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My wife has told me that last week she went to a solicitor to start divorce proceedings. It's suddenly occurred to me that I know absolutely nothing about what happens next. So I googled and got lots of sites saying the petitioner coughs up £550 and the court tells you she wants a divorce and why and you don't say no because it's expensive and it's this long til one decree and that long to the other. They make it sound like it's as simple as popping into Tesco and picking one up with the milk. What happens if you don't agree to her statement? How do you sort out the finances if she won't talk to you? What about the children? I think my wife thinks she can just tell a pack of lies and I'll OK love here's the house and I'll be gone in the morning. She's only spoken to me once in 6 months and she couldn't keep that up because she was so emotional. I think she wants to do it by telepathy.
Hi Staggered,
we have spoken in private messages about this.
Divorce is getting more and more like you describe, when my wife filled for divorce she did it all on line, she sent the forms off and everything just followed from there, as you say the 2 stages follow on from each other, the decrea nisi is first then the absolute.
I didn't speak with my ex wife at all during the whole process of the divorce, and the absolute was issued before we had sorted finances.
when we sorted finances that was done mainly through solicitors, though if you are able to avoid that at much as possible it will save you money, but if your ex won't talk that isn't going to be easy.
GTTS
Here's a link to further information about divorce, including the financial side
If you can, agree a reason beforehand. Unfortunately, in this country, we still don't have no-fault divorce, so the reason has to be strong enough that the court don't reject the application (which they can do, and I don't think you get the fee back).
You can disagree with the reason for the divorce, but you then have to put in a counter application, which will cost you £550 (in addition to the fee she has paid) and the end result is still a divorce, so I really wouldn't do this.
You will need to do a financial agreement, and there is a standard format for this - I used a service for this which wasn't expensive, and certainly saved a lot of time and hassle, and was done entirely by phone and email, so was very convenient.
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