Online divorce

SuperSonicDog

I’m looking for advice around the online divorce via gov.uk.

I want a divorce, sell the house etc but he doesn’t and he’s dragging his heels refusing to do anything. 

I’ve seen this is a way of a cheap divorce without fighting (I don’t want to fight, I just want to move on with what’s mine and he has what’s his) 

I spoke to someone from a company called amicable, but they only deal with couples who are amicable 😂 and we’re not. But she did tell me about the  consent order to separate our finances. So if I used the online divorce who does this part? I’ve seen it does ask about this on the links about how the divorce would work and whether we’d need this and I’m guessing we do. Would we get a solicitor each just to work this but out? Or doing it online is the expectation that we’re sorting it ourselves??

thanks for any advice

Brie

I presume you haven't discussed a split of your finances or had an official accounting of what this might involve?  What's yours and what's his is often a difficult conversation and needs to include proper information with regards to the value of pensions etc.  If he doesn't want to sell the house maybe the value of his pension being transferred to you would cover your share?

Emmia

If he's going to dig his heels in I fear it will probably mean you'll need legal advice and representation for this.  You don't want to fight, but it sounds like he doesn't want to divorce - that means that to get what you want (a divorce) you're going to have to fight at least a bit.

In the marriage who has more financial power? Higher wages / bigger pension etc. who has the most to lose? 

You sound as though you've already mentally checked out of the marriage - are you still living together? 

IOWJJBTM2025

Even if both of you agree there are still lots to sort - it can be very messy.
From the short message there is a house involved and the other half is already not in agreement.
Therefore I would suggest that agreement of who gets what will save a lot of battle and money in the future.
It may be easier for you to divorce and get a solicitor to assist.
In my case I just instructed a divorce on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour and the solicitor just told me what to do and when.
Once the other half gets the letter from your solicitor they should realise your intentions.

SuperSonicDog

Brie thanks for your reply. No we’ve not had any advice. I guess that’s my question, can we do the (cheap) divorce online but just get help (and pay for)  with the finances?

Emmia, thanks. Yes we’re living together still, in a very small house where there’s no escape 😩 I am very much checked out of the marriage. I wish I could just go 😩 we have been here before many times so unsure why he is fighting it.  In terms of our situation we’re pretty much equal in terms of finances, similar pensions (although he is in the process of claiming everything he can) he earns more but he’s older so can’t get the term on another mortgage that he wants whereas maybe I can. So yes I think my question is, can we do the divorce part for £600 online and just have a solicitor sort the financial side or do I need someone to sort the whole lot (we would have about 50k each equity so clearly I’m wanting to hold on to this as much as I can in order to move on)

Emmia

SuperSonicDog said:

Brie thanks for your reply. No we’ve not had any advice. I guess that’s my question, can we do the (cheap) divorce online but just get help (and pay for)  with the finances?

Emmia, thanks. Yes we’re living together still, in a very small house where there’s no escape 😩 I am very much checked out of the marriage. I wish I could just go 😩 we have been here before many times so unsure why he is fighting it.  In terms of our situation we’re pretty much equal in terms of finances, similar pensions (although he is in the process of claiming everything he can) he earns more but he’s older so can’t get the term on another mortgage that he wants whereas maybe I can. So yes I think my question is, can we do the divorce part for £600 online and just have a solicitor sort the financial side or do I need someone to sort the whole lot (we would have about 50k each equity so clearly I’m wanting to hold on to this as much as I can in order to move on)

How are you proposing to do it online if he's not in agreement?

There are lots of reasons people don't want to divorce - culture/family, being seen to have "failed", financial position - you will probably be worse off financially as two single people than a couple (two lots of housing, two lots of utility bills etc).

You should take (separate) legal advice on the financial settlement - you may need to sell the house in order to ensure an equal/fair division. 

Can you afford to move out?

Peter999_2

I got divorced after we split up in June 2024.    Fortunately we were both in agreement and amicable.

We just sat down together and went through what we had (fortunately I am very organised financially wise so had it in a finance package down to the penny how much we had).   

We spoke to a couple of solicitors who wanted over £2,000 to conduct the divorce and were horrified that we didn't need any advice.    Even my conveyancer for my new house was genuinely shocked that we weren't taking any advice - as far as we were concerned we didn't need it as it wasn't rocket science (between us we had over £1 million of assets).

We completed the divorce ourselves with no help from solicitors.  We found it difficultish but not impossible.
The difficult thing was the financial settlement which when I explained to her how important it was we decided to have one. The really annoying thing was that if we didn't go through a solicitor then it took a few months longer as we couldn't use the online portal to speed it up.

We paid £399 to divorceonline.   They got us to complete a form with all our details and without telling them we completed the forms for the financial settlement ourselves to see what the difference would be.    When we got it back from divorceonline it was practically identical - they'd even made a mistake which we had to tell them about, haha.

We had agreed that as I had earnt all the money in our marriage that we wouldn't split the pensions as that would be complicated.  I had retired and wouldn't be able to add to my pension whereas my wife now has a pretty good job with a generous pension and will be able to add to it for the next 15 years before she retires.   This was very kind of her and I still appreciate it now as it made a big difference to me.

