please advise re divorce settlement

[MrsVidic]

my DP and Ex Wife finally came to a financial aggreement (after nearly 2 years stalling etc from her). The court produced their order (all financial as no dc's) he has to give her one of his houses mortgage free and raise a mortgage on the house we live in at the moment. Not a large ammount (37k) to pay off her mortgage.

On friday we recieved a bundle of letters from his solicitor (we had not heard anything from his solicitor for 4 months and had been chasing him up via email) and found that the court order had been given on dec 8th (where we would have had to get everything sorted in 56 days)- however this leaves us with less than 2 weeks to raise mortgage etc which is not going to be possible (bank have told us 4 weeks minimum).

What should we do?

I've not got any experience in these things, but my reasoning is that you should complain very strongly to your solicitor and ask him what he is going to do to sort this out.

He sounds as if he has been negligent in passing these on so late, so you may need to complain about him to whichever body regulates solicitors (sorry, I don't know who that would be, but there will be one).

Court orders such as these usually have a clause towards or at the end saying "liberty to apply as to timing and implementation". You need to apply to the court for an extension of time to make the payment. Before you do that write to the other side's solicitor and ask for their agreement to this explaining what has happened. Set a time for a reply, say 7 days. Hopefully they will agree and a letter can go to the court explaining both parties agree an extension of time.

If they won't agree I suggest you go to the court office and ask for the relevant form. The court staff can't give you advice as to how to fill it in but should know the correct form. There will be a fee. Fill it out in plain and simple language and say how long you need and why. This form will then be sealed by the court and you need to serve it on the other side's solicitor.

You should query any fees due to the solicitor given the delay in informing you of this important obligation. You can complain to the Solicitors Regulation Authority but go to the solicitor first and make your complaint to them. Hopefully they can attempt to rectify things by doing the work above instead of you having to do it yourself.

Don't panic, take action!

thanks for the repiles- we have emailed the solicitor and informed him of the delay and checked the bundle of letters (hte bundle of letters were email responses which my DP hadn't been recieving and none of them told us of the court date. Therefore it appears his solicitor had made no attempt to inform us that the 56 days had began until last week.

We have had a mortgage agreed in theory and the paperwork is being sent today.

The solicitor has still not replied to our emails telling him of the delay and asking him what we should do. My DP is going to phone him tommorrow.

I am so worried about this now. His ExWfie has stalled everything from the beginning and been as awkward as possible (hence us aggreeing to a generous settlement to just end the waiting). Her stalling was why we believed that the court date was taking so long (we were also told there would be a long dely)

I just want this all to be over

Just a further comment, you didn't receive replies to your emails in the first place and now you are emailing the solicitor again. Emails obviously are not the best way to contact this solicitor so it is a phone call or a visit to his office surely? It is the court and the other side who need to know of the delay so make sure the solicitor informs them or do it yourself.