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The Divorce Surgery
How Can We Help You?
  • Home
  • Get Started
    • Don’t Know Where To Start?
    • Start Together
    • Resolving Finances
    • Co-Parenting
    • Divorce Applications
    • Order Drafting
  • Our Book
  • Online Courses
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    • Our Blog
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It’s been more than a year since ‘no fault div It’s been more than a year since ‘no fault divorce’ arrived…and what an improvement it has been. Couples tell us how liberating it is now to be able to make a joint application for divorce. 

But there is much more to think about than just the mechanics of the divorce, particularly when it comes to arrangements for children and the division of finances. 

That’s why we’ve put together our FREE ‘Don’t know where to start with divorce’ course, so you can begin to consider all the angles and work out what help you’re going to need 💻

You'll find our free course linked in the bio 🙌
Hope this helps 👍🏼 Hope this helps 👍🏼
Sometimes a cost benefit analysis can help. Legal Sometimes a cost benefit analysis can help. Legal fees get out of control so quickly in litigation. And if you both want to escape- try sharing a lawyer. The Judge can stay (pause) the proceedings to let you do so. I really hope you reach a fair settlement soon. 

Good luck.
Please keep the questions coming 🙌🏼 Please keep the questions coming 🙌🏼
Yes, you will need to demonstrate to the court tha Yes, you will need to demonstrate to the court that he is aware of the proceedings and is failing to engage. But that doesn’t mean that you should, or that the Court will approve such an Order.

Remember the Family Judge has an obligation to ensure the outcome is fair- if he is earning more than you and is failing to engage you can get substantive orders to enforce against him, for instance orders that he pay you a lump sum, or transfers a property to you, instead of maintenance on the basis that he has demonstrated by his conduct that he is very unlikely to comply with an order for regular maintenance payments.

I’m pleased you have a solicitor as you will need legal advice, but rest assured the Court can and will make Orders against people who refuse to engage.
In many ways, when couples navigate divorce they a In many ways, when couples navigate divorce they are modelling for their children, showing them ways to navigate disagreements which they may draw on in their own adult lives.
The 38% statistic came from a study by the Nuffiel The 38% statistic came from a study by the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory in 2019. And it caused a massive stir in the legal profession. Until that point, Judges and lawyers had proceeded on the (it turns out, baseless) assumption that 10% of separating families end up in court over their children’s arrangements (e.g. where they live and the time they spend with each parent). But we were all wrong, and the real figures were almost four times higher. 

Since the statistics came out, the most senior Family Judge in England and Wales, the President of the Family Division, has made helping parents stay out of court one of his top priorities. 

 Why? Because court proceedings, in themselves, have been found to cause emotional harm to children. Because they pit their parents against each other. The Nuffield itself concluded that this required a public health response. 

 What the statistic also shows is that as a society, we have normalised going to court. But it’s not normal. It’s far from normal to delegate decisions about your child to a total stranger who will, in all likelihood, never meet your child. 

 Be aware of this landscape when you are navigating divorce. Maybe, in your situation, there is no option but to go to court. But know that for the majority of families, you should be able to navigate the arrangements for your children without stepping foot in a court room, or ever meeting a judge. It’s never too late to change your approach.
Hope this helps 🙌🏼 Hope this helps 🙌🏼
This case is another example of legal costs going This case is another example of legal costs going completely out of control. As the Judge put it:

“Stating the background in simple terms will highlight the problem of disproportionality. In an application in early March 2025, heard in mid April 2025 with a final financial remedy hearing in early July 2025, the wife sought £500 per month interim maintenance, obviously interim being pending the final hearing and order. Presuming judgement given in mid July, this was only ever going to be 3 months duration namely £1500, at most £2000 with possible backdating. Yet in relation to this exercise alone, the wife had incurred costs of £8716 and the husband had incurred costs in responding of £4170 namely about £13,000. Almost 10 times what would have been the recovery. How can that ever be?...”

“...Throughout history, lawyers have had a bad reputation. Amongst the wide category of complaints might be nuances, fine points taken which lawyers call distinguishing but the public calls something completely different, long delays which rarely suit anyone but lawyers and high costs including disproportionate costs. It might be thought that in recent years, with far greater opportunity for bringing bad practices to light and far greater consumer awareness, there would have been wholesale changes. The profession now is very different to when I started decades ago and rightly so. We have far tighter professional rules, far more openness and transparency and far more information about costs. So why is it still in England and Wales family law, with which we are concerned, we have a continued saga of cases with disproportionate costs and applications which sadly do little to correct the reputation of these millennia? Countless reported decisions have condemned costs being incurred unnecessarily or inappropriately.”

This is EXACTLY why Harry and I are so committed to our fixed fee model at The Divorce Surgery. Please don’t sleep walk into litigation. We get couples coming to us even in the middle of litigation. If you both have the will to find another way, we’ll find it.
Hope this helps 👍🏼 Hope this helps 👍🏼
I’m so sorry to hear this. I don’t know the is I’m so sorry to hear this. I don’t know the issues in your case but remember it’s always worth telling the Judge how you feel at your next hearing. If they understand you are keen to settle they could explore with you both whether there are other avenues you can pursue to reach settlement? 

Court hearings can always be stayed (paused) if you both want to try to settle outside court. We have had couples coming to us who were in litigation for 5 years (and then settled out of court in 8 weeks...). 

