How do you divorce if you agree?

[Pinenuts91]

How much would it cost? How do you do it, if no assets, child arrangement agreed yourselves. Just to seperate financial ties and dissolution of marriage? Do you just waltz into a solicitor office and get them to write it up?

Not divorced but officially separated. Also Scotland not England. We effectively went to solicitor with what we'd agreed between us. They typed it into an agreement and gave us a draft. From there to a final version where we then signed and had witnessed.

There were a few charges for things related to property and registration fees etc but I'd estimate that it was 1k to 1.5k for that on its own. A lot of it was fees, I think the actual agreement was £400 plus vat.

Ex didn't bother to get his own solicitor for it as it was all straightforward and no one was trying to scam anyone. We just listed assets and who was going to retain them. Cars etc and then how much I was paying to buy ex out of everything e.g. House, contents, savings etc. We didn't touch each other's pensions as we had broadly similar values. DC were adults.

What is the difference in a separation? Thank you for replying :)

This is what we did.

We used amicable.

Only asset was the marital home. One child, who was approaching adult legal age.

Applied for a divorce on the .gov.uk HMCTS website.

Used Divorce Online (other similar websites exist) to write a financial consent order. Sent it off myself using tracked post.

My pension and future inheritance potential was higher than his, so he will get a majority share of equity in the joint property. No pension sharing. DD was almost an adult so no arrangements for her welfare were made. We split her living and school costs 50/50 (she's in Y13 at school, splits her time between us as she pleases). We agreed all this between us.

It could have been a lot worse considering the cause of the breakdown of our relationship.

Well at the moment we are still officially married but can go for a straightforward divorce when we want to but our finances are settled, we have separate lives and homes. It just seemed easier at the time and we are late 50s/early sixties and not interested in remarrying.

So finances are separated, if he's in debt it won't effect you at all? Only thing is still Mrs? That might be a better option for us. I'm not interested in remarrying. Two young kids. So may just depend what he prefers.
Is it cheaper too?

To be honest I'm not entirely sure how it works with debt, it's not a concern for either of us at the moment as we are both good with money. The only debt involved is the small mortgage I needed to take to get the full amount to buy him out.

From my pov, all my assets now go to our DC and my pensions are pretty much all in a Sipp or defined contribution. His main pension is final salary and he's still keen for me to get a widow's pension from that if he dies before me but I'm not sure that's possible though it is one of the main reasons he's keen to remain married. I've already said that anything I got I'd give to the DC anyway.

I'd imagine that the fees might be more for a divorce but I think the main thing is to agree as much as possible before engaging legal help as regardless of it being a separation or divorce, the more amicable and straightforward it is then the cheaper it will be.