Divorce means legally worthless marriage and also has severe effects on at least two people or their families’ lives. Some people therefore want a friendly solution where a conflict is not promoted and resolved with as little agitation as possible, allowing the individuals in conflict to get on with their lives being destroyed. However, in real life, there might be more complications, especially when two partners’ ways and desires are separated. This platform will give you complete details on how long a spouse can drag out a divorce in the United Kingdom.
How Long Does the Divorce Process Take in the UK?
The time duration for each divorce case may be different for every case, but mostly it depends on the number of cases that are submitted before submission of your divorce application in court. Previously, one could expect that from the moment of filing an appeal to divorce, the marriage could be dissolved within four to six months.
But it was not the case before, especially prior to April 2022 with the implementation of any fault divorce law. The new system will allow partners to get a divorce without marking each other as either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, thus encouraging less bitterness in the process. While everyone aimed to justify the proceedings, this change has also impacted the time that one expects to undergo the divorce. Tapping UK divorce lawyers may help in gaining a better perception of this changing storyline.
No-false divorce proceedings can take a minimum of 26 weeks or six months to be finalized. This period also features a statutory time frame by which the parties are expected to be able to think hard on their decision and, if at all possible, agree on all matters concerning financial relief and children without any time restriction from the impending dissolution of the marriage.
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Factors that can extend the divorce timeline
As highlighted, the ending process of a marriage is not a straight process, but there are various factors that have a serious influence on the duration. These include:
1. Disagreements on Financial Settlements
one of the major causes in delaying the completion of divorce proceedings since the couple cannot agree on how to chop their advantage. Wedding property and wedding debt usually present challenging issues, particularly where there are valuable assets or disputed values and distribution of the assets.
2. Custody Battles
They rarely reach an agreement; therefore, it might involve mediation, negotiation between the involved solicitors, or, in some circumstances, a court ruling. All of them increase the time taken before the divorce process is complete.
The major issue of conflict is child custody; the majority of the people argue and take time to agree on a particular area. Decisions are made on where the children will reside, or visitation rights, and how the parents will share their responsibilities. These are mainly not simple issues that are easy to decide.
These matters may also be resolved in court when the parents cannot agree on the same thing, which will result in further hearings and decisions that may require a long time to summarize this process, and no doubt this is a prolonged process of the divorce.
3. Lack of Cooperation
The process can, however, be prolonged by one of the partners refusing to cooperate. This can be anywhere from failing to respond to divorce appeals in any given time to denying to furnish special financial information or simply avoiding participating in any mediation process.
sometimes It becomes time-consuming and may cause other steps to be taken, like ordering people to follow a case, which again takes more time and stress during the divorce.
4. Changes in circumstances
Integration of the complicated asset in the marriage property leads to the protraction of the divorce process. This applies to business and investment assets, as well as property overseas, which need capitalization and, in many cases, professional help.
complex Asset
Some of the factors that are taken into account include when dividing the assets. This is a complex process that involves dealing, and in some cases judgment or evaluation takes time. Moreover, where these assets are contested, it will create more prosecution and a resulting prolongation of the divorce process.
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Reasons to drag out a divorce in the UK
1. Parents’ disagreement on arrangements: if you are not able to decide or agree where the children should stay most of the time or how much time each of you should spend with the children, then these decisions can prolong the process of divorce. In this case, mediation can be proved to be very useful so that both of you arrive at court with common ground without the necessities.
2. Disagreement on the financial issues; also be for this reason: because you and your ex-partner have not agreed on how your marital property will be shared or which partner will pay the expenses after the marriage, he or she will want to prolong the process. Once more, an especially assigned mediator will be able to assist you both to reach a common solution, which can be effective due to a lack of nervousness and hostility between you.
3. Belief that you can fix it If your partner feels that only you can fix the marriage, then you will wait for them and stop all legal processes. This is where the no-fault divorce process will occur. The 20-week maximum cooling-off period enables the separating individuals and/or sufficient time for couples to consider their mistakes. Just as you should know, your partner will not be able to file an objection claiming that he or she does not agree to the divorce.
4. control and coercion if the other party wants to continue the process of divorce, for instance, due to continued exercising of control and force. Both parties may apply different strategies to prevent the divorce, such as not showing where they can be found and challenging the application. However, procedures have been instituted in no-fault divorce that check such attempts meant to lengthen the duration of the process. If you think that your partner might attempt to cooperate with the process of divorce having acted as a controlling and forcing individual before, is it highly advisable to get in touch with a family law solicitor who will be able to guide you on what you will do next?