Quickest way to get a divorce?

[thebeachismyhappyplace2]

I’m after some advice on the quickest and cheapest way to get a divorce? Is the government online one the best or are there better online ones?

We have an amicable relationship and we already sold the marital home over a year ago. We split everything 50/50 and we bought our respective homes.

I’ve been distracted with life in the last year but am conscious that any inheritance I may get in near future, my ex would be entitled to half so I really do need to crack on and get it sorted.

And do I need to wait until after the divorce is finalised before I get a clean break financial order in place?

Apply for your divorce online on the Gov site

You then have to wait 5 months in case you change your mind

If you are both completely amicable and can work everything out between you then use that time to complete form D81 yourselves outlining how you will split assets

You need a solicitor to draw up a clean break financial order agreement between you

After the 5 months are up - you apply for a conditional order - this is currently taking about 3-4 weeks to be read out in court and issued

Once this has then been issued, your solicitor can upload the financial consent order for a judge to review and seal

6 weeks after the conditional order has been issued, you can apply for the final order (Don't do this until the judge has sealed the consent order though)

There are lots of mandatory wait periods. We were also completely amicable but the process took 11 months. Get moving on this now.

Wikivorce has a cheap if not super quick service they refer you to.
You can draw up the financial order yourself but you need to copy someone else's as starter template. That's the only thing that slowed us down, not having that template (grrr) so we had to use a solictor (see note about slow wikivorce service). But even without that solicitor introduced bunch of delays, we would have needed 9 months minimum.

Thank you so much for this advice ladies