Divorce Lawyers

Valli

Smurf71 wrote: »

Hiya, giving this a bit of a bump as I could be doing with a bit of help.

My Ex and I have been separated since the start of November and are now looking to divorce. There are no kids involved, no joint financial policies/savings and the house is in her name. I wanted to go down the self-petition route as we werent contesting anything but she wants to use the services of a solicitor even though she believes that their input would be minimal.

Has anybody any idea as to what the costs would be involved in this?

Thanks for looking.

Ring your local solicitors (ie a few of them) and get a price per hour, price for making calls, answering calls - in other words a tarrif of charges.

Then show it to your wife.

Because if she wants to use a solicitor she WILL be paying approx £100 an hour for his/her services. It will be a 4 figure sum, to come out of her share of the marital assets.

Solicitors do a free half hour interview, useful for quick fact finding etc. You might actually have to ASK if they do this;)

Smurf71

Valli wrote: »

Because if she wants to use a solicitor she WILL be paying approx £100 an hour for his/her services. It will be a 4 figure sum, to come out of her share of the marital assets.

Yeah, that exactly my point!! One of my friends is a Solicitor, and even she is recommending that we go down the other route. Saying it will cost around £1-2k each even though we arent contesting anything.

jtk174

Smurf71 wrote: »

Hiya, giving this a bit of a bump as I could be doing with a bit of help.

My Ex and I have been separated since the start of November and are now looking to divorce. There are no kids involved, no joint financial policies/savings and the house is in her name. I wanted to go down the self-petition route as we werent contesting anything but she wants to use the services of a solicitor even though she believes that their input would be minimal.

Has anybody any idea as to what the costs would be involved in this?

Thanks for looking.

Hi,
I recently paid £97 + VAT an hour, 9.70 + VAT per letter or phone call. In addition the solicitor added 33.3% on top for each attendance at court for Joint Consultations. This brought his charge (£300 ) to more than the charge for the Barristers time ( £250 )

Having gone through an 18 month divorce I would advise anyone to ; find out about your solicitor before you retain them
they are supposed to give you a full breakdown of costs and detail of what they will do for you on being retained - make sure you get it ( mine didn't! )

take notes every time you have a meeting with anyone - 18 months down the line you will be glad you did!

don't be a passenger - ask questions, preferably in writing ( follow up!)

don't be afraid of taking your business elsewhere - I did after 18 months and the new guy had it sorted in 2.

check your bill thoroughly - your notes might come in handy ( I cut £800 from mine due to a charge for a day in court that the solicitor didn't attend and 40 telephone calls - should have been 4 - also VAT charged on a bill that already had VAT charged)

don't accept your OH word for anything - get it in writing and check what they have written .

In the end, having drawn up an agreement ourselves, 2 solicitors quoted £1200 for actually handling the divorce. Hopefully that will be fairly representative. However, having gone down the argumentative route first, my first solicitor bill was nearly £5K.

I have some links to N.I. case law in a different thread ( for those in for the long haul )

Good luck.