Cost of draft consent order

[WingingIt90909]

Hi all, I've been trying to get a list together of the anticipated costs involved in divorce. My solicitor has quoted a rough estimate of £1000 plus VAT to write up a draft financial consent order. Does that seem about right, or should I be shopping around? I've only seen her once so far.

Also, when consent order is rubber stamped by the courts, is that the point at which you can in theory sell your property / buy out partner, sort out the financials agreed, or do you have to wait until decree absolute? I'm a bit confused about the timing.

That's about right for the draft consent order once both parties agree. I believe your property ie the family home can be sold and arrangements for buy out do not have to wait for the Decree Absolute. It's just that overall it is best of the consent order to be signed off to be certain and clear before applying for the DA.

Thanks Crumbs, that's really helpful. The timings of everything have been hard to figure out 😊

Yep, that’s about what mine cost last June…we paid slightly more but that included a quick session with another solicitor for my ex to ensure courts knew he’d taken legal advice as well. we provided the rough non legal version to solicitor along with our D81. They did the legal speak version and submitted it and our D81 to courts. Their fees also included sending the signature pages on our consent order and D81 to both of us,

@MayMorris

Yep, that’s about what mine cost last June…we paid slightly more but that included a quick session with another solicitor for my ex to ensure courts knew he’d taken legal advice as well. we provided the rough non legal version to solicitor along with our D81. They did the legal speak version and submitted it and our D81 to courts. Their fees also included sending the signature pages on our consent order and D81 to both of us,

Thanks MayMorris, that's really helpful. Did you use a particular template for the non-legal version that you wrote up and gave to the solicitor?

Oh, sorry, just seen you asked another question.
No we didn’t use a template..we just wrote out what we were doing as the proceeeds for the house sale was main thing that needed to be split and then we were both walking with our other personal assets intact.
We actually wrote out the formulae mathematically of how the sale proceeds would be split (we’re both scientists😉) as we didn’t know at time what house would sell for. It was a bit of algebra! And then a list of reference to D81 of what we’d both end up with in terms of other assets and where from. I gave that word document and out form E and D81 to my solicitor. She put it into legal speak. So she had to think a bit about how to verbalise our mathematical equation 🤣🤣

@MayMorris

Oh, sorry, just seen you asked another question. No we didn’t use a template..we just wrote out what we were doing as the proceeeds for the house sale was main thing that needed to be split and then we were both walking with our other personal assets intact. We actually wrote out the formulae mathematically of how the sale proceeds would be split (we’re both scientists😉) as we didn’t know at time what house would sell for. It was a bit of algebra! And then a list of reference to D81 of what we’d both end up with in terms of other assets and where from. I gave that word document and out form E and D81 to my solicitor. She put it into legal speak. So she had to think a bit about how to verbalise our mathematical equation 🤣🤣

Ah thank you, that's really helpful to know. I love that you included an equation 😂🤣