Consent Orders and Divorce Settlements

A consent order is a legal document which forms part of your divorce. It set outs the terms of your financial agreement and, in a lot of cases, it is binding on you. A consent order helps you set out what is going to happen to such things as your:

• Property or the family home
• The contents of any property, jewellery, cars etc..
• Investments and savings
• Business
• Other assets, such as trust and inheritances
• Liabilities and any tax
• Pensions
• Maintenance (spousal and child maintenance)

It is important that you are aware of your legal right and financial claims.

The purpose of the consent order is to ensure that the terms of the financial settlement are:

• Recorded in writing
• So that each party knows that the settlement is; and
• How the settlement is to implemented and by what specific dates
• That is binding
• To provide a financial clean break, if that is the right thing to do

If your financial agreement is not legally binding or the terms of it are not clear, a court cannot enforce it if there are any issues or problems later. You also run the risk of the other party asking for eg. more money in the future.

You can get legal advice or you can ask a solicitor or divorce specialist to draft a consent order for you.

It is usually better to try to reach an agreement than going to the family court but it is important that your financial agreement is fair and well thought out. This is your best opportunity to get the financial settlement right both now and for your future (and to include any children).

A family law solicitor can help with:

• Advising you about your rights and to warn of any risks that you might not be aware of
• To assess the merit of your proposed financial agreement or help you settle any issues that remain in dispute
• Help you with the technical drafting of the consent order

A solicitor can also provide you with cost information to help prepare your consent order in the divorce and explain and discuss the financial procedure.

It is usually best to ask the court to approve your consent order recording your financial agreement after you have your conditional order or decree nisi. The court cannot often approve a consent order before this.

The consent order will only take effect and can be enforced after you get your final order or decree absolute. Again, a specialist divorce solicitor can help you with this and also warn you of the risks of applying for the final divorce order or decree absolute before your financial consent order is approved as you could suffer financial loss, particularly in relation to pensions.

The steps you will need to take are:

• To draft a consent order
• To fill in a notice of an application for a financial order
• To sign the draft consent order
• To fill in a statement of information form, called a D81
• To file the consent papers at court and pay the court fee, presently £53

There is usually no court hearing. A judge will approve your consent order to make it legally binding if he or she think it’s fair. If the judge refuses to approve your consent order then the court office will usually set out the reasons or questions and ask you to deal with the judge’s comments. On other occasions the judge will ask you both to come to court. A family law solicitor can help you deal with any problems that might arise.

We are expert in dealing with family law cases, including consent orders and financial agreements. We are also ranked in Tier 1 in the Legal 500 for 2023 in the Norther West for family law and are leaders in our field.

We are specialists in our field of divorce, family law and children law. We have an extremely good reputation, and our clients are often recommended by existing or past clients or other professionals, including other family lawyers, barristers, judges, accountants and financial advisers.

We are ranked in Tier 1 within the Legal 500 for family law in the North West of England. Please also see our client testimonial page.