Anyway - we submitted the financial order and had to wait a couple of months before a judge looked at it (if we'd have used a solicitor they could have used the portal and it would be a lot quicker).

The judge rejected the order because he wanted more details about why I was keeping my pension and not splitting it.  At this point I read somewhere that a judge cannot reject an order as it's seen as an agreement between two adults - only that he would ask for more details and if he was satisified we both understood it would be accepted.

We made the changes and gave me details as to the reasoning and submitted it - when we sent it off we realised we'd both forgotten that we should have asked divorceonline to make the changes as this was part of the package.   

About 3 weeks later we were told the financial order was granted and we could then submit the decree absolute (they call it something different now) and we were divorced.

I actually put an offer in for a new house within a month of us agreeing to split up - I just didn't want to be in the house anymore and had to get away.   My conveyancer strongly told me that this was completely the wrong way to do it and I should wait for the divorce to come through before I bought a house.   No chance - at this point I was a bit sick and tired of solicitors telling me what to do and that without paying their fees we wouldn't be able to do things ourselves.

I had to pay stamp duty on my new house as it was a second property as I hadn't disposed of the first until the divorce.   My idea was that when we were divorced I would claim it back - though my conveyancer was adament that I couldn't as I wasn't selling the house I was giving it to my wife.   Fortunately I looked into it and on this very forum I found a fabulous user who obviously knew everything about stamp duty and he/she said that they thought I could claim it back.

Again, solicitors wanted a lot of money to help us transfer the house into my wife's name only and that we wouldn't be able to do it ourselves.    Yet again we did it ourselves (the hard bit was proving our identification but my coveyancer did it for me for free and my wife got an online solictor to do it for her for £58 (thanks to covid you didn't have to actually meet the solicitor anymore - though to be honest it felt very open to fraud).

Yet again, because we didn't go through a solicitor who had online access to the land registry we had to wait months for it to go through.     It took about 5 months in the end, fortunately before the financial order was approved.  They accepted it and the house was transferred successfully.

I would point out that it was very important that we both were in total agreement after the initial couple of hours going through who got what - I really wouldn't have liked to have done it if she was awkward.  We are also both professionals who have spent quite a long time in admin jobs at the start of our careers and I worked in IT for over 30 years so am fine with oneline stuff.

In all, we only paid the £399 to divorceonline and the rest of the money was just the fees for actually doing the land registry, the financial order and the divorce itself.   I think the order was £58 and the others were pretty similar and cheap.  Certainly a lot cheaper than the £3,000 to £4,000 it would have cost if we'd gone through solicitors.

I wish you the best of luck for the journey and I totally understand what you mean about no escape in a small house.   We were actually still friendly-ish but I did find it very hard to still have to deal with her OCD and her being very controlling (everything in the house was exactly how she wanted it - I didn't get a say).   I was fine with this when we were still "together" but when we split up I had to really bite my lip all thetime and couldn't keep it up for very long at all.

VyEu

Divorce process and the financial split on divorce are actually separate processes. You can do the divorce itself online, that more straightforward.

If you agree something via consent then you need a consent order. I don't recommend amicable because they won't actually act for either party in the sense of giving proper advice. But if you want to do it on the cheap, then your choice.  If you have complicated assets e.g. a mix of pension types, multiple properties etc then they can't always deal with it.

Standard advice is both parties have their own solicitor, consent order submitted to court and hopefully court approves it. As above poster says, if it's really one sided the court can reject it. 

RAS

Have a look at wikivorce. They may not act for you but you can get an idea of what's possible and acceptable. 

If there no agreement, offer mediation. You can't force him to accept but refusing doesn't look good. And sometimes having a neutral party explained n that your, or his, desire isn't likely to be accepted shifts attitudes.

But unless he has a change of heart, this is likely going to cost you both.

Exodi

SuperSonicDog said:

I don’t want to fight, I just want to move on with what’s mine and he has what’s his

Such a simple sentence, echoed by all yet riddled with complication and expectation.

The biggest problem - who's to say what's his and what's yours? You obviously have your interpretation of what should be yours, likewise he might have his.

He may have the view that as he has worked or earned more than you during his working life, or he brought more into the marriage, he should be entitled to more - we see this quite often, not saying that that is my view.

Likewise you suggest you don't want a fight, but are you willing to settle for less than you consider "what's yours"?

I think it's important to mention (and we see it on this forum all the time), that both parties in the divorce always believe they are the 'reasonable' one.

As you've probably gathered from the comments on this thread, you will not be able to do administer a cheap DIY approach to your divorce, if you are not only not in agreement about how to split the martial assets, but you can't even talk about it.

You say you have similar pensions (of course double check), which is good because it means you can agree that your pensions remain untouched by each other (which is good as this can often be a very incendiary point in divorces).

Being pragmatic here, assuming your pensions are equal and in terms of assets you only have £50k equity in the property, how do you propose the equity is released. You mention that he's older and his mortgage-raising capabilities may be hindered whereas yours may not? This implies that you should buy him out instead of vice versa but your later points imply you may want the equity as cash? If you were clearer in your suggestions (e.g. I'll buy him out for £25k or we sell the house and split the proceeds, it might be easier to progress).

Unfortunately this situation has all the hallmarks of a lengthy and expensive legal battle.

It sounds like he's still in denial breaking up.