Divorce and financial issues
Divorce can be a stressful and difficult time. Fortunately, you can be assisted by expert help and advice by instructing Colaru Law Chambers to represent you.
There are generally three parts to a divorce. The first is getting the marriage itself legally cancelled. This is the actual "divorce". The second part is dealing with your financial arrangements after the divorce has gone through. Finally, if you have children, and can not reach agreement with your ex-spouse on what the arrangements will be, you can apply to the court for the court to make an order.
This page only deals with the divorce and the financial issues - we have a separate page for people who need help with a dispute over arrangements for children, which you can find here.
Please see below for a summary of what is involved in divorce and financial issues, but if you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.
What are the steps in this type of case?
1. Applying for the divorce
What's involved?
If you are going to be the person starting the divorce, you will issue a "Application" through the Family Court. If your ex has started the divorce you will not need to do this, instead, you will file an "Acknowledgment".
Either way, the documents are checked by the court and a case is opened.
Assuming everything goes smoothly once any financial aspects are considered you can apply for a "Conditional Order". After 43 days you can then apply for a "Final Order" and the marriage will be legally over.
How long does it take?
It normally takes a week or so for us to get the details necessary to prepare the Divorce Petition / complete the Acknoweldgment.
After this in most cases we would not apply for the actual divorce until other matters such as finances have been dealt with.
Ever since Covid back in 2020, there have been significant delays in the court system, and believe it or not these are still ongoing today! This means you can expect to wait much longer to get the Final Order from the start of the divorce, and sometimes over one year if finances have to be dealt with too.
What will it cost?
If you start the divorce petition there is a court fee you have to pay (unless you have a low income and qualify for a discount or are able to have the fee waived). This is currently £612 (in 2025), but the fees increase every year.
Our fee to assist you with legal advice and preparing the paperwork is £480.
2. Applying for a financial order
What's involved?
If the arrangement as to finances are agreed, first we will discuss the situation with you and provide you with legal advice to ensure that your agreement is reasonable and you understand the implications and options open to you. We then prepare a "Consent Order" which sets out your agreement with your ex.
If the finances are not agreed, we would start off by providing you with legal advice and writing to your ex with your proposals to see if an agreement can be reached.
If agreement is reached, each side prepares a statement setting out their financial position (called a Form E). This is quite detailed and is provided to a judge to double check before the finances are agreed. The statements and the Consent Order are then sent to court and we then wait for it to be stamped and sent back. At that point the agreement is binding and you can put it into effect.
If agreement is not reached, we would be able to take the matter to court if you wish. The court would issue orders telling each party to provide extremely detailed accounts of finances (including copies of statements, etc.) and also a witness statement explaining the background.
You can expect in a contested case there would be at least one initial court hearing early on (called a First Appointment or FDA), one appointment where everyone gets together to have one last attempt to settle the case and reach an agreement (called an FDR or Financial Dispute Resolution hearing) and then a final hearing where you give evidence to the judge and the judge makes a decision.
How long does it take?
Each case is different.
Because of delays in the court system, if your finances are agreed, you can expect to wait around 6 months for the court to issue a stamped Consent Order. If finances are not agreed, and it has to go to a contested hearing, you can expect to wait 12 months for this to take place and the judge to make a decision on how finances are to be split.
What will it cost?
To open the financial case in court there is a charge of £303 (in 2025).
If finances are agreed, the court charges are £60 currently (in 2025) for getting a Consent Order stamped.
If finances are not agreed, there will be further fees and costs to pay as the matter proceeds to a final hearing.
Our fees for dealing with financial orders vary from case to case, as some people have straightforward finances and others are more complicated.
In an average case where finances are agreed, you can expect our fees to be around the £1,000 mark.
If finances are not agreed and we have to take the matter to a final hearing, you can expect it to cost around £15,000 to £25,000 in the average sort of case we see. Of course most cases settle before the final hearing and if that happened, costs would be lower. And if your finances were more complicated, and the arguments in court needed more evidence, it could cost a lot more than this. Often you can recover these costs from assets in the divorce, such as after a sale of the house.
Part of our service includes advising you as to the costs to be incurred in the future and whether you would be able to claim some or all of your costs from your ex.
3. Finalising finances after the divorce
What's involved?
Once you have either got an agreement on finances, or the judge has made a decision, you need to put the decision into action. This could involve selling a property, or transferring pension rights or simply one person sending money to the other person.
How long does it take?
If the case can be finished just by one side writing a cheque to the other, it can be dealt with in a matter of days! If it requires pensions to be update or transferred, it can take some weeks, and selling a property can take anywhere between two weeks and months. Of course every case is different, but we will do our best to make sure things are brought to a conclusion as quickly as possible.
What will it cost?
Unfortunately it isn't possible to give a fixed cost as each and every case is different. Some case will involve no work at all (or so little that no fee is payable). Others can be complex. We would of course discuss the costs with you when giving you our advice. Where fixed fees don't apply, we charge based on how long we have to spend working on your case and the rate ranges from £200 to £350 per hour.
What to do now?
If you'd like to discuss the services we offer, and how we can help, please contact us. There's no charge for making an enquiry and the quicker you contact us, the quicker we may be able to help!
An indication of the steps involved, and the fees that we would charge if you were our client is set out on this page above. Please note that the charges listed are intended to cover the most common types of case that we see. If you came to us with an out of the ordinary case, it could be that we would not be able to act for your for the fees set out above. However, we would discuss this with you first, and you would have the opportunity to decide whether you wished to go ahead or not. Fees set out above are not fixed price quotes. They include VAT but any fees that are charges by third parties (such as the court) are subject to change, and the amount you need to pay is the whatever they charge when you instruct us to proceed.
In some cases and in some situations a court may order you to pay costs to the "other side" in a case. Usually (but not always) this happens if you "lose" your case and the other side "wins", or sometimes if a settlement offer is made it can happen if you don't take the settlement but a judge later thinks you should have done. These costs would be broadly similar to the costs you incur, but are often higher as our costs tend to be lower as we work more efficiently for you and aim to keep our costs low. They are not included in the breakdowns above.
Whilst we're happy to talk through what we can do to help, we won't be able to give legal advice until you formally become our client and you have signed the Client Care Pack we will send to you.
We can offer help in a number of different way, whether that's from just providing you with written advice, helping with one step or stage of your case, or handling the whole case for you from start to finish. We will help in whatever way best suits you!