Straight forward divorce .... Process

pebbles88

Hello

It's soon going to be 2 years that me. & ex-husband have been separated.

We've both moved on, however at present living in the same house.
He's moving out next week into his new girlfriends, prior to him taking up a new job post.

He wants no claim on our house, as I grew up here. He knows I can't afford to buy him out as yet. So knows his name will stay on the mortgage for now. Which he is ok with.

He knows how much the house means to me, more so since losing my lovely mum a year ago. We have a mortgage on the house & a ccj linked to a loan that we struggled with a few years ago.

We are wanting to do the divorce as simply as possible. He has asked for £5000 to allow him to sort a rental bond & a buffer for a new place, which I am ok with & can pay him over a few months. I can cover the general house bills, he is going to contribute half a month to the joint debt we have.

I've looked on wikivorce, and can see there is a simple process. But I'm not really getting it.

I'd like to have a legal Agreement that would protect me from him coming after the house & trying or force me to sell in the future until I can buy him out. We've agreed to do a simple financial clean break as well. It's all as friendly as can be at the moment. After all, at one point he meant the world to me. We've known each other so long, I really don't want it to get nasty.

So to summarise, is there some sort of agreement i can draft re the house? & what's the way to kick start the divorce?

I have copies of the D8, which I gather I need 3 copies of to apply
, it's just the stuff afterwards that I don't really get.

Any help much appreciated, I'll admit I'm not on the ball as I'd like as it's the anniversary of losing my mum. So apologies if I have made errors etc

Xx

CP26

The divorce process and the financial side are technically two separate items although (generally) they get dealt with at similar times.

The divorce itself has the following steps:

One of you will need to be the petitioner and the other the respondent. The petitioner is effectively the one asking for the divorce so they have a bit more work. It is completely possible to get divorced without involving solicitors...you'll need to complete some forms and the only cost would be the standard court fee (assuming your ex remains compliant and helpful throughout).

It sounds like you'll be choosing the two years separation option - this will require you ex's consent which it seems like you have. However as you have lived together throughout you may find that the judge wants you to provide evidence that you have lived separate lives despite sharing the same address. The wikivorce helpline would be able to offer more advice on this.

Kick starting is easy - You'll just need to submit the completed D8 copies to your local family court and pay the fee. The forms are relatively straightforward...lots of tick boxes.

The court will then handle the process. They will send a copy of the petition to your ex and a short form. He completes his side of the paperwork and sends it back to the court for processing. After that you'll both then be notified about your decree Nisi if it is granted.

Now is the time to start thinking about the financial side as you can't apply for an order until the Nisi has at least been granted.

A straightforward consent order (clean break order) is probably all you need if you are in agreement over the terms. You will need a solicitor to draft this correctly.

At the very least you need a clause about no future claims against each other. You can then add in pretty much whatever else you want - it's kind of like a will or a shopping list. You probably want to put in there about the £5k payment and that you will look to get ex off mortgage ASAP, ex will transfer his share of property to you and pay half the debt until cleared. Like I said you really do need legal advice for this part just to make sure you have something that is legal and correct should one of you ever get the hump and want to challenge it.

I arranged for a local firm to do ours for a reasonable fixed fee, I'm then doing the accompanying forms myself again rather than having the solicitor manage the process.

Once your Nisi is granted you can then apply for the absolute 6 weeks and 1 day afterwards. When you submit the consent order (after the Nisi) is up to you although if you do it before the absolute is granted the opening wording of the order is slightly different.

My ex and I have been divorced for 2 months (all DIY) and are only just getting round to doing the consent order so you can get divorced first if you want then mop up the rest.

The time it takes depends on the court and their workload. I started in August and was done in January.

Some solicitor firms do fixed fee divorces where they will do all the paperwork for you, plus a consent order if you need it. I found the wikivorce helpline very useful although I wasn't keen on using their services - I wanted a local firm that I could walk into if anything became difficult.

Hope that helps.

Thegirl

As stated above, you'll need a consent order for the financial side.

I used the wikivorce service and found them very helpful.

I engaged the services of a local firm concerning some questions my soon to be ex had raised (they weren't covered by the stadard fixed fee divorce I paid for with wikivorce). I was actualy surprised at how cheap they were.

I would recommend that the part divorce you can do yourself pretty easily, the consent order is well worth paying a solicitor for. To be honest someone local, paying them for drafting the wording, well worth the money. It will be A LOT more expensive in the long term if you do it yourself and the wording is wrong/not what you were hoping it would acheive.

make sure you take every peice of information that might be needed so you have it to hand for reference (details of all debts and assets, the name they are in etc), plus ID.

pebbles88

Thank you both very much for your replies. You make it sound much more straightforward than wiki divorce did. I really appreciate it. X