Cost of a divorce

[Didimum]

I am assisting my sister with the cost of her divorce (solicitor + court fees), and am looking for first-hand experiences on cost – I know it must vary greatly. They own a house together (she will either try to buy him out or get the house in the settlement), and they have two school-aged children together. He has currently left the family home. I am expecting there to be some areas of contention, but I also don't expect him to fight dirty or lengthy. Any advice or knowledge would be really helpful in what I need to expect – standard and unexpected costs etc. I already know the standard cost fee of £500+. Thanks so much.

I'm currently at £15,000 and not even in court yet. Applying for the actual divorce was the easiest and cheapest part of the whole process at a bargainous £550. Ex is an abusive narcissistic monster who has put me through 2 years of daily hell. Hoping there is an end to it soon but it is a slow process, the court system is a mess. There are no winners in divorce apart from Solicitors unfortunately. Good luck to your sister, all I can say is if you can be amicable it will be much cheaper!

£10k here, I found a solicitor who took credit card !

@yolandafostersfridge I'm so sorry!

@stillherenow I assume your ex is not being amicable?

You can do it a cheaply as possible by DIY and just paying the court fees, up to silly silly money.

I did mine (with a LOT of my own legwork, an empowering solicitor who gave me the confidence to DIY the bits I could, but with a barrister for the financials which ex wouldn't budge on) for around £4k

Instead of having a solicitor each (£££££) me and my ex are doing joint legally binding mediation via relate. Each session is £140 and an hour (or a little bit more). I wanted to just do it ourselves but my ex wanted mediation and it has been useful.

It's £593 plus optional solicitor's tax if you can't be amicable about it. And that bit can easily run to 10's of thousands. Solicitors often have meetings amongst themselves about how to maximise the costs of a divorce case. And often they can cause an escalation in disagreements by dragging the two parties away from meeting in the middle. Once they start playing letter ping pong (sending each other acknowledgement letters in response to the other's acknowledgement letter) at £180 a time, things get expensive very quickly.

If there is any way you can do it without full legal representation, then you'll probably both end up better off ultimately.

No I also had a narcissist, we had to threaten contempt of court to get him to engage. I did the first hearing on my own and got a solicitor for the second wherre it was settled. At court I think it's helpful to have a solicitor to do the negotiations

Much cheaper if you can avoid court .

The first solicitor I saw said I couldn't afford court and so we spent another year with nothing happening. I had to go to court so got an interest free credit card and paid it off when we got divorced and sold the house

Mine was free. ExDH is unable to work, so I asked him to do it.

All sorted in a few months. 8 weeks or whatever it is after decree nici and the decree absolute went to court, then it came through about 20 minutes later.

We'd already sold the house ourselves and sorted childcare arrangements. So it looks like it was easier than most.

If it was £££ then we'd probably be married forever! (But separated).

£6k just for my costs.

I would guess at somewhere between 30-40k

Mine was around £20k I tried to keep the costs down, but unfortunately divorcing a batty ex is expensive.
I think he spend about £30k, almost weekly bullying emails from his solicitors.

But it was worth every penny to erase him from my life.

If you can communicate and both of you are reasonable then it doesn't cost very much at all

Can i ask when you say Court costs, is this the same as letting the court decide on the finances? Ref - Financial Order, I was advised to let the court decide and it there would be no costs to this.

Many thanks