Litigant in Person - would anyone recommend this? - and how difficult is it to do?

[Skylermarie]

I really need to get my divorce started but am so anxious about the costs ahead, especially as I have a really uncooperative, religiously fixated narcissistic DH who still refuses to agree to the divorce. I don't have much in savings, having left the family home a few years ago (with disabled DC) in order to escape DA etc. This left me financially vulnerable but I had no choice. He refuses to agree to sell the family home, where he still lives, so he has all the financial advantage over me.

Has anyone found that being a litigant in person is actually doable? I would definitely get legal help when it comes to the financial order, as that's so important, but am so worried that using a solicitor from the start will burn through all my savings, especially as he is certain to be obstructive and make things as protracted, difficult and costly as possible for me.

Does anyone know of any affordable ways to get the support needed, when being a litigant in person? as I think I have to try to do this on my own, but it is so daunting! Thank you in advance for anyone who can advise from experience.

It’s not difficult to act as a LiP, but I would recommend at an appropriate juncture taking legal advice at least on what - broadly - would be a fair range of settlement. The appropriate time would be when you have financial disclosure (in Form E) from your ex.

The family court has produced this guide, which is about how to prepare bundles (of documents for hearings): https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/020326-Preparing-Court-Bundles-for-Family-Proceedings-Guide-for-Litigants-in-Person.pdf.

Lots of info on Resolution website too.

Be very careful about using ChatGPT. I am a litigation lawyer and have a nice new stream of business from clients who’ve got themselves in a right pickle taking advice from ChatGPT and then need it unpicked. Also, if you upload any confidential or legally privileged documents to an open-access form of ChatGPT (or its competitors), you will lose confidentiality and privilege in those documents.

My DP is a LIP with his narcissistic ex and we’re using chatGPT and Claude Ai To guide us. Tbh divorce is a well documented process and I totally think you can do most of it this way with maybe a bit of legal help at important junctures. We got her form E, along with 250 pages of bank statements which we stuck into ChatGPT and it did a forensic analysis of her bank statements produced a report, identified undisclosed spending, loans & benefit fraud, advised us on questions we should ask, created us a plan with key dates to meet, what we need to produce and when, wrote letters for us, came up with strategy etc. quite frankly when I did my own divorce, which was reasonably amicable, the solicitors made so many mistakes both sides on the consent order with silly mistakes on the details such as property addresses, mortgage amounts etc that my ex & I re-wrote it for them. My DP’s exes solicitor keeps making mistakes by quoting wrong bank accounts numbers on questions to him. Quite frankly AI has been more accurate and on the ball for us. In fact until we starred using AI we were stuck, his ex was running rings round us for 2years, ignoring requests for disclosure, cancelling mediation etc. now things are moving and she’s being exposed. FDR hearing is in less than a month. She can no longer put things off and quite frankly that’s cos we now know what we are doing because of AI.

Elektra1 and boredwfh, huge thanks for your kind helpful responses with both your professional expertise and personal experience. Even though you come from different perspectives, this is still so helpful to me as I gather information and advice to help to inform my own journey.

I'm not very tecchy, and unused to /wary of AI, but I do hear people say how useful it can be. It does seem that, at the least, a professional eye would need to be cast over everything before it is finalized.

If there are any other comments/observations/advice/ warnings/examples, they would be very gratefully received at any time. Thank you all