Paying For Divorce

[Wilkoa]

Hi

My husband left me when I was 40 weeks pregnant saying he "didn't love me anymore". Since then I have found out he was and is in a relationship with OW.
We have been married for little over a year and I want to file for divorce based on his adultery.
I don't want to pay for the divorce, question is, how do I go about getting him to pay?!

I can understand that you want to make him pay. I would if I were in your situation, but that doesn't necessarily make it the best approach.

If you start the divorce you can ask the court to order your ex to pay the costs. However, remember that whoever pays it is coming out of the pot of money which will be shared between you, so the higher the legal costs the less there will be to share out at the end of the process. You therefore need to try and keep costs as low as possible. If he isn't willing to pay it may lead to a contested divorce which will increase costs. You may want to consider alternatives such as sharing the costs between you.

I would suggest you think about divorcing him on the grounds of his unreasonable behaviour rather than adultery. Adultery is more likely to be contested, especially if you name the other woman. It is also more likely to lead to an acrimonious divorce. If you go for unreasonable behaviour you can agree a set of allegations between you which could be fairly mild. Remember that, like it or not, your ex is almost certainly going to be part of your child's life. It will be in your child's best interests if you can part on as good terms as possible. I fully understand that you feel hurt and want to hit out right now, of course.

You should consult a solicitor who specialises in family law as soon as possible. I would recommend that you find one who is a member of Resolution as they adopt a non-confrontational approach. This will help to minimise costs and keep things as amicable as possible.

It depends on whether you're paying for the divorce yourself, or using public funding (legal aid). If the former, then you can state in the "prayer" part of the petition that you're claiming the costs back from him. You'll have to pay a court fee of £340 to lodge the petition plus £40 for decree absolute. When you lodge your request for directions (application for decree nisi) you then repeat your claim for costs and usually the court will grant at least half the costs to be repaid.

All the above advice is on the assumption that you're doing the divorce yourself. If you use solicitors, they'll make the claims on your behalf and may also get half or even all of their fees repaid by your ex as well.

If you start arguing with him over the cost of the divorce then those costs will start going up and you run a real risk of ending up having to pay more yourself (My ex did exactly what you're trying to do and ended up with a large legal bill). I suggest you either pay the costs yourself or get him to agree to pay the costs (and actually stump up the cash) before you submit the petition.

You'll find that with an adultery petition a court will almost always order costs in favour of the petitioner (you!).

If costs can't be agreed a judge will want to hear from both of you. Given the circumstances of your pregnancy, I don't think you'll fail to get a costs order.

Don't name the other party. She'd have to be served, and that will only delay things and make them more expensive.

make sure as well that you can prove adultery - ideally he'd sign a confession statement, but evidence that he's living with her should be enough. Speak to your solicitor about that.

It's worthwhile claiming costs. If you don't have legal aid, you'd expect it to cost £1200-£1500, and you'll want to get that back.

This is only the costs of getting the divorce, remember. This does not include the costs of sorting out the finances, which are usually alot more.

My ex divorced me on the ground of adultery (I didn't before we split up but by the time we divorced I was seeing someone else). I agree that it's not worth the hassle to name the other party but I disagree that the court will order costs against the other party. They didn't in my case, despite my ex's attempts.

A divorce petition, particularly for adultery, is pretty easy to put together so you can do it yourself. Even if you get a solicitor to do it, it shouldn't cost more than a few hundred pounds. If it costs £1200 then you're being ripped off.

Sorry nocake but with court fees now at £375 and your average solicitor costing £200 per hour plus vat, it's easy to do the maths. The legal aid board used to think that a divorce could be done in 3 hours work - which means it takes around 4 hours.

Also, if the adultery occured after separation then the cause of the separation must have been something else. That's probably why there was no order for costs made against you.

