The costs of reconciliation and pausing the divorce process
Divorce in itself is very stressful especially when parties are considering how to resolve their finances during the divorce process. However, due to the No Fault Divorce process being introduced in April 2022 some of the stress has been reduced as there is no blame apportioned against one party by the other as to why their marriage has broken down.
The No-Fault Divorce process also introduced a 26-week period for the Divorce process to complete. The idea is to use that time to try to agree a financial settlement. It is important to conclude agreements about finances formally. They need a court order to confirm the agreements reached. This is the only way to make it binding.
It is worth being aware that delay in completing the divorce can impact later upon any financial settlement reached. This includes a ‘pause’ in divorce steps taken due to a period of reconciliation. In a situation where either one of you accumulated considerable wealth during the reconciliation period your spouse or partner could apply to wind back the divorce in order to ask the court to review their financial situation once again. This is called ‘rescinding’ the Decree Nisi/Conditional Order. The Court will rescind the Decree Nisi/Conditional Order if there has been a material change of circumstances of one or both parties’ wealth in the intervening years. In such as case you can find you are not able to conclude the divorce but are obliged to reconsider a new financial agreement to apportion the new wealth accumulated.
Therefore, it is a good idea to consider this if you are going to pause a divorce process and make some provision or adjustment about what is to happen to the finances in the meantime. This is delicate of course, as people do not want to jeopardize a reconciliation so matters need to be handled carefully. It is otherwise a possibility that you can find, even years down the line, a new financial issue arising taking into consideration accumulated wealth since and during any period of reconciliation.
If you have any questions or queries about this article or any of our other articles all of which are on our website www.hmbsolicitors.co.uk please feel free to email us on [email protected] If there are any particular issues that any readers would like to ask, please let us know.
Christina Theodorou
Specialist Family Lawyer and Mediator