How much does a divorce cost on average?

[Bringthewave]

Husband filed for divorce. Although I hope we can make the whole process simple and come to an agreement (house and DS), nevertheless it's a legal matter, so seeking solicitor advice would be necessary to some extent. So, between appointments, forms etc. how much does it average out to please?
He paid the initial fee of £593.

I've done one online, it was very easy but solicitors were not involved.

You need to solicitor to draft the consent order as that is a legal document and could be £200 to £600. If you can't agree, then anything from a few thousand to many thousands.

£500 early this year for the solicitor to do the financial consent - I did all the other forms

It depends on your assets op. There isn't one cost. There's the £600 of thereabouts for the divorce. If you have any assets to split/need a consent order that'll be another £1k ish. If you need help deciding how to split the assets that's anything from a few k to hundreds of thousands of £. Ours was about £10k if memory serves, that was all fine very amicably, but a reasonable amount of assets to decide how to fairly split.

Mine cost 3.5k for the divorce agreement and to have the ownership of the house with my name only.

Mine cost more than half our shared assets which is roughly what I got in the split. We had no children. XH was just difficult and didn’t want to agree to a divorce.

We shared these costs so far
£593 to start things off
£280 to wikivorce for drafting fin. agreement
£53 court fee

We are amicable so did not take any separate legal advice., no additional money to lawyers (so far, but I need to ring them on Monday...)

lawyers cost £26 for 6 minutes so never use them for emotional support.

What assets are you going to split?

A friend divorce cost £40,000 and several years to settle. Hers was particularly painful though.

Why so much?

I represented myself and went straight for an FDR then a filing hearing it cost about £7k and was worth every penny. My ex offered about 20% of the assets, I got 50% as decided by the judge. I just knew at the beginning that my ex wouldn't be reasonable and would mess about with expensive solicitors for years and years otherwise.

Sounds reasonable..

ex has already paid the initial fee of £593.

Not sure how amicable we can be since he attempted to sell the house with a fast selling agency prior to filing for divorce. Thankfully, I had Home Rights in place so the sale didn't go through.

We have home, pension and savings to split.

Child care arrangements - he isn't very interested in a relationship with DS, so I hope this at least will be straight forward.

I want to keep costs minimal. Ex and I are meeting next week to discuss finances and child care arrangements. I hope we can come to an agreement, although I sense it to be very unlikely. He has been very difficult during the separation and has gone above and beyond to screw me over.

Can I please ask what the breakdown of this, to get an idea of what different processes cost..

@Bringthewave not sure the details other than there was a lot of wealth and equity to fight over. As well as forensic accounting involved.

Can I ask, if you represented yourself why did it cost £7,000?

Go to link to ADVICE NOW at top of this board. Download guides, read, read again, read some more
they explain process, what you need solicitor for, what you don’t and where you might. Even have links to solicitors who will just do specific tasks you want

solicitors cost upwards of £200 per hour, each. So for every minute they’re thinking, listening, reading about your problems, gripes, vents, let alone dishing out advice or mediation it’ll cost you £3.40 plus. That’s how divorces end up costing thousands.

use solicitor for exactly and only the tasks you need. Think carefully about cost vs benefits of any battles you want to have with spouse. Try to park animosity until after divorce . Don’t agree anything until you’ve both completed form E/D81 and agreed your numbers tally. Then look at law on “ fair settlement “ and understand how it applies to you. Contrary to MN it does not start with 50:50, it may end up there, but fair settlement must be met even with consent order . Courts will refuse to seal consent orders if not meeting fair settlement as at least 1 post every 6 months on this boards shows.

it’s not just solicitors costing money, they also cost time - yours is one of many cases they’re juggling , but for you, if doing as much as you can, yours is your only case. They can cause frustration because you don’t know where delays are and what’s going on, you loose control- so stress can be way less when doing it mostly yourselves.

clearly if you can’t agree you’ll need mediation ( MIAM required by law in England), or if there’s abuse you’ll need a solicitor…but if you can rise above the shit emotions, pain, grief, hurt, anger, for a few months then it can be relatively simple, low cost and painless as a process

I divorced in 2021, took less than 4 months from petition to decree absolute and cost us in total ( with court fees) £1400. But we both read and used ADVICE NOW guides. They’re brilliant.

Ours was in total £1300. We remained amicable and went down the consent order process.

What was it like representing yourself?

If you can do it amicably, and if your finances are mainly in the UK and not super complex, try amicable.io.

Instead of having to pay two duelling solicitors who are running up bills with both of you by pushing each of you to demand more from the other, you get one mediator who works for both of you and helps you to reach and implement an agreement.

You can get a free 15min call to explore how they work and also ask your questions about costs. I think you and your STBXH can probably each get a free call separately if you want.

I am not affiliated with amicable.io. My knowledge of them is because I discussed working with them for my own divorce. In the end we went elsewhere because our finances were too complex due to having a significant international element, but I would 100% recommend their ethos and approach.

Mine was £15k, but that was because my ex refused to believe the law and thought he could get away with giving me next to nothing. He argued about everything and quite nasty. My solicitor was expensive but worth every penny.

Mine cost a lot but that was because my ex was so difficult and contentious.

I would have saved so much money, if he’d just used a solicitor!

As it was, he had no one to tell him when he’d got the wrong end of the stick, or was arguing over nonsense. Obviously, he was happy to fire off his vexatious emails five times a day and it cost me for my solicitor to deal with all his rubbish.

He even offered to draft the Consent Order himself and said if I wanted my solicitor to write it, then he would not pay towards it (usually 50/50). My ex had no law training, and the consent Order needs a solicitor.

So best way to save costs is to agree both of you will use solicitors and mediators. However if you are divorcing due to any type of coercive control, then your ex can be as difficult as they want.

So ideally, agree things amicably, use mediators for any tricky bits (£100/hr), and solicitors to write up/process the legal bits.