ahhhh Sherril...... I feel your angst. We never paid for an atty for our son, but his grandmother did. With this top notch attorney, he was sentenced to a state prison for 18 months; he was out in about 6 months.
Before that, our Difficult Child had only public defenders. One was just horrible and later disbarred(!) Another one seemed incredibly good. This was before his grandmother hired an atty.
Through it all, bad/good public attorneys and the one paid for by his grandmother, our son talked the talk, but we knew he was not repentant. He blamed everybody else. Of course, he did want to avoid the time.
Although we were not retired when this all started, husband and I are now. We do not regret not spending money on our son's defense. If he had had a change of heart and convinced us of it, that would be a different story. And, I will add: we wrote letters and I flew up to plead his case with everybody I could think of in the town of his conviction, hoping to change things. I was met with stonewall faces telling me how our son deserved to do serious time. I so did not want to hear that stuff. I am wiser now.
I wanted to do something, knowing that he was guilty, knowing he would most likely not turn his life around. But, i loved him so much, still saw my little boy, and wanted so badly to believe he would do better if given a chance.
While I do not regret it, I learned a lot.
As we are learning, it was on him all along. $$ his grandmother spent did not help at all, that we can tell.
