Hi I hope someone can help. I filed for divorce for UB and it was served on ex on the 17/08/2016. Since then as there was no response I filed for a court bailiff to serve the papers and was told that could take 9 months, so I paid for private process servers to serve them. He refused to meet them, told them two stories on the phone, and said he was homeless and jobless. They wrote a statement of truth to say he had admitted that he had the papers but was refusing to return them. I applied for deemed service to proceed with the Nisi. Today I got papers saying he was defending the divorce. I am aware this is very rare. He has written some horrible nasty things about me on the paperwork. He could of said he disagreed with the divorce petition and what I said but uncontested it. I did file my paperwork for deemed service a few weeks ago. Will they accept the deemed service as it was filed before his paperwork, I was told its a 6 week wait to see a judge when I phoned 2 weeks ago. I am going to have to call them and face another 90 mins at least on hold. It looks like a long drawn out court date just to get the nisi. I can not afford to pay for legal aid, its costing me £4k to contest the child contact order he has taken me to court for. I do not understand why he has chosen to defend it. I have looked into it and it is very rare to do so due to cost and time and the same result, the nisi. This seems very inappropriate to me and caused me a huge amount of distress. x