Only courts in certain parts of England are testing the express financial remedy procedure at the moment. Check the list below - if your court is listed, this guide is for you. If it is not listed, go to How to apply for a financial order. 

Cheshire and Merseyside

• Birkenhead
• Chester
• Crewe
• Liverpool
• St Helens

Cleveland, Newcastle and Durham

• Darlington
• Durham
• Gateshead
• Middlesborough
• Newcastle Upon Tyne
• North Shields
• South Shields
• Sunderland

Greater Manchester

• Manchester
• Wigan
• Stockport

Lancashire and Cumbria

• Barrow in Furness
• Blackburn
• Blackpool
• Carlisle
• Lancaster
• Leyland
• Preston
• Reedley
• West Cumbria

North and West Yorkshire

• Bradford
• Harrogate
• Huddersfield
• Leeds
• Scarborough
• Skipton
• Wakefield
• York

West Midlands

• Birmingham
   

• There is a court called the Family Court, located in different places across England and Wales, which deals with disagreements among separated families. These are not the same courts where people who are accused of doing something wrong go.
• Sorting out your dispute will only happen quite quickly if you can cooperate and agree things between you as much as possible. For many couples, family mediation is a good way of achieving this. We talk about this in more detail later. 
• Going to court is often stressful and time consuming – at an already demanding time in your life. If you have a solicitor to advise you throughout it can also be very expensive. 
• The court expects you to try and agree things between you as long as it is safe to do so. If you don’t manage this and need to apply to court, you will have to explain what you have tried to avoid court. Our guide What to do before applying for a financial order when you get divorced explains everything you need to consider so that you are not penalised by the court. 
• If you do end up going to court, the court will try to help you compromise at each stage. 
• Having lots of arguments about who gets what can cost you thousands of pounds if you use a lawyer to help sort out your dispute. The more you spend, the less there will be left over to share out between you, and to support your children if you have any.
• When a relationship breaks down, financial settlements vary enormously in size. Just because there are reports of the super-rich paying or receiving millions, doesn’t mean to say you will. It will depend on lots of things such as how much there is to divide up, what each of you will need, the needs of any children, and the length of the marriage. You cannot share out what you don’t have.
• The term ‘financial order’ is quite new. The full name given to this type of order is a ‘financial remedy order’. 
• We talk about the court ‘doing’ things quite a lot in this guide. For example, the court may ‘send’ out a form, ‘make’ a decision or ‘think’ about something. It sounds a bit odd because most people think of a court as a place, a building. But ‘the court’ is often used as shorthand to talk about the people working in the court, whether they are a judge or court staff. That is how we use the term here and how you will probably hear other people use it too.
• We use the word ‘ex’ in this guide to mean your ex-husband, your ex-wife, or your ex-civil partner.

Emotions around your separation and your future

Whatever stage you are at right now in your separation, it is likely to be a demanding time. It is natural to feel worried, stressed, or angry. You might feel lots of different emotions that are hard to manage. You might feel angry or tense. Or you might not want to talk or think about the problems at all because it is all too much. You might feel so scared that you can't do anything. Or you might just want to agree to anything to try and keep the peace and hope the problems and your ex all just go away. 

All of these reactions are natural. All of these emotions can prevent you from making progress. If you can access some legal advice now, it can really help. See More help and advice. 

Next, we talk about how you might be able to get some legal advice if you are on a low income to help you make informed decisions about the way forward.

legal aid 

Legal aid is a government scheme to help people who live on a low income, have few savings, and meet specific other criteria, pay for legal advice.

However, even if you are financially eligible, unless you can prove you or your child have suffered domestic violence or abuse, which was caused by your ex, you cannot get legal aid to apply for a financial order. 

What is domestic abuse? 

Domestic abuse means any abusive behaviour by one person towards another person, where those two people are in an intimate relationship or are relatives. The abuse can be: 

• physical or sexual,
• violent or threatening behaviour,
• controlling or coercive behaviour,
• economic, 
• psychological or emotional.

A child who sees, hears, or experiences the effects of the domestic abuse is also a victim of domestic abuse.

Abuse can happen via tech and online as well as in real life. Some examples of tech abuse are abusive messaging online, tracking you with spyware, demanding access to your devices and online accounts or sharing intimate images online without your consent.

For organisations who can help you in any of these situations, go to More help and advice.

As long as it is safe to do so, you can sort out your finances and who gets what from the family home by negotiation and agreement with your ex at any time – either before or after you start court proceedings. 

If one or both of you are not willing to negotiate or refuse to go along to mediation or another kind of dispute resolution, then you may have no choice but to go to court. 

Reaching any agreement usually means being prepared to compromise – accepting less or paying more. And it may be worth doing this to avoid the uncertainty and expense of going to court. But how do you know what’s fair for you to suggest to your ex, or for you to agree to? Understandably, you will not want to get less or pay more than a judge would order. 

We have another guide that helps you understand more about what a judge might do in a case like yours, so that you have a better chance of making a fair agreement with your ex. Take a look at How to sort out your finances on divorce for more information. 

If you cannot reach agreement by speaking to each other or with the help of family or friends, you cannot just go straight to court for an order. Instead, as long as it is safe for you to do so, the court expects you to try another way to resolve your dispute. Family lawyers often call this non-court dispute resolution or ‘NCDR’ for short. 

