How to do your own divorce in 5 steps – Introduction

In this series of 6 short articles and videos, I am going to take you through the 5 steps to getting an online divorce for yourself and it shouldn’t cost you a penny more than the court application fee of £594.

But before you are ready to make your divorce application there are 8 things you need to do, all of which are covered in chapter 6, section 4 of the Divorce Manual.

8 Things to do before you make your divorce application

1. Decide whether you are going to apply online or in paper, form. Online is encouraged but may not be possible for everyone.
2. If you have decided to apply online, you need to have found the online divorce site www.gov.uk/apply-for-divorce
3. You will also need to have obtained your original or certified marriage certificate ready to upload. A photocopy will not do.
4. You will need to have decided whether you are going to apply jointly with your former partner or on your own. This can be an important decision so please think about the positive as well as negative implications before doing so. See question 3, section 4, chapter 6 of the Divorce Manual
5. If you and your former partner decide to apply jointly, you will both need to decide who is going to be applicant 1, the one responsible for paying the court fee and where the money is coming from. The court fee is currently £594.
6. You will need to have checked that the court has jurisdiction to deal with your application. Have a look at section 4, chapter 6 of the Divorce Manual which will help you decide. There is also a separate video in this subject.
7. In some exceptional situations, an urgent divorce application may be needed. In these situations, you must be clear about how to do this which you can read in section 4 which I have already referred to. There are specific forms for this.
8. Finally, you will need to decide whether you are going to ask the court to send divorce papers to your former partner or you are going to do this yourself. If you decide to do so there are rules which will need to be complied with. For more information about this see the Q&A section, section 6 of the Divorce Manual.

You should now ready to make your application online or on paper, moving on to the second article and video in this series- Step 1-How to apply for your divorce