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Frearsons Family LawSolcitors Skegness - Divorce Procedure
Frearsons Family Law Department promise to guide you through the Divorce Procedure in a caring and sensitive manner. Our specialist divorcesolicitors offer advice and support through this difficult time.
A divorce procedure begins with a petition and it ends with a decree absolute. At Frearsons Family Law Skegness our solicitors will ensure they explain everything to you in plain English so do not worry if, at this stage, you do not understand the terminology.
Phone us on: 01754 897600 or
Out-of-Hours: 07880 506601
The divorce process will take around 4 to 6 months and usually the cost will be charged to the Petitioner (the person who starts the proceedings). Costs will be negotiated during a meeting with one of our specialist solicitors. Some of these costs, however, may be recovered from the other party. You may, if you are in receipt of benefits or have a low income, be exempt from court fees and be able to obtain help with other costs. We will be able to advise you on this.
If children are involved with the divorce it is an extremely distressing period for them, both mentally and physically. We aim to protect the children’s best interests in such situations, ensuring you are provided with or you will provide sufficient child maintenance money and child care for them. We also offer advice on child support, child custody, child contact and child access. These are all major factors within the divorce process and factors which need to be dealt with both sensitively and sensibly. At all times in situations concerning children, the child’s welfare is the main priority.
In order to begin a divorce it is essential for you to talk to one of our specialist solicitors or legal executives at our office in Skegness. We will gladly guide you through the process, explaining everything in more detail so you are fully aware of all of your legal rights and obligations.
You will provide us with instructions to prepare your divorce petition. We will then do this and after you have approved it we will file it. Where there are children involved, we will prepare a Statement of Arrangements with the court.
The court will then notify us that the petition, together with the Statement of Arrangements for the children, has been issued. These documents, along with a form known as an Acknowledgement of Service, will be posted to your husband/wife. .
On receiving these papers it is open to your husband/wife to consult with his/her Solicitor who will then help him/her to complete the Acknowledgement of Service and return it to the Court.
In the Acknowledgement of Service your husband/wife must confirm that he/she has received the Petition and state whether he/she agrees to the divorce and whether he/she agrees to the arrangements which you are proposing in the Statement of Arrangements.
The Acknowledgement of Service is then processed by the Court Staff who then send a copy of it endorsed with the Official Court stamp to your solicitor. At this point, we will need to see you again to take you through the next stage of the proceedings. If your husband/wife has indicated on the Acknowledgement of Service that he/she agrees to a divorce and to the arrangements proposed for the children then the procedure should be quite straight forward.
A sworn Statement (Affidavit), which contains evidence in support of your application for a divorce, will be prepared for you. Once sworn, this document will have to be submitted to the District Judge, if the Court is satisfied with the evidence then it will issue a Certificate stating that you are entitled to a Decree Nisi. The Court will then direct that the Decree Nisi should be formally pronounced in your favour in an Open Court.
It is important to remember that if your Petition is undefended and you are granted a Decree Nisi in this way then you will not have to attend Court. Following a period of six weeks and a day from the date of the pronouncement of the Decree Nisi, it is then possible for you to apply for the Decree Nisi to be made Absolute. This makes the divorce final. This is a pure formality and all you have to do is to sign a simple form which is then submitted to the Court and the Certificate of Decree Absolute is sent back to us, usually by return of post.
It is very difficult to give an accurate assessment of how long your divorce will take. There are a number of factors over which we have no control, such as the time it takes for your husband/wife to deal with the acknowledgements of Service and the time it takes the Court Staff to process the documents. An average time from filing the Divorce Petition to pronouncement of Decree Absolute is approximately five months.
We deal with all aspects of Family Law, including divorce, separation, cohabitation disputes, civil partnership dissolution, resolving financial matters following separation, child residence, child custody, child abuse, child care, adoption, common law marriages, child support, legal fees, legal help and issues of domestic violence.
You can arrange appointment times to suit your schedule as one of our solicitors will always be happy to see you.
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