FAMILY LAW UPDATE
Divorce Court Fees Have Increased
The issue fee for commencing divorce proceedings has increased from £410 to £550 with across all divorce units.
Financial Remedies on Divorce
There are two ways to deal with what happens to your assets such as your house, shares, savings, car and etc during the divorce proceedings.
First, you and your spouse can agree between yourselves and that agreement can be sent to court where the District Judge is requested to approve it after the Decree Nisi stage in your divorce proceedings. We at Sabeers Stone Greene LLP can draft the agreement for you.
The second option is when you and your spouse can not agree and you need to get the legal professionals involved, like solicitors and judges. We at Sabeers Stone Greene LLP can assist you with the second option by advising you and representing you in Court where a Judge will decide what is fair and how your assets should be divided between you and your spouse.
Any party to the divorce proceeding can ask the District Judge to make a decision but if you have remarried then you cannot do that.
It has now become a mandatory requirement that before making the financial order application you must explore mediation as an alternative to court proceedings. This can be done by attending medication information and assessment meeting known as a MIAM. However, there are limited exceptions to this rule. For example, if a spouse is not willing to attend or doesn’t attend the meeting willingly or there is some other reason why mediation is not suitable then the mediator will issue a form called FM1 for a fee. This form will then have to be attached to the financial remedy application to establish that you have attended medication information and assessment meeting (MIAM). We at Sabeers Stone Greene LLP can arrange this meeting for you with a qualified Mediator.
If the matter reaches court and is contested then the financial order proceedings take about four to twelve months to conclude. However, this time period is affected by how quickly you and your spouse manage to iron out the issues you disagree on.
Usually, in contested proceedings for financial order in divorce involves three court hearings, namely the First Directions Hearing, the Financial Dispute Resolution Hearing and the Final Hearing. However, if you settle your case earlier during this process then you will not have to go to other court hearings subject to court making an order to that effect.
We at Sabeers Stone Greene LLP can assist you by advising and representing you throughout this stressful period. Our professionally qualified and skilled solicitor’s team in our family department try their level best to make this procedure as comfortable, quick and less stressful as possible to save you both stress and cost.