Divorce Finances
Dealing with the financial consequences of a family breakdown can often seem the most bewildering part of divorce or separation. What do you do about your home? How do pensions affect the situation? Should you be paying or receiving maintenance? How do you deal with business assets? What about inheritances or money that you had before your marriage? It can be hard to know where to begin.
Don’t panic
What you need is straight forward advice in understandable English and that is what we aim to give you. We cannot always promise to have a solution to what can often be a complicated financial situation the first time we meet but we can almost always tell you what we need to do to get a situation where we can!
We will explore what options to sort out your finances best suit your circumstances. We will look at Mediation and Collaborative Law if your case is suitable. We can talk about approaches to negotiation and how we can get to the bottom of your financial position where it is in unclear. We can tell you how to protect your assets.
We hope that in most cases it will result in an agreement being reached on financial matters but where that is not possible it can be necessary to ask a Judge to decide the issues for you. If that is necessary we will work with you to present the best possible case and to try to demystify the process for you.
But we are agreed on our finances
That is excellent news. Where you and your spouse agree on financial matters arising from your divorce you still need financial security. This is best achieved by asking the Court to record the financial settlement in a Consent Order. This document ensures that there is no misunderstanding about what has been agreed and in most cases guarantees that further claims cannot be made in the future.
In the case of Wyatt and Vince (2015) a wife was allowed to bring a financial claim against her husband 22 years after divorce even though the husband’s wealth had been created long after the separation. Had there been a Consent Order this would have been almost impossible.
We can arrange a Consent Order for you where agreement has been reached.
We will discuss our fees with you when we meet and in some cases may be able to agree a fixed fee.