In 1989, the lawyer who handled Ms. Kiss's divorce, Jack B. Solerwitz of Mineola, L.I., absconded with the $70,834 she received from the sale of her house required by the settlement. Ms. Kiss then hired a second lawyer, Bertram Zweibon of Manhattan. In 1990, with Mr. Zweibon's help, the fund compensated Ms. Kiss for most of her losses. But Mr. Zweibon promptly stole everything she had just recouped. "Aside from the fact that my ex was driving me nuts, all these guys were taking my money," she recalled.

It is in her religious tradition, said Ms. Kiss, an Orthodox Jew, to take people at their word. It is also, she thinks, in her stars. Asked how she could have judged legal talent so badly, she replied: "Maybe it's because I'm an Aries and I trust people. Don't you think it's a better way to be?"

But bitter experience, she concedes, has made her a bit warier -- a feeling, she said, that has spilled over to her children. "The latest line of the oldest one," she said, "is, 'Lawyers are liars.' "

Fiorello LaGuardia liked to say that when he made a mistake, it was "a beaut," and for Ms. Kiss this is doubly true. In New York legal lore, Mr. Solerwitz is the Babe Ruth of ripoffs, having been convicted of stealing more than $5 million in the 1980's. He is serving 5 to 15 years in prison for grand larceny.

"I didn't know any lawyers, and he was a very nice man," said Ms. Kiss, whose children were 3, 4 and 6 when she left her husband in 1987. "Someone finally wants to help you; you jump at it. What did I know? When you're dealing with a woman with three small babies, it takes a lot of chutzpah to do something like that."