i think you’re confusing form E and consent order
so, courts have duty of care to ensure a “fair” fincnail settlement irrespective if you have the courts decide via an imposed financial settlement or a consent order you’ve both agreed on.
you can agree anything in theory in a consent order.
But the court needs the evidence of what that amounts to and then will determine if that meets the 10 or so criteria for “fair settlement”. You can find these 10 criteria on line at the Mediate site or ADVICE NOW site.
The form that the courts need to “seal” (make legal) your consent order is a D81, not form E. D81 is a summarised version of Form E . Form E only goes into courts if you’re asking them to make a financial settlement.
what you need to do is the pair of you sit down, fill out form E and ensure you’ve both declared everything. Then summarise that on Form E .
Then agree between you what is fair bearing in mind those criteria.
Write it out as clearly as possible and remeber courts prefer a clean break.
only then go to a solicitor and ask for them to JUST draw up the legal draft. This puts your words into legal speak. It may cost you around £500-800 .
You will need to legally sign this and your D81 to say youhave both fully disclosed your financial status
once your divorce petition (which you do NOT need a solicitor for now) gets to hte intermix orde stage (what was decree nisi and I can’t remember what new term is now), your solicitor then logs the draft consent order and D81 with courts. They’ll then review and seal at decree final or whatever it’s now called.
one way to offset the court coming back at point of sealing and asking why your consent order is not”fair” at face value is to show you both have taken legal advice . So one of you will have in terms of whose solicitor draws up the draft. The other person just, at minimum is wise to get a single session with a solicitor who will run through what they’re signing and implications.
You can then put both solicitors names referenced in the D81 and consent agreement and that gives courts more confidence .
You can also put a very brief explanation in hte small notes box in D81 to explain any perceived unfariness- get solicitor to do this too and they know how to phrase it to keep brief but meaningful.
in my case it was uneven. We did all that and it went through with no issues at all.
my biggest advice to you is to download the ADVICE NOW guide to making a fincnail settlement. Search under advice now and look at their guides on divorce . They cost about £20 per guide but this is a fraction of the cost of an hour of a solicitors time.
The guides are designed to tell you what the process is and forms, and will tell you what you must use solicitor for, what you don’t need a solicitor for and what you may choose to use a solicitor for. They also provide a list of approved solicitors that will do just the individual task you need at low cost. Advice now is a uk charity set up by lawyers trying to make legal work accessible.
me and ex spent £1600 ish on our entire divorce following these Advice Now
guides (this was last year before the new divorce act changes). We were divorced in 12 weeks form petition to decree final- so it worked really well for us.
We worked together parking our acrimony and hurt so that we could do it quickly and cheaply. It was surprisingly stress free and easy. Buying my new house was waaaaaayyyy more stressful and painful 🤣🤦♀️