Divorce Question

[FieryP125]

My friend may soon be going through a divorce due to adultry commited by his wife.

One question - is it of any benefit / advantage for my friend to tell the solicitor he is divorcing for adultry?

[Ethel]

He has to show that the marriage has irretrievably broken down.

There is no harm in him telling his solicitor that he can no longer live with his wife because of her adultery and there is no hope of the marriage surviving.

[FieryP125]

But is it of any benefit for my friend to tell the solicior about the adultry though?

Would it make any difference to the settlement?

[Postdog]

You don't say how long he has been married. I recently dated a woman who had been married about 2/3 years, and her ex saw a solicitor for a divorce, The solicitor asked on what grounds (it was just she was fed up with him in certain ways) and the solicitor said they would have to wait a couple of years. He also said though that had it been for adultery, it could be started right away.

Really, the best thing is to just be honest with the solicitor and ask advice.

[FieryP125]

My frriend has been married for 2 years.

She has admitted one count of adultry to him - there may be others.

What benefit would it be to cite adultry instead of, e.g. irreconcilable differences, other tgan getting the divorce started straight away?

They have a mortgage togther and one joint account and a HP agreement which they were thinking about putting on a cr card.

[bednobs]

It would b to his advantage to tell his solicitor the whole truth

[FieryP125]

How would it be to his advantage though? Thats what he needs to know

[bednobs]

because there is no point in paying someone shed loads of money to act on your behalf if you arent telling them the truth is there?

[bednobs]

is there something you are trying to get at that im missing here? Are you trying to say, will the settlement will be better in his favour if he can prove she was an adulterator?

[Mullen1]

Hello everyone, I am the person that my friend was talking about. The point he is trying to make is - my wife HAS cheated on me. But, if I wanted the divorce on the grounds of adultery, would I be in a better position in terms of what I can take as mine from it?

The obvious scenario is that everthing gets split 50-50 if it is in both names, even if one party has paid more towards certain things e.g. the house. But if I said I'm divorcing due to adultery, would I be able to get a greater share than 50% of any assets?

[Pippa68]

As far as I am aware adultery makes no difference to settlements..if things are in joint names it would still be 50/50.

In any case, the wife claim she was driven to adultery by her husbands unreasonable behaviour. It can all become a very expensive argument!

[Ethel]

It doesn't work like that - your wife will not be punished for committing adultery in the divorce settlement.

Your assets will be divided exactly the same. It will cost you a lot less money and the divorce will be quicker if the two of you can agree finances and division of assets between yourselves.

[Pippa68]

And if you had children (as in Mr Pippas case with his first marriage) the wife coud end up with the lions share of property & finance even though she commited adultery.

[Mullen1]

I understand. We're still trying to save things but it does come down to divorce then we're going to try to be as civil as we can. Would one solicitor be able to deal with a divorce for both of us if it was amicable?

[Pippa68]

The same solicitor cannot represent both people in the divorce, each party must have his or her own solicitor that will be looking out solely for his or client�s best interest.

Having a solicitor represent both parties goes against the entire point of having a solicitor, which is to have someone working in the best interest of each party independently. The solicitor can make sure all the legal aspects of the divorce are being addressed and that the other party isn�t trying to hide anything.

[Mullen1]

Thanks Pippa. And everyone else of course!

I understand what you mean about separate solicitors. It must seem as though I'm asking some really obvious questions, but as you can imagine my head's in pieces at the moment and I've not had the pleasure of getting divorced before!

If a house sale is involved, would either of us be able to use our own solicitor or would we need to use a third company due to a conflict of interests?

[Ethel]

Only one solicitor is needed to deal with the house sale.

But you and your wife will need to agree how to divide the proceeds, if any.

[lady_p_gold]

As previously said the conduct of either party makes no difference to the division of assets. Also one should not assume that it will be 50/50 it is often a larger share to the wife, and she may also be awarded a lump sum from your pension (or vice versa depending on the circumstances, length of marriage, children etc.)