-to-reimburse-client-losses/article_6932b5e4-2567-43ae-b1d3-f44dc7103aea.html
State of Oklahoma ex rel. OBA v. Hopkins, 2026 OK 26, SCBD-8100, emergency interim suspension entered April 27, 2026. Oklahoma Supreme Court, via OK Courts and More. https://okcourtsandmore.org/supreme-court-of-oklahoma-2026/
Canadian County District Court, Stacey Weber (Stanton) v. Jonathan Carl Weber, FD-2021-693, Supplemental Journal Entry and Journal Entry, hearing dated May 7, 2026, filed May 11, 2026. Court records on file with The Oklahoma Post.
Stacey Stanton’s two Oklahoma Bar Association grievance letters and recorded interview with The Oklahoma Post, on file.
Oklahoma Developmental Disabilities Services waitlist, reduced from 13 years to about one year. Oklahoma Human Services DDS dashboard. https://oklahoma.gov/okdhs/services/dds/ddswaitlist.html
Oklahoma Legislature funding to clear the DDS waitlist, House Bill 4466, $32.5 million, May 2022. Oklahoma Senate. https://oksenate.gov/press-releases/senate-gives-unanimous-approval-bill-eliminating-oklahomas-waiting-list
Oklahoma autism and family resources, Oklahoma Family Network and Oklahoma Autism Network. https://oklahomafamilynetwork.org/resources/oklahoma-autism-network/
Oklahoma Judicial Rules Cited:
- Oklahoma Code of Judicial Conduct Rule 2.3 – Prohibition on bias, prejudice, and harassment
- Oklahoma Rules of Evidence 401-403 (codified at 12 O.S. §§ 2401-2403) – Relevance and prejudice standards
U.S. Constitutional Provisions:
- Fourteenth Amendment – Due process guarantees
Court Documents Referenced:
- Kramer v. Howland, Case No. PO-2024-4026 (Oklahoma County District Court) – Victim protective order case
- Kramer v. Howland, Case No. FP-2025-311 (Oklahoma County District Court) – Paternity case
- Application to Assume Original Jurisdiction and Petition for Writ of Prohibition and Mandamus, Oklahoma Supreme Court (filed December 22, 2025)
- Emergency Motion for Stay of Proceedings, Oklahoma Supreme Court (filed December 22, 2025)
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