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If your partner wants to divorce you, while you can cause them delay, frustration and additional expense, eventually they will succeed. You also need to be mindful of the fact that they could pass those additional costs onto you if they are successful in obtaining a costs order against you.
What is the divorce process?
The first step in obtaining a divorce is issuing a divorce petition with the court. It then has to be proved to the court that you have received a copy.
Once you have returned the Acknowledgement of Service form to the court your spouse then has to wait 20 weeks (the “cooling off period”) before the court will grant a Conditional Order.
The Conditional Order (previously called a Decree Nisi) is an order where the court says they do not see any reason why you cannot divorce.
After this, the Final Order is applied for. The Final Order (previously called a Decree Absolute ) is the legal document that formally ends your marriage. If there are financial proceedings in relation to the divorce, it is likely that your spouse will wait until the financial aspects have settled before applying for the Final Order.
What happens if I ignore the Acknowledgement of Service?
If you don’t return the Acknowledgement of Service form to the court, they will have to resort to other methods to prove that you have received the petition.
The most likely method would be personal service. This means the papers would be personally delivered to you and the person carrying out the service would sign a statement confirming that you had received them. This statement would then be given to the court as evidence that you have received the papers.
Alternatively, if they have other evidence that you have received the papers they could apply for Deemed Service. Deemed Service is an order from the Court confirming that you have been deemed to have received the papers.
Whichever option they go for it is likely that they would be successful in obtaining a divorce. Our advice would be to seek legal advice regarding your options at an early stage to avoid the pitfalls and potential extra costs that are associated with ignoring the proceedings.
Contact us
George Green’s Specialist Family and Divorce lawyers give advice regularly on divorce and the financial aspects of divorce. If you wish to book in for an initial consultation to discuss your situation our family solicitors are based in both Wolverhampton and Cradley Heath. For all new enquiries, please call 01902 328 355 or complete our online enquiry form and a member of our team will respond.