When should I tell my husband I've hired a divorce lawyer?

[user1482949820]

Hello there. I hope someone who's gone through a divorce on this forum can help me. I am about to tell my husband I want to break up. How long after this conversation should I say that I have hired a solicitor? We have no kids and are both financially independent. I don't think he will see my decision coming but I believe he realises things are not going well. I want to keep things as amicable as possible. So how long would you suggest I wait before involving lawyers? Many thanks.

Your DH will need more time OP if you want a quick amicable divorce.

You do have a responsibility to not make him homeless and without an office in your short timescale.

Plan for a year.

And DO call an independent mediator. The lawyer will only be trained up to such a level, but you need a fully independent, accredited and trained one to get a win win you can hold your head high about in your future.

Stop plotting and get honest, fair and slow down. You can't evict a tennant on your timescales after 14 years occupancy, and you cannot evict your DH on that timescale.

Slow down, cool off, and get talking with an independent mediator not your lawyer
You need a win win, so work towards that as your best result.

If you railroad your DH you may end up with a totally fraught and unnecessary long, expensive and unpleasant experience.... a lose lose.

Slow down and be fair, put your irritation to the side and treat him as a friend, you won't regret it as you'll be divorced to him for the rest of your life.

Excellent post mistletoe. Can't add to that really except to say to the OP that doing it slower, won't make it not happen (which seems to be a theme of concern for you). Rushing it, could make it take longer as legal wrangling is both time consuming and expensive.

I think you have to accept that divorce takes time and is painful and neither of those things can be avoided altogether but you can reduce both by good communication. (He needs to be included in that "communication" as well as your lawyer. :) )

There was acceptance on both sides that the marriage was over.
There had been a series of incidents. Once the decision was made he also wanted it to be quick so he could release equity from the house to purchase a property

Thank you. I really appreciate all the comments. They truly help.

Good luck OP. I never looked back. Best thing I could have done and wished I'd done it years ago.

Thank you. I'm scared and excited at once. And sad. But I'm telling myself that if so many people do it every day then it's going to be fine. Probably!

Update: I have spoken to my husband. He said he knew I wasn't happy and that things weren't going well. So far he hadn't said anything because he was scared I would say it's over. He was however (or so he says) planning to bring this up and see if we wanted to give things another go. I explained that for me things are over but this is sort of how we left it.

The conversation was 'amicable' and reasonable but we didn't reach a conclusion. I am concerned he's doing what he's already done, which is to say nothing hoping that the problem will go away. I am planning to gently bring up the conversation again soon. Any thoughts/advice very gratefully received again. Thank you.

I wanted a divorce and my husband' didn't. I took advice from a solicitor about 6 months before I decided to divorce as I wanted to know my rights before hand so in a sense I went legal before I'd taken any decision at all to divorce. Then I told him in the summer and I was very clear about what would happen - that the decision was taken and XYZ would happen so he was in no doubt. Then he needed a solicitor - my solicitor recommended one and I paid for his and for mine and his wrote to mine with a draft divorce petition, they make some changes which I was fine with and then we negotiated my buying him out of the house, did a remortgage, conformal financial consent order sealed by the court ( separation agreement is NOT good enough by the way despite suggestion above - you need a court sealed consent order on finances before decree absolute ideally). It took 7 months for everything to be finalised and house transfer into my name from joint names and we lived in the same house throughout.

If you've decided you've decided so just tell him. Then tell him you've appointed a solicitor (when you have) and that he will have a chance to amend a draft divorce petition and then perhaps put to him a financial agreement for him to mull over. We had solicitors but negotiated our own financial terms to save legal fees.

EnormousTiger: thank you. That sounds very much like what I'd like to do. I appreciate your help!

I would be tempted now to slightly railroad the conversation along to avoid staying in stasis for too long, i.e. "now that we've spoken, I'm going to go ahead and instruct my solicitor - I think it's best if we get this moving so that we can move forward". Then do it.

We also had a court agreement around the finances. We have also had a clean break which means neither party can request money in the future.
This was all agreed and confirmed by the court before the decree absolute.
We both had solicitors but agreed the finances ourselves.

eating sounds like mine too (if mine can be understood through its typos above.....) I thought it was all very slow as I wanted the divorce and my husband thought it was all very fast as he did not. Basically the more you can agree between you on finances the less you will waste on solicitors' fees. I would rather my husband had money than lawyers (despite being a lawyer myself) although we still spent a fair bit and we both compromised.

It is hard to generalise here on what financial deal is fair to your situation as every family varies. We started with a 50/50 split of assets. He ended up with 59% and giving up his claim from me for maintenance (I earn more although he does work full time) but with no child support from him which is very unusual but was part of our overall deal. Other couples where say the wife doesn't work the husband might well be paying out maintenance, giving her the house entirely or until the youngest child is 18. It is so hard to generalise.

Start by adding up all assets you both have in whoever's name and deduct all debts in any of your names to get your joint assets.

