As from April 2016 the Court fee for issuing a Divorce Petition increased from £410 to £550. This is despite an increase only 2 years ago from £340. However, the Government initially discussed raising the fee to £750 although decided not to increase it by that much.
Resolution is critical of the increase with Jo Edwards (Chair of Resolution) recently commenting on the same. She states that the actual cost of the administrative process has been shown to be £270, meaning that at new rates the Ministry of Justice is making a profit of more than 100%. Resolution also continuously campaign for ‘No Fault Divorce’. Current divorce law is based on a fault system.
See our previous article regarding this by clinking here: https://www.hinesolicitors.com//time-no-fault-divorce-not-yet/
The No Fault Divorce Bill is due to have it’s second reading in The House of Commons on 22 April 2016. It proposes a sixth ‘fact’ on which a divorce can be granted. This means that there would still be a fault based system where applicable however, there would also be an option for couples to divorce where both spouses agree to end the marriage and do not want to have to wait 2 years to petition on that basis.
Under the current system if the parties do not want to wait 2 years one spouse has to allege unreasonable behaviour of their spouse even if it was really the case that both parties’ behaviour has contributed to the breakdown of the marriage. Resolution consider that the introduction of the proposed sixth ‘fact’ will greatly assist parties so that they can resolve financial matters sooner and will also reduce the possibly of conflict between them.
At Hine Solicitors all of our family solicitors are members of Resolution and therefore take all possible steps to resolve matters in an amicable, cost effective, non confrontational way.
