Experiences of FDR hearibgs please, with obstructive ex

[Bemyclementine]

Not quite ex husband failed to exchange fibancial info before our FDA. He has since done a half arsed effort. 2nd hearing is imminent and he has as yet failed to respond to ANY and all correspondance, including trying to finalise the offer he came up with.

There is not a lot of money involved here, literally just the equity in the marital hone where i live with 2dc.

What is the worst case scenario here? I have no money abd now 13k on a credit card for legal fees.

My solicitor has email to say i need to pay for the barrister for the next hearing and the amount will depend on whether its fda or fdr.

While I do feel better about having legal advice and someone on my side as such (this was a controlling abusive relationship) I cannot just keep sucking these fees up onto my credit card.

If we do not get as far as fdr this time, then I am looking at 2 more hearings before tge courts have to make a decision? I feel like this is his aim

Just do as much yourself in terms of correspondence, raising supplementary questions regards his financial disclosure & the schedule of deficiencies then save for the barrister for the hearings if you really need it. My DP has a very obstructive ex who has a solicitor and legal aid but we’ve done everything through chatGPT, every piece of correspondence we put it through chat gpt, we even got it to do the forensic analysis of 250 pages of bank statements, create questions to ask off the back of it & tell us step by step what to do right up to the hearing. It even tells us how to prepare, what questions to expect from the judge or opposing solicitor, how to word final position statement and so on. It’s been a lifesaver and tbh I can see we’ve done a more thorough job than her solicitor in cases. In the end divorce is a process that is well documented that you just have to follow so I do think you can do most of it yourself.

I self repped through FDR. Ex husband had a solicitor and barrister. Nothing was resolved. Ex husband was unrealistic and greedy and the FDR judge didn’t fully consider the children’s housing needs (IMO).
went to final hearing. I self repped for the admin but took direct access barrister to the hearing. Reasonable and fair outcome was achieved which meant I could house the kids. He got more of the pensions to compensate but he got less overall than he had been insisting I settled on.

OP - in your case - I’d self-represent and get a direct access barrister. They are much better value than solicitors.
You will save a lot of money on correspondence and prep by doing it yourself.
And barrister will do the hearing prep - the position statement, etc.

How did you get chat gpt to do forensic analysis?

Upload the documents and prompt it

I put it into research mode (on the paid for version) uploaded the 250 bank statements plus all of her exhibits and form E. Then I asked act my senior solicitor who is an expert in family law, to do a forensic analysis of her income and expenditures vs claimed needs and supporting evidence. It took around 1hour for it to process but then it produced a report, showing discrepancies in her form E vs actual expenditure, showed undisclosed income, showed patterns of spending etc. you need to write a good prompt. I actually input what I wanted it to do first then asked chat to improve my prompt then used that. And we just got through the FDR with indication by judge that we will get everything we wanted. So know we did a good job on the position statement too which we also used ChatGPT to do (though we edited it and refined it over a number of weeks and also kept putting it through AI again to be reviewed for how a judge will view it, how it stood up against case and family law etc.) we also asked it to anticipate the other sides arguments and rebuttals we could use on the day and how it would stack against the law.