Hi, head to divorce board. Link at top of that page to ADVICE NOW.
download their guides. Read. Read more
understand that D81 is your financial declaration. You and spouse need to complete fully. Legal full declaration. It includes EVERYTHING- chatells, cars, pensions, income. Saving, property, business interest. The guides will ensure complete it properly
then the two of you need to decide how to split these assets. A consent order is what you do if you can agreed without court intervention. But it is sealed (authorised) by court at time of your final divorce with court using the D81 as supporting evidence . Whether court agrees to your consent order is based on “fair settlement” law. Even if you think it is fair, the court has to ensure law is followed. And it doesn’t start at 50:50 , it’s about future needs. Courts like that a 50:50 could be reached, but in some cases that simply wouldn’t meet the legal “ fair settlement “ needs.
your consent order can be written in your layman terms. But then needs to be drafted legally. Realistically you do need a solcitor to do that. Courts also much prefer to see that you’ve both taken at least minimum advice (say 1 hour) with solicitor to ensure you know what you’re signing. You could try doing Legal draft yourself, but frankly it’s not worth risk for the £500 it’ll cost to write up based on your good laymans term document, and the time you both need to review it with solicitor to satisfy court you know what you’re doing. It cost me and ex £420 in total for that bit in mid 2021. There are examples one this site (divorce board) of courts rejecting consent orders as they’re not meeting “fair settlement”.
but in order for court to review and seal it you needed to have ticked box in petition to say you want court to do a financial agreement. Maybe you did do this and that’s why they’re now chasing.
ifvyou and stbex can’t reach agreement, you will be directed to mediation. That should get you to same place for a consent agreement . If not it’s a full court hearing.
BUT you need to inform yourself on process. The fact you didn’t understand about D81, form E and consent orders shows you’re lacking some basic knowledge here. But, good news is, it’s not difficult to learn on the ADVICE NOW site. you can still do it cheaply, as long as you can both be agreeable and compromise. Make sure stbex reads the guides to, so you know you’re both on same page re process and likely outcomes . Understanding “fair settlement “ is absolutely crucial if doing it yourself.
ADVICE NOW clewrly states what you really do need solicitor for, what you might need one for, and what you really don’t need solicitor for. You need to be very spepcifc then with a solicitor to say exactly what tasks you need them to do. And only those tasks.