Replying to a Without Prejudice letter

Is there a special way of doing this? If it goes to court, is my reply witheld?

I need to approach my wifes solicitor about 2 things. One the lack of disclosure and 2, the Without Prejudice proposal I received.

Should I draft 2 letters? Should I do anything special with the reply to the proposal? Ideally I would like to counter the offer as my wife has lowered the sum payable to me from what we had discussed. I would like to accept the basics of the offer put the amount back up to what we had discussed.

Robert,

I think one topic to one letter.

Head your response to the without prejudice proposal with 'without prejudice save as to costs' and do not say that you reject or accept her proposal.

State that it is along the lines discussed with your wife, but that the amount does not reflect what had been mentioned, then rewrite the proposal in the amounts acceptable to you and send it back.

Hi Oldie.

Is there a reason why I shouldn't reject the proposal on the grounds of no disclosure? Are there repurcussions? Does it look bad?

I find I am (today at least) not in a position to put forward a counter proposal as my wife needs an answer by Tuesday afternoon. I just received the proposal on Wednesday. 6 days has barely given me enought time to breathe. I need the time to deal with the shock of the proposal as not only did it lower the sum we discussed to buy me out, but it added that she required a 473% increase in her monthly maintenance. When we spoke the night before she went to he solicitor, we had a good conversation and everything seemed fine. We discussed our aims, decided she would put it to her solicitor, then bingo, a contradictory proposal appeared on my doormat.

What is the reasoning behind not accepting or rejecting a proposal? I cannot make a new one by Monday to reach her by Tuesday this simply is too much pressure.

Sorry to vent, just wondering about repurcussions of rejecting proposal with nothing to propose in return. I genuinely want full disclosure but previously this was a side issue. I have lost trust in her intentions now so would like to see her savings and missing bank statments.

Robert,

The Courts like agreement. It's not positive to reject an offer. It may make sense to reject it but 8 months down the line your xtb'x solicitor reads out your rejection and turns you into a vexacious litigant bent on nothing less than wasting the court's time and playing mind games with your delightful and innocent xtb, etc etc.

So, write back and state what you just wrote in your post, ie you have insufficient information on which to understand the financial position and you can neither accept, refuse or propose a financial settlement until the missing information has been provided but in the meantime you would comment that the single proposal received to date does not reflect the discussions on finances that you and your xtb have had.

You list the info you want and say you look forward to receiving it as you would like to resolve matters without unnecessary delays.

I just have to say Oldie, I was up all night trying to compose a letter. I shrunk it down in size to cut out all the emotive parts and ended up just rejecting due to the lack of disclosure. I did originally compound it with fact our discussions varied greatly, but thought the conversations may have been irrelevant or seen that I was pushing her in a direction where she did not want to go, but her solicitor saved her in the morning....if you know what I mean...which is definately not the case. I feel I have been manipulated and our conversations have just been about her testing the water, not about trying to reach a mutual agreement.

You have put it into one paragraph in such short time. Thank you so much.