Documents for solicitor

[Dreamer1989]

I am trying to be prepared to meet solicitor, I want the fewest number of appointments ideally as I realise how expensive they are. What paperwork can I prepare to take with me to initial appointment please? I have marriage certificate, 12 months of bank and credit card statements and pension cash to value transfer statements. Thanks.

You will need proof of identity - passport of drivers license. Also proof of where you live, like a utility bill.

It also helps if you are able to wrote down what other accounts you have, address of property you own and whether joint ownership, details of any debts you or your STBX have etc

If this is all written down then it saves them spending time writing it down.

Thank you all :)

Do you know you can apply on line for divorce yourself? It’s stupidly easy. Costs £500. You really don’t need a solicitor for this bit
Restrict your solicitor to financial agreement and child arrangements if you have them.
We didn’t have dependant kids, so only used solicitors to write up our layman’s terms consent order for financial settlement we’d agreed into legal speak and then for them to process and submit it to the courts. Ex got 45 mins with a solicitor of his own to review that draft consent agreement.
In total we spent less than £2000 all in on the divorce costs .
Read up yourselves on the process on government divorce site, Mediate, and Advice now. Be very specific with your solicitors about the exact parts of process you want them to do.
But really no matter what your situation you can petition on line- really don’t need someone else to do that for you. Site is designed for public to make it easy, quick and cheap

When you go to solicitor for the fnancialxagree,ent, you should have completed the form E and D81 ahead. ideally have the forms completed by both of you . This is your legal financial and full declaration. Again asking the solicitor to do this form filling for you will cost you a LOT of money and time wasting. If you both agree you want to save money on solicitor costs then for goodness sake sit down together, bite back the anger and pain, and just get these forms filled in cooperatively.

@MayMorris thank you! I was going to print those forms off at work (sneakily of course). And ive told him to get his pension statement as his provider takes weeks.

Do solicitors need physical copies of bank statements, or can I send pdfs? Thanks :£

No, the solicitor isn’t that interested in your D81 unless the proposed draft consent order contravenes those 10 or so criteria the court uses in establishing what is a fair settlement. It’s needed as it has to be submitted to the court with the draft consent order. The court doesn’t want to see the detail unless they can’t agree to seal the draft consent order.
Both solicitor and court take the view that if you have both completed form E and D81 and have signed them (legal document so legal signature) to say it is a full and accurate disclosure , then that is enough.

But you need the bank state,ents etc to get that full, accurate disclosure when completing the Form E then summarising onto form D81.

You need to hold onto all statements for 7 years anyway because of HMRC, so if courts do need to ask for them you should have them anyway ,

Hope that makes sense.

Thank you so much!