We each kept our won pensions as after 20 years we felt they were worth about the same roughly and we had another 20 years to build up more pension if we wanted as we worked full time. For many women however the biggest marital assets is not the house but their husband's pension when they are both 65 or older. However it is not treated as cash so it can be a bit complex to value it.

Thank you. TBH neither of us needs the other's money or pensions. We have significant assets in the pot and we'll see how that goes. I don't think either of us will make claims to the other's possessions/money/pensions but we'll of course see. Apparently some people change when such talks start. I am planning to start via a solicitor who's also a mediator so that we begin 'gently.' And then we'll take it from there.

We have spoken again and have agreed to seek advice as to how complex it would be to separate given how closely webbed together our businesses and finances are (I'm thinking if millionaires get divorced we certainly can too). So things seem to be moving. I guess it's because he already knew that between us it wasn't good and hence the discussion that I initiated did not come as a surprise.

Now I am just mindful or not hurting him any more than necessary. I am loathing what I am doing to him, and I told him. But I've also told him that I couldn't carry on the way things were and he agrees.

Thanks everyone again for all the comments. It helps immensely to get your thoughts.

Apparently some people change when such talks start

That.s because they are moving through the change curve, from denial that the relationship is over, to anger that it is happening - that can often be redirected towards the spouse. Please don't be surprised if your spouse becomes angry and/or depressed.

Also, solicitors are the experts - your solicitor, or his, may present either of you with a perspective you had not thought of, which changes your view of what is "fair".

Thank you. I am going to do my best to keep an open mind. I even suggested we keep on working together (our businesses regularly share clients). I like him as a person and I told him. But I simply cannot stay in a relationship where we are just housemates anymore. It's unfair to us both. And he agrees. Is it normal that one moment I'm fine and the next I'm quite down btw?

I am sure feeling up and down is normal. If either of you are an employee of the business of the other you might also want to include inthe divorce papers an employment compromise agreement which I had drawn up for my husband to ensure he could not claim as an employee for unfair dismissal (although he didn't really do that much work for me) just to give legal certainty on that. If your businesses are worth similar amounts and have similar amounts of income and neither of you owns shares in a compnay or is in partnership with the other you could each just walk away with your own business. if one earns more (I earned 10x my ex) then in our case he got 100% of my cash, shares etc etc and a big chunk of equity from the house after I remortgaged it and no obligation to support the children but at least I got a clean break. Our self employed businesses however were not an asset capable of valuation like a restaurnt or bigger business might be - they were / are just us providing services alone so the valuation of the business itself as a saleable asset was not relevant whereas our respective incomes were in our case.

It sounds like you also had a complex set up EnormousTiger. I'm planning to introduce a mediator/solicitor next week so we'll see how it goes. In the meantime I am trying to find a new 'balance' since we are still living together and sleeping in the same bed.

A judge needed evidence of us living separate lives before agreeing to the petition. I too shared a property. Sharing a bed would not help your petition to be granted a divorce.

We shared the twin beds right until decree absolute consent order and he moving out actually - 7 months. We had not a single court hearing as we agreed everything so your solicitors in such a case draft the financial consent order (the only difficult bit for everyone usualy unless you are fighting over children) and then they take it to court and without a hearing the judge seals it. If instead it says one partner gets £20m and the other zero the judge will not approve it but the judge will approve reasonable consent orders put before the court with a statement of arrangements for the children. We did not have financial disclosure - form Es because we only had jonit accounts, I did both our tax returns and we both knew always 100% what the other earned and had in terms of savings/shares etc so there was nothing to disclose.

He says where you are now is too big. Move bedroom tonight. The mixed signals of saying you want a divorce and then getting into the same bed is no way to carry on.

I personally left it to my attorney to inform my ex that she was representing me. But then I was leaving an emotionally abusive, narcissistic twat.

Thanks everyone. Pestilence13610: I thought that moving to a spare room would be harsh. I'm trying to take things 'slowly' even though he said he's known for over a year that things weren't going right (he even said he thought of asking me a couple of times - during arguments - whether I wanted to finish it, but then he dind't ask because he was worried I would actually say yes). Would it not be childish to move into another room? Bearing in mind we haven't been intimate for a year now? It's such a minefield :-(

I moved into another room immediately. He was weird about it but I thought it better to set boundaries while everything was fine. Rather than wait and have to move because we'd got shitty with each other.

Take things slowly if he is in a different place to you emotionally. Let him catch up. if you can discuss the finances when you are both in a similar place it will be immeasurably easier. The worst divorces I deal with (solicitor) are the ones when one party has moved on and the other is dragging their heels. In those circumstances no settlement is good enough because what they really want is the relationship back. If someone is hurting they will try and make you hurt more.

I was totally relaxed about staying in our twin beds, not least because for those 7 months of divorcing we did not tell our families, the cleaner, the youngest children etc and we had stopped having sex when I announced I wanted a divorce. Worked for us.