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Responding to a Divorce

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Here at Divorce Rights we can help you if you are facing divorce proceedings. As a "Respondent" you must consider taking legal advice to protect your interests and determine what might be the best course of action for you.

You may have separated already, you may have received a letter from your husband/wife’s solicitor stating your spouse is to divorce you or you may have actually received some papers from the County Court.

There are 3 main options available to you:

  • Allow the divorce to proceed
  • Defend the divorce proceedings
  • Defend and Cross-Petition – you still want a divorce, but on your terms not your husband/wife’s

 

Divorce Petition - What to do?
 

 
You receive from the Court a copy of a form called a Divorce Petition and a form called an ‘Acknowledgment of Service’. We ask you to complete the enquiry form on our main website and we will contact you.
We complete the Acknowledgment of Service for you from the information you provide us with and send it to you to approve. The divorce petition may include allegations you are unhappy about, or claim that you pay fees that you do not want to pay. We advise you what you can do about these things. We return the Acknowledgment of Service to the Court for you.
We send the Court fee, your marriage certificate and the divorce petition to the Court. After about a week, the Court will send your husband/wife a copy of the divorce petition and an Acknowledgment of Service to complete and return to the Court.
We prepare and send you to approve another form to confirm to the Court what, if anything, has changed since the divorce proceedings were started. You will need to pay us a second Court fee of £45.00.
The Court looks at the divorce papers and decides if you have sufficient grounds to divorce your husband/wife. The Court then formally announces by way of a Decree Nisi certificate that you can divorce your husband/wife. We send you a copy.
Six weeks after Decree Nisi, we apply for Decree Absolute for you. This is the final decree and leaves you free to remarry. Decree Absolute is a certificate. We send you a copy.

Get in touch

We can discuss your case initially without charge and will provide an overview of how our service may be able to help you. If we cannot help you directly, we may be able to provide some very useful guidance about your situation or send you one of our specialist information brochures.

Call our helpline on 0113 218 5426 or make an on-line written enquiry with our contact form.