Amending a financial consent order

martyn.pope13

Hi we had our consent order approved last month but there was no mention of spousal maintenance on the order, can anyone advise the route to amend this as we simply want the order to state the agreed amount and the duration of payments , I did try via slip rule but they rejected this approach stating it’s needs to be lodged as an appeal, find the whole affair very painful considering we are totally amicable this is not what I need. Thanks. It is literally a paragraph stating how must spousal maintenance is to be paid and for how long so we both this recorded and enforceable by law. This also was stated on the signed D81 

Spendless

Assuming you live in the UK, spousal maintaince is rare. When it is paid it is ususally for a limited time and for a reason.
Eg it might be paid when one of the couple concerned is a very high earner and the other a low/non earner and they have children and would be awarded for a few years to allow the low earner time to undertake further/higher  education to enable them to seek better paid work. Its probably for this resson you cant 'just' add a paragraph yourself. 
Im.sure someone other than me could provide more detail on this though. 

martyn.pope13

Thanks for the comment, I know what spousal maintenance is, my post was in relation to the D81 stated the amounts that would be paid for both child and spousal maintenance but were not then written on the draft consent order so my question related to how to go about get the recently approved order to also contain the spousal payments and date, so that everyone is clear what they are getting or paying and until when. The court is making this minor adjustment very difficult in what is already a difficult moment 

tacpot12

This question might be one where it is worth taking professional legal advice on how to do what you are trying to do. It's a technical question on procedure, so a professional is likely to be able to answer it very quickly, and hence at minimal cost. 

martyn.pope13

I was quoted over £1000 to add a paragraph, just feel like the process is total gear to may lawyers rich. 

AskAsk

martyn.pope13 said:

Thanks for the comment, I know what spousal maintenance is, my post was in relation to the D81 stated the amounts that would be paid for both child and spousal maintenance but were not then written on the draft consent order so my question related to how to go about get the recently approved order to also contain the spousal payments and date, so that everyone is clear what they are getting or paying and until when. The court is making this minor adjustment very difficult in what is already a difficult moment 

did you not get sight of the draft consent order before it was sent to the court?  why was that part missed out without your knowledge?

martyn.pope13

Yes we did and this was our miss sight, as I incorrectly assumed that some kind of wording would be sent from court to state the finacial outcomes after divorce as per the d81 section 11, but this is not the case has we realised at the time we would have asked for it to be included 

AskAsk

martyn.pope13 said:

Yes we did and this was our miss sight, as I incorrectly assumed that some kind of wording would be sent from court to state the finacial outcomes after divorce as per the d81 section 11, but this is not the case has we realised at the time we would have asked for it to be included 

did you instruct a solicitor for the divorce or did you pay a specialist company to draft the consent order?

the D81 form is a disclosure of assets form and an agreement between the parties.  the draft consent order is the formal order that determines the settlement.  The court can reject the draft consent order if they do not think it is fair so there may have been a legit reason why the spouse maintenance was left out of the draft consent order as the solicitor may have decided it would not be approved by the court but you would have been told of this.

it sounds like you had used a company to draft the consent order rather than used a solicitor?  as this was missed out and you were not told about it.

as you had already said, you have been told that to change the order, you would need to make an appeal and the court may still reject it.  Over £1,000 to make the appeal sounds about right as they have to draft a new consent order but I think there are companies that can do a consent order quite cheaply but I don't know if they are any good.  Someone mentioned £500 from a company on wikidivorce.

i don't have any experience of the appeal process as I am at the consent order application stage, but my understanding of the process, and it is more complicated than it needs to be!, is that the D81 form does not always become the consent order that is approved as that is what the parties have agreed but it may not be what the judge believe should be the split.  I do find it a strange process where a judge makes a decision to override what the parties have agreed amongst themselves but it is there to give protection to both.

martyn.pope13

Yes thanks for your detailed response, we used an solicitor to just draft what we had already agreed, it does really bother me as you say as grown adults we have tried to do this the whole process with dignity and least confrontational and the courts are just prolong it. It makes now sense really because as the order states at the moment I can legally not pay any maintenance as it isn’t stated on the order, which is the exact opposite of what we wanted, and when asking the court to approve a minor amendment which we have both agreed and it’s rejected just baffles me 

AskAsk

Have you gone back to your solicitor to make a complaint that they have drafted the consent incorrectly from the D81 form?  It would appear that they are responsible for this mishap as although you were supposed to read the consent order and agree it before it was sent to the court for approval, the fact that it was missed off without you being consulted would indicate that it was an error on their part and they should take some responsibility for amending the consent order so that you can appeal.

They may still charge for their time to change the order, which I assume is where you got the £1,000 plus from in your comment, but they should give you a discount for their mess up of the order in the first place.

martyn.pope13

Yes that said they didn’t handle any appeals or the slip rule so I was left to self represent or pay thousands for the redraft.

i may go to the legal ombudsman though