Divorce and consent order

[Lucy88]

Hi
Hoping someone on here can give me some advice.

I used a solicitor to sort out my divorce and consent order. He originally quoted £1000 for the divorce inc VAT and Court Fees and between £500-£1500 for the consent order.

The final bill came to £2150 and I have asked my solicitor to let me know how much the actual divorce cost and what the consent order cost. He just sent me a long list of fees, which did not show me the costs I needed.

I have written to him twice pointing out that he quoted me 2 separate figures - 1 for the divorce and 1 for the consent order and that I would like to see what the actual cost are for these. He has basically ignored this request and has now told me I have 14 days to pay.

My reason for asking for the 2 separate figures, is that I think his fees for the consent order are way too high. If the fees for the divorce is correct (£1000) then I have paid £1250 for the consent order. My Ex-H and I agreed everything through mediation, sent our financial statement to the solicitor and there have been no conveyancing fees, as my Ex-H said that he would not claim on the house. It has ben a very siomple and straight forward process.

Any advice would be appreciated.

The solicitor should provide you with a breakdown. It's easy to do, as all work done will be recorded on a time recording system, so they should at least send you a printout of that. It won't specifically tell you whether each letter in, letter out, phone call, time spend reading a document etc was in relation to the divorce or the ancillary relief as they always get mixed in together (otherwise you'd get charged for two letters every time they were writing to the other side to say, for example, that they approved the petition, and could the other side please confirm some detail about the money.

They'll also have told you at the outset what their charging rate is. My rate is £200 per hour plus VAT and each letter, phone call etc is charged at £20. It doesn't take much to run up a bill of £100, say I receive a letter from the other side, I call them asking them to clarify something in the letter, I then post you a copy and write a covering letter explaining about whatever I'd written to them. That's £60 for doing something very straightforward.

Reading the mediation memorandum of understanding, checking the arithmetic alone should take around an hour to do properly. Drafting that into a consent order, maybe 45 minutes, seeing you to go over it, half an hour, changing anything necessary (the othr side may have preferred wording which basically says the same thing), another 20 mins, you can easily rack up £1250, which is what you've been charged.

You are right, though, they should make it clear how the bill is made up, even if it's just posting you a copy of the ledger.

Why didn't your ex pay half of the divorce costs, at least?