Financial conclusion

leftinamess1

Hi,



I am new to this site and wanted some advice as i have been told it’s verygood.

Trying to keep things short and simple, in 2012 i got a divorce from my ex wife.At the time I was advised to get a financial conclusion but could not afford to doit then and my then wife's solicitor advised her against it. I left it and wasjust relived to be divorced.

Now i have moved to Duabi and am saving to buy a house (sending cash back tothe Uk) and I have also re married. I am now slightly worried that having notgot the financial conclusion that if we buy a house she will try and stake aclaim. I have two children with my ex wife that i contribute to monthly.


Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I do plan on seeing a solicitor inthe UK next month.

Jacko_amz

Hiya, I'm currently starting my divorce and will be going to a solicitor for a 'consent order' to protect my pension. A solicitor can do the same for you, however she may fight it and claim some rights to whatever you have

leftinamess1

Thanks for the advise. Not sure how easy it would be for her with me living in Dubai.

This is more not for now but in the future as she is the type of person to come knocking years to come asking for part of any assets make with my new wife.

WillowCat

You say you have remarried. Were you the petitioner in the divorce?

If you were not, or you were but did not tick the ancillary relief boxes on the petition you are barred from making an application for a financial order (see the 'remarriage trap').

In this case you would need to wait until she applied.

You living in Dubai would not make any difference except for assets you have over there, especially a foreign pension, though the court would normally simply be more inclined to make an order transferring your UK assets instead.

However the longer the gap between decree absolute and a financial order being commenced, the less justification the applicant has to gain a settlement. It's not a rule of law, but there is evidence that if a claim is made beyond six years after decree absolute it has very little chance of succeeding, and the applicant has to justify why they waited so long. Notwithstanding the Vince v Wyatt case last year (which was exceptional circumstances) - the wife in that situation has only won the right to make an application, as far as I'm aware the application itself has not yet been determined and the pundits are expecting the settlement to be trivial in relation to the assets the husband owns.

TBagpuss

Willowcat is right, as you have remarried you are unlikely to be able to make a claim. Does your ex-wife have any assets? it would be possible for the two of you to agree a clean break order, and if she has any savings or assets this might be a ttractive to her as a way of protecting her future assets from you.
If you are not able to reach an agreement with her, then make sure that you keep good records so that if she was to make any claim in the future, you are able to show that the houe or other assets were build up entirely after the divorce.

Also keep copies of any correspondence which goes to or from her now - if nothing else, it may be worth sending / getting sent to her a letter which says, in effect that it is your understnading that all financial issues except the maintenace for the children are resolved and that you propose that you apply jointly for a formal order confirming that. Such a letter would not be binding, but it would make it haeder for her, at a future time, to claim that she didn't make a claim becuae she diodn't know it was possible, or that she believed that you had assets from the marriage, or anything of that kind.

leftinamess1

Hi, thank you for all your advice.

I am just very conscious as she it something she would try and do. She was the one that filed for the divorce in the first place but I remember she wouldn't go ahead with the financial conclusion as her solicitor said it wasn't in her favour.

We had nothing at the time (a few thousand) but I have since moved upwards in my career and am saving like mad to buy a house. It just worries me that she could one day come back to haunt me financially.

She won't have any savings guaranteed as she was addicted to spending. A lot of her spending went in my name to which I discovered when we separated including a CCJ in my name which I managed to take to court and get removed as I could prove I knew nothing about.

paddyrg

You need a legal opinion, not a bunch of strangers on a forum. You're working tax-free and sending money back to the UK to buy property, so you can afford a lawyer. Time to do this properly and not mess about