If you had an amicable, straightforward divorce...

[NCfortoday2021]

How much did you spend on the divorce? We have children and a house (and pensions) but no other assets or secrets around finances.

Just spoke to two lawyers and they have quoted £400/hour once VAT included. I'm imagining this is many hours' work, even if no disagreements!

We just did it ourselves. No lawyers. Applied for divorce online. If you get a financial consent order there are websites to draft this for you. No need for lawyers if no disagreements.

We did it online with no solicitors involved. All very amicable and cost around £500. Much cheaper than getting married...🤣

We did it online as well, through a managed divorce service. No solicitors as such, more legal advisers I think. They had various fee levels, I think it was somewhere in the region of £150 for them and then the standard divorce fee which was about £500. I think everyone pays that, irony is that the divorce fee was more than the marriage fee was!

It's useful if you've been able to agree everything between you but it's probably a bit more difficult in terms of knowing how to complete the forms. The divorce service were helpful with that though.

I did it through an online divorce lawyer (Scotland). They were fantastically helpful especially as ex was living in Geneva and Covid meant he couldn't travel to sign.

I honestly don't think there is such a thing as an "amicable divorce" - I truly wish there was though.

At the end of the day you are dividing what you had/have and both hoping to make the best of it for your own sanity and that of any DC involved. You are hypothetically splitting x number of years married, caring and establishing yourself as a "family"

There will always be so many interpretations of how that has worked (good or bad)

You genuinely don't know what your partner will say or do at this stage. Be wary please.

Costs around £500 mark seem very low IMHO

In a different country and it involved reconveyancing.
Had to do separation agreement first as divorce involved waiting period - so as to get the mortgages rearranged asap.
So that was 5k for me 10k for him.

Divorce itself we used an online co for the court documents - based on the solicitor agreed separation agreement. That cost 700.

I'll let you know in 8 months. In England, hoping to not involve any lawyers, so just the default court fees.

If you agree how to separate things, do it yourselves. That's what we did.
I didn't feel the need to have a solicitor tell me what I could get. Neither did he. Maybe I could have got more, but we're both happy and had a cheap, amicable divorce.
We just went 50:50 assets, kept our own pensions so it was very straightforward.

Not sure why you throw doubt on the possibility of an amicable divorce when so many people are posting about theirs. Clearly it's possible.

The divorce fee, half each, plus about £600 each for 2 sessions and a consent order with a company that specialise in amicable divorces called amicable.
It was very straightforward

The transfer of equity / change of ownership on the house deeds was the only bit we have used a solicitor for. It cost just over £1000 and the mortgage company gave a list of which solicitors we could use, so no wiggle room there really. Other than that it was around £500 for the actual divorce through the .gov.uk website, and just over £50 for the court fee to seal the consent order.

The template document you need to use for a financial consent order is the Financial Remedy Order Omnibus, which you can then edit and remove unnecessary paragraphs from. It needs some fierce literacy skills to use, but guides you through all the key areas including pensions and potential future inheritance etc.

We did it online and it was about £600 in total, if I remember correctly.

Additionally I paid £300 to have private advice from a solicitor

£593 for applying for divorce - £53 for filing financial consent order - £480.00 to get a solicitor to write up a consent order for us to send to the courts

I honestly don't think there is such a thing as an "amicable divorce" - I truly wish there was though

We (no children) had an amicable divorce once the dust had settled. I applied in my own good time without any pressure from ExH (he left for OW and I have a sneaking suspicion that he used 'but I'm still married' to fend her off a bit). We did it ourselves as house had been sold and equity split. Years ago, though, when going for pension (he was the higher earner) wasn't a thing.

Amicable divorces are possible. However, no matter how amicable it is don't leave out getting a financial order which can be done by consent. People don't realise financial claims can survive a divorce. People can pop up with claims 20 years later.

Why use lawyers if you can do it yourselves. I did and total cost was £400 which was the admin fee.

There is. Plenty of people, including me. I divorced in 2021 - I petitioned on grounds of unreasonable behaviour. Yet it was amicable. We completed from petition to decree final in just 11 weeks and it cost us £1400 ish in total.

we achieved this by

1. both hating the idea of throwing money away on solicitors
2. both wanting to separate physically as soon as possible and get divorce done quickly
3. Recognition that , although my ex was behaving unreasonably it was as a consequence of his symptoms of mental illness. Whilst it was not unreasonable of him to choose to stop taking his meds and entirely his choice, it was My choice to state it as then unreasonable for me to stay married, due to safeguarding issues.

this message board has numerous examples of amicable divorces. Not necessarily amicable relationships with ex. But it is entirely possible to separate the two

Use the ADVICE NOW guidelines linked by MN at top of board. I was one of posters who asked for MN to link

I am shocked by the sheer majority of posters here that believe the first step in divorce is to arm yourself with a “ good” solicitor. The whole stance is adversarial from the off

my divorce took 11 weeks from petition to decree final in 2021. Can’t do that now as min is 26, but shows you can do it quickly

it cost us in total £1400 in terms of court fees and solicitors. But that doesn’t include costs of house sale and new home purchases.

the ADVICE NOW guides cost £20 ish to download each. But that is roughly 7 mins of my solicitor fees and 4 mins of time you’ve been quoted.They’ve been written by a legal organisation who are tring to empower people to understand the law and do simple processes themselves, but also to understand better what exactly a solicitor should be doing.

These guides take you through the concepts of “ fair settlement “, ( not a 50:50 starting point that most people think is the law- it is not). They then walk through the processes stating what you do not need solicitors for, what you might, and what tasks you really should use one for. They also have a list of affiliated solicitors who will do just and exactly the task you want and charge reasonable rates for.

I petitioned myself. Only used a local family solicitor to draw up legal draft of consent order and a couple of other small bits of work, and ex used one of linked solicitor from advice now to go through consent order with him, so we could show court he’d taken legal advice too, to avoid court questioning our agreement

I downloaded the relevant guides, and then shared with my ex to read BEFORE we even started to discuss financial agreements , that way it got us both to the point of accepting a outcome where we’d both be poorer, and have to give up stuff, before we started. It helped keep things amicable, but it was hard initially to accept the outcome.

Yes, agree with this.

Mine was via the coop online, I spoke to a lady and she talked me through it all.

Husband bought me out the house, kids grown up, left pensions alone.

Cost £650 for the first bit then £600 for the second bit if I remember, he paid half

Have you got a court sealed Consent Order

if not, you are a sitting duck, I’m afraid.

Seperated and I bought him out of the house after a few years and stayed there with the teenagers. Until the house was solely in my name he paid the mortgage in lieu of maintenance. Once house in my name he could then get new mortgage with his partner. Few years later and children over 18 he filed for divorce with my blessing and it was granted, no solicitors involved at any time.
Absolutely no animosity, it didn't cost anything and the children were affected as little as is possible.