Obviously if your safety is at risk you will need the protection of the court. Whatever your situation, I hope it is resolved soon.
With child maintenance, at least you know where yo With child maintenance, at least you know where you stand, right? You enter the relevant figures into the online ‘CMS calculator’ and off you go, job done.  No fuss and no real cost. 

Some countries do something similar for spousal maintenance too. But not England & Wales. The advantage of the approach here is that you can accurately tailor the payment of maintenance to meet needs – so neither one of you pays more or receives less than is necessary.  Also, the fact that spousal maintenance is discretionary means that, if you have children, the rough edges of the formula-based CMS approach can be smoothed away if need be, so that if you are getting too much or too little child maintenance, the spousal award can remedy the defect (this obviously wouldn’t be possible if both maintenance awards were formula-based). 

In truth, it is hard to compare across different countries. If you live somewhere with a generous social security system, then the precise quantification of spousal maintenance may be less crucial. But if you do not, it can make all the difference.
Maintenance can be one of the more difficult aspec Maintenance can be one of the more difficult aspects of arranging your finances on separation. 

If you have children, most of us readily understand and accept that they need to be paid for somehow, so maintenance for them is not usually a major issue.  Indeed, working out what to pay for children is not something the courts get involved with anyway (other than in certain limited circumstances), leaving it instead to the Child Maintenance Service.  In simple terms, the CMS will work out what has to be paid by applying a formula to the maintenance payer’s gross income, taking into account various factors, including how often the children stay overnight with the maintenance payer. 

But spousal maintenance, as ordered by a court, paid from one ex-spouse to another to meet their needs, is often less obvious. Some of us have very strong feelings as to whether such payments are fair or not – often tied in with our perceptions as to why the marriage has ended.  And even once you’ve decided that there should be a spousal maintenance order, how much will it be and how long will it last?  Even the most experienced family lawyers find predicting these things difficult, because different judges come to different conclusions. 

So if you can come to a figure you can each live with – probably more than one of you wants to pay but less than the other wants to receive - it’s well worth it.
Hope this helps 🙌🏼 Hope this helps 🙌🏼
It is madness to spend a fortune on legal fees and It is madness to spend a fortune on legal fees and end up in court unless there really is no other option (and it’s thankfully a rare case where there ‘s no other way.

But in my experience as a family law barrister, I haven’t met anyone yet (in almost 20 years) who WANTS to spend a crazy amount of money on lawyers. They just want a fair outcome. And so does their ex. But if they are giving different versions of events to their respective lawyers, they’ll be given different answers, which is the whole issue with the two-sided adversarial model, and why Harry and I set up The Divorce Surgery.

If a separating couple can find out together, from an impartial lawyer, what’s fair, it’s a game changer. Suddenly, there’s nothing left to fight about (or spend money on legal fees to fight about)
***DIVORCE STATS UPDATE*** ok..sounds boring, bu ***DIVORCE STATS UPDATE*** 

ok..sounds boring, but this stuff really matters. There are fewer divorces happening but a huge rise in the number of cases where separating couples are arguing about money. This is an unsustainable burden on the Family Court. And it can only mean one thing: more delay, more cost, more unhappiness. So share a lawyer and stay away from court if you can…
If your ex won’t engage in proper financial disc If your ex won’t engage in proper financial disclosure it’s time to make a court application. Get your mediator to sign off your MIAM certificate and issue a Form A.

This does NOT mean you’re going to court, but it sets up a timetable so that if your ex continues to refuse to engage then you have a hearing in the diary (called a First Appointment) where the Judge can order your ex to complete a Form E.

A good idea is to write to your ex now saying:

- The efforts you have made to get them to engage

- What they have failed to do (i.e. fill in a Form E and attend mediation)

- That as a result you are now forced to issue court proceedings

- That if you are forced to attend a court hearing you will be asking the Judge to order your ex to pay your legal costs

- BUT that all this can be avoided, and the proceedings stayed, if your ex files a Form E and engages in an out of court process with you (either mediation or there are other options, such as sharing a lawyer)

You can then attach that letter to your Form A so the Court has the full background. Good luck.
A divorced parent is still a parent 100% of the ti A divorced parent is still a parent 100% of the time.
When you get divorced, and you have children, you When you get divorced, and you have children, you are still a parent 100% of the time, whether your children are with you or not. 

 Think back to when you were in a relationship, did you stop being a parent when your children were at school, or you were at work, or went out for the evening without them? Of course not. Did you count ‘nights’ or percentages of time then? No. So why do it now? 

 Litigation about children often starts from a place of fear. Fear that you’re going to be marginalised as a parent, that your relationship with your children will be negatively impacted by the divorce. 

 But, provided it’s safe in your circumstances to do so, can you start from a place where you both agree that you’re going to share the care of your children? That you’re both going to be fully involved, committed parents? That this isn’t a competition. Because if you start there, then the rest just becomes logistics. What work commitments do you have? Who can do the school run on which days? What works best at weekends? If you can approach these arrangements as simple diary management, they won’t become overloaded with emotion, and will enable you to change the arrangements (which no doubt you’ll regularly need to do) when work and your children’s commitments change and throw a spanner in the works.
Hope this helps 🙌🏼 Hope this helps 🙌🏼
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