seperated ,finally talking divorce

[jam2b]

My husband and i have been seperated for over 8 years and i have lived with my new partner for over 5 of those years.We have now decided to divorce as i am now engaged to be married to my new partner. I have two children with my husband , both live with me and see their father twice a week. We are both in aggreement with getting divorce and there are no problems, my question is ,how do we go about getting a divorce, do we have to go to a solisitor, about how much will it cost . We have already sorted out all the money side . Thanks

I am in the same position, I have been seperated for two years and am now living with a new partner. I have just filed for divorce and although my husband and I sorted all our finances out at the time, I have been told that we need a financial order which finalises everything, apparently without it we could potentially always have a claim on each others finances.

You can get in touch with the divorce courts direct and I think it only costs about £340 for a divorce. You can download the divorce form and arrangements for children form online.

However, because of the financial settlement I am using a solicitor for the entire thing which has been estimated to cost me between £1500 and £2000

oh, that's a lot of money , i suppose its best to have a financial order. not sure where to find a friendly solicitor.so much easier to get married

What area are you in? I am in Hampshire and have found a really good but expensive solicitor. I wanted to emply a good one in case there was going to be any issues over my DS but thankfully it all seems like it will be straight forward.

My worry with solicitors is that they can so easily play you off one another, my husband isn't employing a solicitor and as I am the divorcing him I am paying the costs. But at least I know he won't have anyone telling him to fight me for anything.

Im in bedfordshire rosepetal1. There wont be any issues with my children ,as my eldest in nearly 18 and my youngest has sen and dad doesnt have any problem with any i say regarding him. It is all so friendly , shame we couldnt work like this when we were toghether.I left my husband and i asked him if he wants to divorce me , he just said , we need to just do this together , just make sure that the kids are taken care of.

Maybe if it's all so good between you and you know for sure that he will never try and claim any money from you or anything, just go direct to the courts. It will be alot cheaper. To be honest if it wasn't for my DP I would do that, but he wants the financial order as my DH has a good job but the hospital he works for is closing down and he may not get such a well paid job.

Have a look at this website:

www.courtsevice.gov.uk

Hi, I'm a divorce lawyer. So far as the divorce itself is concerned, just fill in the Petition form and Statement of Arrangements form which you can get from the website. The grounds for divorce are 5 years separation. Send them to the court with your original marriage cert and a cheque for £300. The court will explain the rest of the procedure, but it's a piece of cake.

On the financial side, if there are any assets to split, pensions etc it would be worth using a solicitor to draft a consent order. If everything's already agreed and there are no holdups it shouldn't take more than 3 hours from start to finish (I charge £175 per hour, others may be cheaper).