Separation agreements

If you are considering a divorce or dissolving a civil partnership, but you have not filed the papers yet. Then, you can get a separation agreement drawn up. This agreement will set out obligations such as who will pay the rent or mortgage and bills until the decision to continue with a divorce or dissolution is achieved. You can use a separation agreement for other reasons. If you have been together for less than a year in England and Wales (and less than two in Northern Ireland), a separation agreement might be the only available option. This will allow you to live separately while also arranging who pays for what while you wait to legally begin the divorce process.

 

What is a separation agreement?

This is a written agreement that establishes the parameters of a financial arrangement while separated, and it can cover several areas. Some examples of what it includes are: who pays the mortgage or rent, household bills, what happens if it’s sold, and who continues to live in the family home.

To ensure that the separation agreement remains unchallenged, you and your ex must be fully open about all of your finances. This is also referred to as financial disclosure. Note that you do not need legal advice for a separation agreement, though it is highly advised. If you agree to get legal advice, please note that you cannot use the same solicitor, you can however use different solicitors in the same practice, this makes life easier as they can communicate between themselves far easier, hence avoiding time (and cost). 

 

Legal Enforceability

From a legal stance, separation agreements aren’t legally enforceable. However, they are given significant weight by the court in their deliberations. The court will most likely ask that you stick to the agreement, however, they will look at any obviously unfair clauses.

 

Legal Separation:

In exceptional cases, you may decide to go for a legal separation, maybe your religion forbids you from getting divorced or dissolving your civil partnership or you want more time and space to work out specific details. You will need to request legal separation through a form and then send it to your local court.

 

How we can help

The process of writing up a settlement agreement can be difficult as it is rare that all topics can be informally agreed upon. Lestons can assist clients in various ways and seek to resolve the myriad of issues that accompany a separation. We would have two teams, (one legal and one third-party independent financial advisors) who will work together to put forward workable solutions which we hope both sides can agree on. We can act for both parties in the divorce, it would simply mean that each side has its own team, taking instruction from their respective client.

 

The large cost legal fees that have been in the newspapers come around with lawyers writing letters (at £100+ a time) over insignificant and minute details. With both sides working for Lestons means that there is a significant saving on dealing with small financial issues as instead of prolonged correspondence they can simply arrange a combined video call with everyone involved and sort things out without recourse to expensive letters and so on. The one certainty in a prolonged, messy, bitter divorce is that the lawyer is usually the only winner so it seems counter-productive to prolong matters and just come to a speedy resolution.

 

In regard to the third-party financial advisor on the team please note we make no commission from these referrals. To gain our assistance you need to open a case, this is done by taking advantage of our free consultation service, activated by the link at the top of the page, should you wish to start a case the caseworker will send you the suitable payment link.

 

Please note your caseworker can only give generic advice, their role is to prepare your details for handling by our appointed experts and to act as your point of contact, they will also issue you with your Password and PIN, these will be needed to log onto your client dashboard. From your dashboard you will be able to manage and view every aspect of your case, upload documents, images, files etc.