Divorce - cutting the cost

sandybeaches

Hi All,

I wonder if anybody can give me an advice on how to cut the cost of Divorce. My Partner - soon to be husband hopefully- has passed his two year separation period with his wife and is now looking to be divorced. I have been quoted £1100 for the proceedings because there is a child under 16 involved.
My Lawyer told me that if there hadn't been a child involved it would only have been around £250!!! what a huge gap. This is alot of money and eats into our Money Saving Wedding budget quite alot.
Since there is no property or settlement money involved and the childcare arrangements and maintenance are long ago established I thought that it would be easier.

I have read that you can do the Divorce yourself by getting all the papers and simply payingthe court fee's but I don't know how straightforward or feasable that would be.

Has anyone done this before or can anyone offer any advise?

tinamaria

http://www.divorceonline.co.uk/

My friend did hers through this, dont know anything about it but you may want to take a look?

sandybeaches

Thanks tinamaria, I will have a look

Mr_Proctalgia

I did all my divorce myself, but did not do the finacial settlement. The divorce is a doddle, get yourself down to the county court and ask for a divorce pack. My local court has them ready in an envelope with instructions it cost I think then about £180 and took 3 months.(But I think it has gone up since).
You will HAVE to have taken legal advice for a settlement and need to get it drawn up in legalise to be presented to the judge. Ideally you should be looking for a "clean break" settlement and leave the child support to the CSA.
I was lucky as our kids are adults and we simply went 50/50 and walked off.


HTH

Philippa36

I did it all myself. I did consult a solicitor at the beginning who told me it would cost me over £1,000 even though there was no property and no issues with maintenance or childcare arrangements.
He did send me a letter stating what I should put it where but it was worse than useless, it even contained spelling errors!
The courts were very useful to me, and I found the forms relatively simple. There are several forums online that will help with the process but I didn't use them so can't recommend any.

I would definitely suggest you try it yourself first, you can always seek help if you find you have problems but I doubt you will

Bossyboots

All the information and forms is available to download from the Court Service website.

The current fees are £300 to file the petition and £40 for the decree absolute. People on certain benefits and low income are exempt from these on completion of the requisite form. Details of who is exempt are listed on the site. I can't put in links now but if will do so later on if anyone needs them.

Becles

tinamaria wrote:

http://www.divorceonline.co.uk/

Don't pay for their divorce pack. You send them all your personal details, which they type into a form and send it back for you to sign and send to the court office.

You can get the same forms free from court and fill them in yourself with a pen to save paying Divorce Online (and similar companies).

Bossyboots

Becles is spot on. You really do not need to be paying people to fill in these forms for you. You can get all the information and forms you need from the court service website. They are not difficult to do and you can take them to your local court and ask staff for help or ring a county court and ask for guidance if you get stuck on anything.

Where I would not recommend cutting corners is on the financial order. This must be done properly to prevent claims being made in the future if, for example, one of the parties comes into a sum of money. You should also be aware that you should have the financial element sorted before applying for the decree absolute.