Going through a divorce can be stressful enough on its own, without the added worry of sorting through finances, assets, and determining the custody of your children. Here at Prentice Family Law, we understand this, and will do all we can to help you get through the process in a calm and professional manner.
The divorce process
There are a few different steps to the process of a divorce, and we can help guide you through each one, the first one being filing a divorce petition. This is when you will set out a reason for the divorce, and how you intend to deal with any arrangements, whether that be with finances and/or children. You can decide to do this yourself, or one of our divorce solicitors in Guildford can do it for you.
The second stage of the divorce process is when the court sends off a copy of your divorce petition form to your spouse. As well as the petition form, there will be an acknowledgement of service form which they need to fill out and return to the court within 7 days. This confirms that your spouse has received the petition form and that they are happy with the reasons for divorce.
In amongst all of these steps, we will help you to straighten out the details of arrangements for finances, assets and custody of any children. We can help you to put together a strong case, stating your needs clearly. We can also communicate with your spouse’s solicitor, if they have one, to try and straighten out any details.
The next stage that our divorce solicitors in Guildford can help you with is the application for the ‘decree nisi’, which is the first of 2 decrees in the divorce process. Put simply, this is a document which states that the court does not see any reason as to why you can’t get a divorce. We are happy to guide you through this stage and give you advice on how to apply for this.
After this, we will help you to file an application for a financial consent order, which is a document that straightens out all of the agreements you and the other party have made about finances. We believe this is an important step in creating a smoother process for you, as it gives you a peace of mind that your ex-spouse cannot make any false claims about finances in the future.
Once you have got the decree nisi, and you and your spouse have agreed on how you will handle finances and/or children, we can move on to applying for your ‘decree absolute’. This is the final step in the divorce process, and legally finalises the process. The application for this usually takes 2 weeks, and after this, your marriage will be legally ended.
Our divorce solicitors in Guildford are pleased to be able to help our clients with the process, as it gives them a peace of mind that the legal side of things is taken care of.