Divorce advise

[clairehaines1]

I am looking to divorce my husband was wondering if someone could give me some advice

We were together just under 12 years, married for just under 4 years and we have a 6 year old daughter.

Due to us splitting up our house was repossessed, we have no assets and all child care arrangements and maintenance is already in place and works very well, have been separated for nearly a year now.

It was myself who ended the marriage, basically for a good few years my husband just stopped bothering, stopped any attention and affection towards me moody all the time just generally couldn?t be bothered to make any effort no nights out absolutely nothing. 8 months before I told him it was over, I found him on a couple of sex websites, basically looking for cheap fun! I created a whole profile and was emailing him etc wanted to see how far he would go, I eventually lost my bottle when he was arranging to meet someone, I confronted him instead, we split up for a week but I took him back to try to make a go of it. Over time I started to realise I had stopped loving him, I didn?t trust him and didn?t want him anywhere near me. I then found out he had been on other websites, I couldn?t tell if they were new websites or from the previous time but that was enough for me to decide enough was enough and to tell him it was over.

As I said this was nearly a year ago and I would really like to arrange a divorce. I was thinking I wouldn?t need a solicitor as we have nothing that needs splitting and childcare etc is all sorted.

Could you advise what I would basically need to do? Apply to court? And what reasons would I need to use? Would it then be a case of attending court and the magistrate agreeing?

Any advise would be greatly received!!

Thanks
Claire

you can complete your own divorce papers but you will need solicitors to draw up a Consent Order regarding finances, from what you have said it will just be a clean break Consent Order which dismisses each other's rights to claim against each other in the future.

for the divorce i you google hmcs forms it will take you to the court website and the petition is called a D8. its pretty straight forward and somewhere on the site it will probably give you the stages you need to go through. you would be looking at divorcing your dh on unreasonable behaviour and will need to include examples eg, his use of the websites, lack of affection etc

however, if you are on a low income or unemployed you may be entitled to legal aid and therefore it would be much easier for a solicitor to do the forms for you.

So far as the divorce itself is concerned, you can do it without solicitors. You need to dowload a petition form, and a statement of arrangements for children form, from the court website www.hmcourtservice.gov.uk.

Fill it in on the basis of your husband's unreasonable behaviour. Break it down into paragraphs, in date order so far as that's possible.

Before sending the forms to court, send them to your husband and ask if he wants to change anything. It's much better to get any arguments out of the way before issuing the docs at court.

Then send the original petition plus two copies, and the same for the statement of arrangements for children, a cheque for £340 payable to HMCS and the original marriage cert to your local county court.

I won't go through the next steps in detail, the court will give you guidance leaflets or you can go online.

Essentially, the divorce is the easy bit. So long as your husband has no objections, it'llgo through within about 3 months to get to interim order (decree nisi as was).

Remember to ask for your costs back when filling in the back section of the Petition. Try to agree this with your husband as well. If succesful, the court will order him to pay back all or part of the fees.

You don't go to court, it's all done by post and it's not the magistrates, but the county court you apply to.

RE. finances - I generally advise that you get a consent order drawn up, and ideally this should be done by a solicitor. It will prevent him, for example claiming against your pension, or for maintenance or lump sums against you. Given what you say about your finances, you may feel this isn't necessary but I suggest you try to get a free half hur with a solicitor to double check everything.

xposted with CoDurham.

thank you both so much for this

With regards to the consent order, does this get done after the decree nisi bit or does it need to be done when i first send the petition off?

Thanks again
Claire

You should try to agree the terms of the consent order asap, but it can't be filed until after decree nisi.

thank you very much!!!

Regards
Claire

sorry could i ask something else please???

SOmeone mentioned as we have a daughter i need to also fill a form in relating to our child, is this right and if so do you know the form i need to complete?

All access and maintenance is agreed and works well.

thanks

Yes, (I mentioned it in my first post but don't worry!). Statement of Arrangements for children, also downloadable from the court website.

Good luck!

haha thats where i remember it from then

Thank you!! x