Final Consent Order - post divorce

Punkich

Can anyone please give me some advice on a solicitor (or other)  who can help me with a final consent order. 

Our divorce was finalised 9 months ago but a final consent order was not included.  I have contacted a company online who say that we must still go through mediation and clock up £1000's of pounds more in fees when all we want is a legal agreement that says we've now split the house sale money 50:50, we both keep our respective pensions (I have taken on the credit card debt) and we will both have no further claim on each others future monetary situations. 

Surely it CAN be that simple?  Can't it?

Many thanks in advance

Paula

tightauldgit

It can be that simple. If things are amicable and you're both happy there are solicitors who will just do the paperwork for you. Check wikivorce for info. 

Punkich

Punkich said:

Can anyone please give me some advice on a solicitor (or other)  who can help me with a final consent order. 

Our divorce was finalised 9 months ago but a final consent order was not included.  I have contacted a company online who say that we must still go through mediation and clock up £1000's of pounds more in fees when all we want is a legal agreement that says we've now split the house sale money 50:50, we both keep our respective pensions (I have taken on the credit card debt) and we will both have no further claim on each others future monetary situations. 

Surely it CAN be that simple?  Can't it?

Many thanks in advance

Paula

Sorry that should read FINANCIAL final consent order!

RAS

Write out between you what you want to happen. Then go over to wikivorce to find a lawyer who can check it for pot-holes.

You can send it to the courts and pay the fee, but as long as the judge is happy, it should be OK.

Hazelnutty

Yep, we did this and it cost around £500 I think via an online service. Judge can ask questions and ask you to clartify aspects of the agreement but can't override your decision is what I recall. It was all super simple.

Lavendyr

Go to Wikivorce. You can get a solicitor to draft for you and make sure the legal document does all it needs. It's not expensive at all. 

DeeSpare

Hazelnutty said:

Yep, we did this and it cost around £500 I think via an online service. Judge can ask questions and ask you to clartify aspects of the agreement but can't override your decision is what I recall. It was all super simple.

Hi, sorry to hijack but this is interesting.
i wanted to forgo my portion of the house in exchange for spouses private pension. Spouse agrees. But was told judge gets final say so…which is a big risk therefore for me. Is that not the case then?

tightauldgit

DeeSpare said:

Hazelnutty said:

Yep, we did this and it cost around £500 I think via an online service. Judge can ask questions and ask you to clartify aspects of the agreement but can't override your decision is what I recall. It was all super simple.

Hi, sorry to hijack but this is interesting.
i wanted to forgo my portion of the house in exchange for spouses private pension. Spouse agrees. But was told judge gets final say so…which is a big risk therefore for me. Is that not the case then?

I believe a judge can withhold approval of an agreement if they feel there are issues but if you both agree then that's fairly unlikely. A judge really just wants to know that you both agree and both understand what you are signing up for and that one party isn't being duped by the other. So for example they would probably want to know how your spouse plans to support themself in retirement if they sign over their pension to you, but provided there's a sensible answer I wouldn't see any issue.

A judge isn't going to completely re-write the agreement there and then - worst case they will tell you that they don't approve it and why and go away and come back with a different agreement. The judge is only going to have to make a ruling on it if you both can't agree having been through the whole court process.

So basically the worst case scenario is that you end up without an agreement, which is where you are now anyway. 

 

TBagpuss

DeeSpare said:

Hazelnutty said:

Yep, we did this and it cost around £500 I think via an online service. Judge can ask questions and ask you to clartify aspects of the agreement but can't override your decision is what I recall. It was all super simple.

Hi, sorry to hijack but this is interesting.
i wanted to forgo my portion of the house in exchange for spouses private pension. Spouse agrees. But was told judge gets final say so…which is a big risk therefore for me. Is that not the case then?

How it works is that youcan agree on what you want. The Judge can then either approve the order which is what generally happens) or decline to approve it (in which case they will typically say why - normally asking for more details to explain why a specifc proposal is fair. They can't make an order which divides things in a different way from what you've agreed.

The most common situation where a Judge may decline to approve the order is whrethe order appears, on the face of it, to be unequal, particuaelly where the person ho appears to be getting less  in not representated by a solicito. In some cases the Judge may list the case for a short (5-10 minute) hearing so they can speak to you directly to make ure that eveyone is geneuinely agreeing. 

When you send an agreed order to the court you send with it  statement of iformation in Fomr D81. The form has boxes for additional information / explanation and it maypay you to get a proper solicitor to draw up the order and D81 as they will beto advise about whether the Judge is likely to have questions and how to complete theforms to try, as far as is possible, to pre-emptively address / answer them to reduce the chace of the order being rejected. 

SO, if you are getting a bigger share of the pension that you would otherwise be entitled to in exchange for a smaller 9or no) share of the hosue, you would proabbly want to make that clear , give some idea of the figures.
Obviosulyyou would normally be entitled to a share of the pension anyway so you wpould want to show you are getting a bigger dhare and how the values compare