How much did your divorce cost?

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Exactly as the title suggests. I want to hear the good, bad and ugly about your divorce proceedings

Bumping for you…
I’m especially interested in the fairly ‘straightforward’ divorces ie/ no major arguments around custody etc

I'm hoping to get mine done amicably and as low cost as possible. Saw a solicitor this week for a free consultation. Not expecting to need any custody agreements for our children.

So far costs look to be

£593 divorce application done online on government website

£275 for the consent order on the government website

£500 for the solicitor to draft the consent order assuming that STBEXH and I agree it between ourselves and fill in the D81 form ourselves. No need for Form E as not expecting to go to court

£185 bank fee plus a solicitor fee to remove STBEXH from the mortgage

I suppose there are then things like the cost of remortgaging so product fees of £995 but that can be added to the mortgage

Or if you are selling a home it's the cost of selling and buying that you wouldn't have had you stayed together

Mine cost me £13,000 in solicitor's fees alone. It was not amicable and that doesn't include the conveyancing and marking fees for the sale of the house which came off the proceeds.

100% amicable.
Actual divorce about 600, for online type firm to do the formalities - re write the separation papers and push it through to the court.

Separation agreement - especially including conveyancing which solicitors both did "from scratch", I.e. as if bona fide property purchase from third party - about 15000. (Sad face.)
This was completely amicable, I actually had to sign a caveat to the solicitors that I was asking for the terms I wanted, rather than them pushing for more.

Wow! That's eye-watering.

So sorry to hear but hope you're much happier now

About £30k solicitors fees. I was ordered to pay both sides due high earner vs. low earner.

It wasn't not amicable - despite infidelity. Well kind of. She just refused to mediate, and her solicitors were happy to take from the pot we had between us and get nasty. It then became not amicable.

I started off intending to pay a much higher amount (plus some spousal until our daughter turned 21) prior to all the solicitor crap. We ended up 50/50 and a short period of spousal with the judge telling her to get on her feet.

I don't think she was greedy. I think she got poor advice from people she shouldn't have. My advice...try to mediate where you can if possible. If not, it can force you down a route where everything becomes hardball, not to mention the cost.

I agree with pp, once solicitors become involved it gets expensive. My ex is an abusive narc and would get his solicitor to sent 9 pages of drivel to mine which we had to sift through - 90% wasn't relevant to the divorce. Goodness knows how much his solicitor's bill was.

Having said that it's the best £13k I have spent. 50:50 split on the house and total pensions, can't get any fairer than that. Divorce finally came through in 2019. Now that I am free of him I am able to set boundaries and know my self worth. I'm now 55, living my life and loving it.

Mine cost about £12k about 8 years ago, it started off very amicable but costs soon mounted up with house sale, pension splits and seperating of assets it's a very costly process!
Worth every penny though!!

I can't bear to add it up - not amicable and I bore all the costs, he refused to engage/is a control freak so dug his heels in. I'm guessing £12k.

Bloody hell..a lot of people here that have been ripped off

mine cost (and this includes mine and ex’s) total costs inc VAT £1400

That was in July 2021

how we did this

1. use government portal for divorce. Learn the process. No need to use solicitor. Site has been designed by government not to use solicitor
2. pay £20 for the ADVICE NOW guides on divorce and DIY financial settlement etc. £20 a pop but tell you exactly what you don’t need solicitor for, what you might, and what you should use solicitors for. The link to the ADVICE Now Guides is at the top of this page put there by MN . They are a charity run by English family lawyers - so all legit. And they have a list of solicitors they will undertake just the tasks you need . Not sure if there’s an equivalent for scotland/NI. Wales falls under same law as England I believe so these would apply there too.
3. only pay solicitors to do tasks you can’t do yourselves. Be precise about what you want them to do. Don’t waste your money at £3.5 a MINUTE rambling on to them, telling them how stressed you are, or asking questions that you can find out answers to yourself. Present information to them…eg do your finically declarations yourselves- you don’t need a solicitor unless, when done, you think the other party has not fully lawfully declared everything.
4. Stay amicable and compromise with your STBex at all costs. You will need to be prepared to give up some things but hold back on your anger and frustration. You can express all that on the day your financial settlement and final order comes through. This way you avoid conflict, the need for mediation, one party dragging it out etc. share the Advice Now guides together and go through the actions needed together).

not only were my cost low (and I thought it was a lot even though cheaper than others!) , but we divorced (decree final and consent order sealed) in 11 weeks post petition . Ok, no one can do that now since recent divorce law changes (absolute min is now 26 weeks sadly) . Mine was a “at fault” petition against him (can’t do that now) so could have got messy, but we were unified in not wanting it to cost a lot or take a long time and both were prepared to put bitterness aside temporarily to that end . I had to work hard on that, and swallowed my pride, and anger and had to really engage my brain in determining what I would compromise on and what I wouldn’t in advance of each conversation.

my caveat is , of course, that if there is abuse involved then working together amicably is not necessarily advisable. And if your married to someone who has money to waste and a “revenge” mindset you’ll probably have to use solicitor even if they’re cutting off their nose to spite their face,

Ah, this is interesting that you’re including these transfer of assets as “costs of divorce”.
In that case, yes it cost us more

1. house sale
2. purchasing my/his house costs
3. removal costs for us both
4. Cost of replacement essential items for the person that didn’t take them at split (e.g. a second computer, a second car etc. )

but I guess where do you stop in that? there are ongoing costs that cost more as singles then they did when married - 2 lots of bills for 2 households …you don’t pay 50% on the bills you did when married.

Well done Newlife.

I have seen a few women on here tackle Divorce themselves and do a good job of it. I have a couple of friends who are separated and one thing I am a bit shocked at is they seem to be massively ill-informed. I worry that their DH's, who seem to have more £ than them, are going to screw them over big time.

I do think that if you can equip yourselves with as much info and research as you can, then you will come off better.

£250 online. Totally amicable, sorted the house/kids ourselves.

Ok, this means you didn’t get a legal sign (“seal” ) of your financial agreement
This is not recommended . And you do need a solicitor to “draft” the legal speak (we kept cost down by drafting it layman’s terms which solicitor wrote into legal speak), then paid for court to “seal” it

if you don’t have your financial agreement sealed by a court, and made legal an ex can come after your money at any point in future and you have no protection . That can include future pensions by the way years after you’ve divorced

Either you had nothing between you including no pensions, or you’ve taken a risk - that risk may be small but it will be out there forever unless you get it legalised.

I was quoted £3500 to include divorce and financial order.

But my now ex husband told me he would make it as difficult as possible to divorce him.

Court and solicitors fees were over £9k
I had to really scrimp and go without to manage to pay this.

So far, £12k he’s divorcing me but is massively dragging his feet and it’s been 3 years of chasing him to make every tortuous step towards being free of him.

I paid around £450 (or whatever the cost was back then) to the court to submit the petition and did the paperwork myself, no solicitors. However, we didn't have any property or assets and he wasn't interested in custody arrangements for our 3 children. This was back in 2015, unsure whether the process has altered much.