How often do consent orders get rejected by court?

Just wondering how often Consent Orders that two people have agreed on get rejected by the court? Also what the most common reasons for this are?

Does anyone have any stories to tell on this please?

Thanks.

Sometimes if the agreement is weighted in one persons favour a court would like to ensure legal advice has been sought, also that the person with less of the split hasn't been forced into it.

If its pretty evenly split, its worth a go.

WR

I work in law although not family and tried to deal with the consent order myself. I drafted a consent order which we both agreed to giving a 50/50 split of the assets but the Court would not agree asked for further details which I gave and then rejected for a second time asking for it to be drafted by a solicitor.

If I had known it would have been so difficult I would have got someone to draft for me but as far as legal documents go this was a basic but concise document drafted by myself. It would therefore appear impossible to divorce without a solicitor getting involved.

As luck would have it I was able to get a family solicitor to do the work for free as a professional favour to me.


Don't really know what to make of it all but if there were some sort of draft to work with that would help.

Anyway new consent order went into the Court today will wait and see if a draft from a solicitor can get it through!!!

Ours got rejected twice due to nit-picking over the wording. It was drawn up by solicitors and they still couldn't get it how the judge wanted it.

It is often the case that the Judge who is dealing with the application is not familiar with family law. Each Judge comes from a particular legal background but has to deal with issues in all categories of law before returning to a specialism.

As an example, a colleague drafted a consent order which was agreed by the other side. The Judge rejected it due to a clause that "did not make sense". The clause was a standard clause from the SLFA handbook which every firm in the vicinity uses. This was explained to the Judge who subsequently let it through.

Non-standard clauses can also be difficult to put into word that are not ambiguous. The devil is in the detail as they say.

Charles