The court expects you both to attend a mediation information and assessment meeting (or MIAM for short) before you can apply to the court – unless you fall into the limited circumstances that mean you don’t have to do this.

A MIAM is not mediation. It is a meeting to help you understand more about mediation and the other options available to you to reach an agreement out of court. Mediation can help but there are other options to think about too.

To understand more about this, make sure you read our short guide on What to do before applying for a financial order when you get divorced.

Next, we talk about the things or ‘factors’ the court looks at when making a decision. You need to understand these to help you negotiate with your ex.
 

The law explains what a court needs to take into account when it decides how to divide what you have between you. If you and your ex try to reach an agreement yourselves, the court expects you to take the same factors into account. And they also apply if you use other methods to try and reach an agreement out of court, such as mediation or arbitration. We explain these factors here:

The welfare of any child of the family under 18 years old

This is so important that it must be the first thing the court considers. In many cases, it can mean that most, maybe all, of your joint resources will go towards providing a home for your children, at least whilst they are under 18 and sometimes older. Typically, the children will live with the person mostly responsible for their day-to-day care. This is why it is common to come across situations where the person mainly looking after the children stays with them in the family home. However, the court also looks at how the children can be accommodated with their other parent if they stay overnight there too.

The income, earning capacity, property, and other financial resources which each of you has or is likely to have in the foreseeable future

This includes any increase in earning capacity which the court thinks it is reasonable to expect of you or your ex. This can mean, for example, that the court makes a decision based on the expectation that one of you will get a job or a better paid one. The reference to ‘other financial resources’ can mean, for example, money received or coming from an inheritance or a personal injury claim. If you have a new partner who you are living with, the court can take their resources into account when deciding how to divide up your money and property. This is because you will be sharing living costs with your new partner rather than needing to manage alone.

The financial needs, obligations, and responsibilities which each of you has or is likely to have in the foreseeable future

The main financial needs the court thinks about are housing need and income need. Where will you each live? How will each of you pay your bills? Ideally, you will both end up with a home to live in. But if there is not enough for two homes, the person mainly responsible for looking after any children day to day gets priority.

The sort of responsibilities the court can take into account include, for example, those you or your ex owes to a new husband, wife or civil partner, other children, elderly parents, or other relatives.

The standard of living enjoyed by the family before the breakdown of the marriage or civil partnership

Although the court will take this into account you cannot assume you will enjoy the same standard of living as you had when you lived together. If you have been used to a high standard of living and there is still the money to support that, you can expect a similar standard when you split up. If your family had a low or average income, then you may end up less well off. What is just about enough to keep one family going often is not enough to provide adequately for two households.

Age and the length of your marriage or civil partnership

Age can affect what is fair in many ways. It can influence whether you or your ex is likely to get work and what your financial position will be when you each retire. The length of your marriage or civil partnership can also impact on the court’s decision. If it has been short, then it is less likely that your money and property will be divided equally. This is especially true of things that the court may see as belonging to just one of you, for example, an inheritance or property you brought into the marriage. If you lived together as a couple before you married or became civil partners, then the court will take this period of time into account as long as there were no breaks and the time living together before your marriage or civil partnership flowed smoothly up to your marriage.

Any physical or mental disability

This allows the court to take into account any physical or mental disability suffered by you or your ex. The court will want information about any ill health, long term illness or disability and its impact on you or your ex’s earning capacity and housing requirements.

Contribution made to the welfare of the family, including looking after the home or caring for the family

The law says that raising the children or looking after the home as just as important as earning the money. This means that the person who earns the money won’t receive a bigger amount just because they earned it, but only if they have another good reason.

Behaviour, but only if it was so extreme that it would be unfair not to take it into account

The basic position is that the court will not decide whether one of you has behaved more badly and is more responsible for the breakdown of your relationship than the other. And it will not then reward the better behaved one with more money. It has got to be really bad behaviour which affects your finances before the court will consider taking it into account. The law currently says that domestic abuse is not enough to make a difference in the split of the assets, unless the abuse is so severe that it has caused a life-changing injury that prevents the victim from being able to work.

The value of any benefit which either of you will lose the chance of acquiring

This is about things that you or your ex is no longer going to benefit from as a result of splitting up, for example, the possibility of getting a lump sum or income from your ex’s pension scheme if they die before you.

Whether it is fair and reasonable to order a clean break

The court also has to think about whether and when it is fair to end your financial responsibilities for each other. The ideal is that you sort out your money and property in a way that means each of you ends up being financially independent of the other when your divorce is finalised. The court will try and achieve this, but it is not always possible, for example, one of you may have to wait to get your share of the family home until your children have grown up or pay maintenance to the other.

What will I get?

How the court applies these principles in your case will depend on your individual circumstances. They are there to help the court reach a fair outcome. And why there is often no quick and easy answer to the question: what will I get? People commonly think that the courts automatically divide up a couple’s money and property 50/50. This does not always happen, particularly in cases where a couple only have limited money or property. Often a number of different, but equally reasonable results are possible in a case.

We talk about this in more detail in How to sort out your finances when you get divorced. This guide is also really helpful if you think that there is still a chance you could reach an agreement and avoid the stress and expense of going to court.

For a rough idea of what a fair financial settlement might look like for you, you can try using the MoneyHelper’s free divorce and money calculator.