I think leaving your heavily pregnant wife for another woman is one of the clearest cases there can be for an order for costs. Having experienced one divorce does not mean you will be able to advise others on theirs.

agree with resolution
adultery by respondent within a year of marriage and pregnant petitioner = costs order against the respondent

note we are only talking about the costs of the petition. in relation to sorting out the finances, the general rule is that each party bear their own costs except in exceptional circumstances which I hope are unlikely to apply to you (relating to litigation misconduct, not marital misconduct!)

There still is legal aid, but for how much longer is anyone's guess. The government announced a consultation process the other month, ending in March, in which they propose to scrap legal aid for divorce, private law children cases, and financial cases in divorce, save where there has been domestic violence.

Around half my caseload is legal aid, and I can say hand on heart that more than half of them would not be able to prosecute their case in court without representation.

There are significant human rights issues thrown up by this proposal, not least what to do if one party alleges the other has been violent, but the other disputes this. The current proposals would see the alleging party having their case funded but the other party not. Who is to say whether the allegations are true until they have been tested at court?

I have cases where the wife has hit/slapped the husband upon learning of his infidelity. In those cases the husband's case would be funded, leaving the wife unrepresented.

I don't know about anyone else, but I think it's forgivable for a spouse, immediately upon learning of the other spouse's infidelities, to, in temper, lash out. It's a question fo degree of course, and not everyone will agree with me, but that's my view. These proposals would penalise the wronged spouse in that situation and reward the guilty party.

This will also impact upon privately funded cases. The court system will be awash with cases where one or both parties are unrepresented. There will be, I assure you, significant delays as the court diary gets ever fuller, and every court user will be affected by this.

If anyone is concerned enough to make their views known, the Ministry if Justice are the people to contact : [email protected]

And before anyone starts about 'fat cat lawyers', private clients are charged £205 per hour for my time. That is average where I practice. For legal aid work I get £55 an hour if I'm lucky. For some of the work I don't even get paid. That's for me, my secretary, office overheads, central office support staff, training, etc etc. The list goes on. Think how much a garage mechanic charges their time out at. The more I type this the more I wonder why I still do legal aid work.

Rant over.

The judge wasn't aware that the cause of our separation wasn't adultery and didn't ask. He just wanted it sorted and us out of his room. I think the OP should get her ex to pay for the divorce and would hope a judge would be sympathetic to her but there seems to be a big gap between what people expect from the family courts and what they actually do. Many people expect to be able to "take their ex to the cleaners" by going to court and crying to the judge. This means cases end up in court that should be resolved by negotiation and mediation but the court is powerless to force people to do this.

My view is that the whole divorce process is inherently confrontational and can cause the most amicable split to end up in a fight. All it takes is one party to do something stupid and you're in court arguing over nothing and judges have no powers to penalise the stupidity.

Sorry for the rant, and drifting off the original subject, but having been dragged through the court by my ex over very little money it's something I feel quite strongly about. Resolution, and other solicitors who are members of resolution, are doing their bit to try and make it a better system but it needs changes from the top.

Collaborative law is the way forward. Sensible discussions face to face make for a quicker settlement, and leave both parties their dignity. The court process is not fit for purpose, save that those who simply cannot reach agreement must have recourse to them.

As a mum currently being dragged through the court system by soon to be ex for contact as to date 'it's not on his terms', I am hoping that the judge gets as fed up with it as I am and starts awarding costs against him. This is the only way he'll stop. I had the audacity to complain about his DV towards me and got him a police caution - all my fault naturally!! Glad I can laugh about it now!! This is such an expensive way of doing things, but mediation is sadly not appropriate in this case. Can't wait for the financial's to start - watch out for the fireworks all!!!

Costs orders aren't awarded that often in children proceedings. If a judge thinks a litigant is being annoying/harassing he/she may bar further applications without permission from the court.

But such orders (called s91(14) orders) are rare. At times they are made when they shouldn't be, but simply aren't appealed. They do not place an absolute bar on a parent applying back to court - just that within a certain time period they must ask the court for permission before they are allowed to proceed.