Re:What financial orders can the court make?

1. An order for maintenance pending suit;
2. An order for periodical payments or secured periodical payments;
3. A lump sum order;
4. A property adjustment order;
5. A pension sharing order;

The orders are not mutually exclusive, and the court can make the whole range of orders in any one case.

In turn they are:

An order for Maintenance Pending Suit:

This is a temporary order that periodical payments are made by one party to the other while the proceedings are ongoing. The order is to enable the lower earning party to have a form of income during the proceedings. An order for maintenance pending suit can include an amount for the receiver to pay his or her legal costs if legal aid is not available. Once the main proceedings are decided MPS ends either completely, or an order for periodical payments is made.

You can read more about MPS here:

http://www.wikivorce.com/divorce/Divorce-Forum/Ancillary-Reli ef/133818-Maintenance-pending- suit.html

An order for Periodical Payments or Secured Periodical Payments:

Periodical payments (spousal maintenance) is an order that one party pays the other a specified sum periodically, most often monthly.

You can read more about periodical payments here:

http://www.wikivorce.com/divorce/Divorce-Forum/Ancillary-Reli ef/132488-Spousal-Maintenance.html

Secured periodical payments are where the paying party must demonstrate to the court that they have secured the fund to make the payments, and usually occur where there have been demonstrable difficulties in making the payer pay. This is an extremely rare order.

Another type of periodical payment is a nominal order. This is where there is an order that the payer pays the receiver say £1 per year. The money is never paid, the idea is the keep the door open to an application should the receiver fall on hard times. A nominal order can have an end date, which is frequently the children ending full time education.

A Lump Sum order:

This is simply that one party must pay a lump sum to another. A lump sum can be paid in instalments if the court deems it fair to so order, for instance if one party needs to raise the funds from a variety of sources.

A Property Adjustment order:

This can take one of two main forms. Firstly, it may be a transfer from one party to the other, or from one party to a child or children of the family; or secondly it may be an order reducing the share of one of the parties.

In terms of a transfer, this can be ordered with a lump sum to the person transferring their interest, especially if it is an order that one party transfers their whole share in a property to the other.

A transfer can also be ordered subject to a charge in favour of the person transferring their interest. What this means is that on one of the trigger events, the charge becomes payable. In simple terms what happens is the court determines what the amount of the charge should be and expresses it as a percentage. So lets say the person transferring their interest is entitled to a 30% charge. That means on one of the triggers occurring the person in whose favour the charge is receives either 30% of the net proceeds of sale (if the property is sold) or 30% of the value of the property if the person living in the house decides to buy out the charge rather than sell the property.

Trigger events can be anything the parties agree between themselves, but the usual triggers are:

Remarriage or death of the party in the home;
The co-habitation of the party occupying the home for more than 6 months;
The youngest child completing full time education (and full time education should be defined as either the end of the first degree or the end of secondary education);
A fixed date.

Also under the hearing of property adjustment orders are Mesher and Martin orders.

A Mesher order is very simply put a postponement of sale until a named event occurs, which is most usually the children concluding their education. It is usual for a Mesher order to specify who pays what outgoings including mortgage. Although the property remains in joint names, it is usual for an order to be made that only the named party can occupy the property.

The main difference between a Martin and a Mesher order is that a Martin order settles the property on the occupying party for life or until remarriage.

A Pension Sharing order:

This is an order that the pension of one party is to be shared with the other. It should be noted that there is no such thing as a pension transfer order, so the court gets around this by making an order that a pension be shared 100% should it be deemed fair that one party gets all of a pension (which can happen when one party has more than one pension).

I had my decree nisi and have to wait for my decree absolute but am now embroiled in a financial "war" with my wife.Can I stop my divorce in any way?

My partner pays periodical payments to his ex for the benefit of his two 'children' - now nearly 18 and 21. He would like to pay the younger one directly when she goes to uni in a year as she will be living away from home - will he have to get a variation of the consent order? His ex is talking about him paying her accommodation fees as well as tuition fees on top of his periodical payments.

I have to look for this as one of my friend asked me and I told him that you have to consult with the legal adviser and can sort out things accordingly so that, you will not find any problems regarding to it.

Thanks

Hi. Just found the site and have a query as follows - hope you can assist. My wife and myself are separated (will be two years in August this year) and my wife has sought legal advice via a solicitor fixed fee session. We plan to divorce this year after the two year separation period and I have agreed in writing with my wife that as/when we sell our marital home that she can use as much of the equity after the sale to set up a new home as she sees fit and then offer me at her discretion a proportion of any balance. We are both happy with this agreement. However the solicitor advises that a divorce court judge would not let my wife take a proportionally larger sum of the equity (denying me my 'fair share') as this is viewed as 'unfair' to me... I find this a little strange as we are both in agreement and just want a clean and calm divorce settlement. There are no other financial issues as such. We are both employed, financially solvent, have independant pensions and bank accounts, no young children involved etc.. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks. R

Hello

Can you copy and paste this and put it in the ancillary relief section, this begins your own thread and gives you a much better chance of answers.

Dukey

Financial Orders:Be very careful!!

My wife wanted to keep the marital home (joint mortgaged) and for me to sign over my interest in it. I refused to start with, she came back with a £10,000 offer.
The draft settlement order stated that she intended to pay me from one of the endowments for the mortgage by cashing it in.

My solicitor didn't pick up on this. Fortunately my new partner works with some of the top IFA's in the City of London and she asked them about this. I also went to my building society to check.

It is not possible to cash these policies in without the mortgage company's permission and they will not give it.

I went back to my solicitor and told her this and she got the aggrement reworded to say "will be caused to pay the sum of £10,000"

I thought I was safe. The judge rubber stamped the order we got the nisi in 2008, I have not heard from my wife since and have no absolute.

I could perhaps cite that my solicitor was negligent in the first place in not protecting my interests (I had to do it). She was not qualified to deal with the financial implications because she is not a qualified IFA.

Since my wife has not complied with the court order she is in contempt of court and faces a possible jail term if I choose to go down that route.

I now have no option really than to go and see the solicitor I used and politely tear her a new ahole and suggest she sorts her mess out. I will of course pay her fees which I expect her to get back for me.

Don't ever expect your lawyer to worry about what happens to you. If you don't speak up when you see things going wrong you could end up in prison when your innocent!

Win or lose they still get paid..very well.

A good lawyer is a great asset, get the very best you can afford. You instruct them, not the other way around.

Fight your corner whenever necessary.

Happy Mothers day to all the Mothers out there.

KIT