Divorce Costs - Is this reasonable

[GhastlyandUgly]

Hi a friend of mine is getting divorced and has been told that it is going to cost at least £600 plus VAT for solicitors time and £350 court fees. She thinks this seems a little high - could anyone out there confirm whether this seems reasonable?

I'd say nearer 1k if you are doing it properly and considering financial disclosure.
Still find it hard to believe any solicitor would charge 100 ph. I was charging 150 5 years ago.

If it is amicable with no children involved couldn't they do it online? The solicitors on Wikivorce charge £249 + the £340 court fees.

I agree you get what you pay for and I'm not a solicitor so have no vested interest. Over the years the problems I've seen with online services range delays from a huge backlog in the court local to where the online services are based, complication with transferring children cases to a court local to where the children live, the divorce not being granted and the online services refusing to help etc etc.

When it comes to consent orders many online services do not give legal advice which has to be paid for separately. Without legal advice any order is more easily challenged. Alternatively people can find they are stuck with terms they don't fully understand and lose out. For example, one women was granted maintenance pending the end of the divorce suit and assumed it would continue after divorce. It didn't, and she lost out on £1k per month spouse maintenance for 10 years.

Sounds very low to me. DP's divorce did not involve children, and began with an amicable-ish agreement to a 50/50 split of business and personal assets (note there were business assets to deal with so a tad more complex, nevertheless...) and in the end it cost over a quarter of the equity in properties - close to a quarter of a million each. The solicitor said the divorce would take about 3 months and cost far less than it did.

Bloody ridiculous. To top it all off, the Judge finally ruled a division very close to what was discussed out of Court in the first place. Warn your friend!