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Imagine yourself crossing a sea of sharks over a faulty footbridge. Imagine now that the footbridge was not built with your safety in mind. It was built to accommodate the needs of the sharks. Every so often a rung is loose, or a gaping hole on one side means that the pedestrian, however carefully he treads, will end up falling through the bridge and into the jaws of the sharks waiting hungrily below. Now you have a picture of the divorce and financial settlement process. Did you think you could use the bridge in safety? Think again…
Costs in a divorce case often escalate to as much as several thousand pounds.
Why?
“When I first approached a firm of solicitors in Bournemouth, they asked for a thousand pounds in advance. I thought, fair enough, that is about what it’s going to cost to see this divorce through. But as time went by, nothing much happened and they just kept asking for more money, and larger amounts; at one point they wanted four thousand pounds and said that if I didn’t pay, everything would stop. It felt like bribery, but of course you pay don’t you - because you’re desperate…
After months with still no result in sight, I tried another solicitor. They were very critical of the first firm, and I thought that now things would be different. But before long I realised that the same coat fits all. It doesn’t seem to matter which divorce solicitor you see, they all seem bent on the same objective: getting the maximum commercial advantage out of the law; and since the law allows them to do just that, the consumer just ends up footing the bill…”
 TRAP FILE
Sharks figure prominently in Hawaiian mythology. There are stories of shark men who have shark jaws on their back. These creatures could change form between shark and human at will. The shark men would warn beach-goers that sharks were in the waters. The beach-goers would laugh, ignore the warnings and go swimming, only to be eaten by the same shark man who warned them not to enter the water.
Instructing divorce solicitors should not signify a blank cheque. But with the balance of power falling into the hands of legal practitioners, it is all too easy for consumers to find themselves paying for services they didn’t ask for.
“I told my solicitor at Ellis Jones not to write anymore letters without checking with me first. But the letters just kept on going out. The other side responded and then my solicitor came back with a reply - sometimes without even discussing the matter. I felt powerless. He just kept saying that all this was protocol and that we had to negotiate. But the bills went through the roof. I realised then that changing solicitors was not the solution. In the end I had to borrow money just to keep things moving…”
It doesn’t need to happen
Costs can be controlled
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