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Hi,
I have been going through the joys of divorce for almost 3 years now. My wife and I have completed our Form E's, attended several 4-way meetings, and produced a draft consent order. This was done over a year and a half ago; May 2011 to be precise!
Since then, changes have been made by my wife to the consent order, she is now without legal representation and I continue to pay legal fees.
What I wish to know is, how legally binding is a draft consent order? Neither party has signed and nothing has been submitted to Court. However, my solicitor states that I do have to follow, or at least show intent to, what has been written down. To that end, I currently fulfill the following: -
1. I placed the house on the market with the intent to sell. Presently, she will get circa 90% of the capital from the sale, so I marketed the property for an inflated price. Thus why it did not sell. I do intend to re-market the property in the summer.
2. Pay £500 a month in child maintenance for my son; who lives in Scotland with his mum. My teenage daughter lives with me. My wife pays nothing towards her.
3. Pay £250 a month in spousal maintenance.
4. Paid £2,500 to assist with her removal costs.
5. Pay travel costs to facilitate both children visiting mum and dad. This includes flights to and from Inverness and meeting up in either Newcastle or Gretna. This is a 750 mile round trip for me. Thus far, I have paid in excess of £1,500 in travel costs, since June 2012, to facilitate the children visiting and staying with the non-resident parent.
My wife is putting pressure on me to sell the marital home, as she claims to be missing out on certain benefits, such as Housing benefit, council tax rebate etc.
I believe that legally I do not need to sell, as I have to care for a daughter in full-time education.
I have offered my wife numerous financial options, such as a buy-out plan, but she continues to push for the max!
The logical option is to go to Court, but I am concerned about the potential costs and the fact that I may actually get a worse deal than I do now!!
My wife has recently moved further North; thus making contact/access even more of a challenge.
I am now looking to view the divorce and consent order with a fresh perspective. As far as I'm concerned, the current draft consent order is toilet paper. I am in the process of drafting a new consent order, where she will receive less capital from the house sale, an increase in the pension share, no spousal maintenance and an ammendment to child maintenance. She will obviously not like this, but I've had enough.
Cheers,
Mark
Hi Mark
Your solicitor is the best person to advise on this. I think you are technically correct that the draft order is not legally binding as it's only when it becomes an order of the court that it is legally binding. However, you do need to consider how a court would feel if your ex put the draft order before them, which was agreed at the time between you and your ex, and you are now wishing to disregard - potentially a court would not look favourably on your actions, so you would need a very robust reason for your actions.
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