Urgent please - Divorce petition received

[acsrjsk]

Hi

Absolutely devastated I walked home to find divorce petition with the acknowledgement of service included filed in Bury st. edmunds court.

I am seeing a solicitors tomorrow or the day after - yet to arrange an appoinment.

but a few questions:

there is a prayer form included in the petitionL

(2) costs (if you wish to claim costs from the respondent or co-respondent)
That the Respondent (ie, me) shall be ordered to pay the costs of this application.

My question:
1. does this costs just the solicitor fees or the court fees ( around £500 I think)?
2. How do I even know how much her solicitors fees are? I don;t mind paying just the court fee but a bit scared of the solicitor expense. btw I am not planning to contest the divorce although the petition has some truth about my abusive behaviour there are lies in it (not signicant though).
3. I have 7 working days to respond to this. Can my solicitor gain an agreement with their solicitor within this time scale? what happens if I miss getting an agreement within this 7 days?

(3) Under Financial order the following checkbox are ticked:
That the petitioner may be granted the following finacial order(s)
Periodic payments order
secured provisiion order
lump sum order
property adjustment order
A long statement about pension compensation sharing is also ticked

my question:
1. I thought this sort of thing would be discussed after the acknowledgment of service is submitted. We have not even talked about any of this before,
She earns more than me and the property is 50/50 and she has been in pension scheme lot longer than I have. Why are these options ticked at this stage?

Additional question:
Can I just ask the instruct the solicitor to deal with this - I don't think I can handle this on my own. They charge roughly £250 an hour. I don't mind investing upto £2,500 to handle including her solicitor fees. Is this practical?

Sorry if my quesitons sounds stupid but my mind is completely mental as losing her meant that I have lost everything in life and its happening for real. I will be asking my solicitor these questions just wanted to get some views before I see them. Thanks a lot in advance for your response.

Just to add she has not spoken to me directly and everything has come through the solicitors.

[MissFM]

Re: Urgent please - Divorce petition received

Hi acsrjsk,

Once again, I'm so sorry to hear that.

Just quickly (I'm having connection problems):

Don't panic - you have time to identify and instruct the right solicitor for you and do make that your absolute priority - don't do anything in response to the above until you have.

If you haven't yet identified the right solicitor - start here: http://solicitors.lawsociety.org.uk/...Io2RoCYbzw_wcB

and it won't do any harm to look here, too:
http://www.legal500.com/c/east-angli...-client/family (have sent you to the East Anglia page as you mentioned Bury St Edmonds - but you can search by name or firm)

Should you choose a larger firm, they will normally give you the choice of instructing a senior partner at a commensurate hourly rate or more junior solicitor(s) working under his/her supervision. The latter, if you have confidence in the person & the firm, can IME be more cost effective.

If you don't like the first one you contact, then move on. Most will give you a free initial consultation to see if you will suit each other.

Make sure you explain everything to them and vice versa. Once you have identified someone you can trust then yes, in answer to your question, trust them and use their expertise.

Also, please do make sure you get proper medical support for your general wellbeing throughout this process.

As always, this is just my opinion and others may think differently.

Good luck and keep us posted x

[acsrjsk]

Re: Urgent please - Divorce petition received

Thank you so much.

[acsrjsk]

Re: Urgent please - Divorce petition received

Hi

I went to see a solicitor yesteray for initial consultation. He spent 1.5 hours with me.

As part of the meeting he helped me complete the divorce acknowledge of service form and asked me to post it straigtaway, which I did this morning. he suggested that there is no need for his involvement for the divorce part but recommended to get him involved for the finance part of it.

For the cost section in the acknowledge of service he wrote "I have returned the forms to the court immediately upon receipt. The applicant has not complied with the pre-action protocol as I had received no communication regarding the issue of the divorce prior to the receipt of the petition from the court. I do not agree with the statement of the petitioner. Given the above I do not agree with the statement of the petitioner. Given the above I am agreeable to paying 1/2 of the court fees (£205) and each part paying their own solicitors fees".

I really hope that I don't have to pay her solicitors fees. The solicitor said judges usually don't even pay attention to the petitioner prayer for paying the divorce cost and normally don't grant it. Is this true?

I now have two options to deal with the finance side of things:

1. Wait for her side to make the first move, which I had indications that ex-wifes side will be in touch before the end of this year.
2. The solicitors suggested that I could make the first move by suggesting mediation in order to suggest the house to be sold and split the proceeds 50/50. Maybe even write to the solicitors before the mediation what my expectations are.
I have had too much already with the amount of emotions that I endured in the last 3 months for one year. I booked a trip away in December and don't want to conitnue talking about finance straight away and if I were to make the first move I prefer to do this after Christmas. Is this a problem you think or shoud I do this straight away or just wait for ex-wifes to get in touch?

Many thanks