From Speed Dating to Speed Divorcing?
The fastest ever divorce!. New divorce statistic makes history.
A petition sent on the 28th January 2019, has given a date of Decree Nisi hearing on 26th February 2019. This process has recently been taking 6 months, In this case, the respondent did return the Acknowledgement of Service very quickly, but the time taken by the court has been slashed from 6 month to 1 month.
Up until the end of January 2019, the divorce process seemed to be getting longer and longer, with the 11 divorce centres suffering from ever-lengthening backlogs. The Department of Justice IT upgrades might be to blame or being short-staffed has been another excuse that has been mentioned. The courts were taking months to process petitions when they used to take weeks.
Clients can now go from petition to first order in just 4 weeks.
An important part of this quick turn-around is the fast response of the Respondent returning the Acknowledgement of Service to the court. The Respondent has much more power to control the time-frame than the Petitioner in many case. Often the Respondent will not return the form because they don’t like what the other said, but they do want to get the divorce and tick the wrong box. Divorce Negotiator’s new approach, overcoming this type of problem is helping hundreds of couples in England and Wales. It is obvious, working with both parties eases conflict. Parties ‘amicably’ divorcing not only speeds up the process, but reduces the fees. Couples can now move to the next chapter in their life quicker than ever before.
This means, without the requirement of a Financial Order, a couple can get divorced in 11 weeks.
The divorce process that was taking 6 months under the old paper filing, 10 months under the old online filing. One can only assume the talk about the fee increasing from £550.00 to £750.00 is not going to be necessary?
Carol Sullivan from Divorce Negotiator, said "We are in awe of the new timescales for divorcing now the divorce centres have implemented their changes. This will make the divorce process a lot less stressful for all involved."