Hello Forum looking for some advice

Hello to everybody at Wikivorce,

I was wondering if you could advise me on my relatives divorce situation.

They have been divorced for a few years now and seperated for a lot longer. I think it's at least 6 years in total and divorced for 3 or more of those years.

The divorce has been finalised by the courts and the way assetts are to be split but since then nothing more has happend.

One party has stayed in the house while the other is renting accomodation elsewhere. The house was to be kept on the market and put up for sale but the party living at the house has set the price of the house too high for it to sell and not made any effort to sell it either.

Lets just say it is in the persons interest to stay at the house paying a small monthly mortgage than rent a place. The other party is paying two and a half times the amount per month in renting a place by comparison.

During the divorce the party who stayed at the house had the other party sign a document saying they would not return to the house until it was sold.

The person who is renting a place and waiting for the other party to sell the house they can't goto anymore, has been told now that the estate agents have removed the house from the market.

Is there anything the other party can do with regards to speeding up the house sale??

Can the other party demand that he also moves out from the house so it is empty because of the amount of time taken with no progress on the part of the other person. Can they argue that the house is not on the market when the courts said it has to be. Can they force the asking price to be lowered?

With the expense on the person who is renting to pay a lot of money in rent they don't get the luxury of taking time off work for court or paying high solicitors fees. With the slump in the market now they will be lucky if they can afford to buy another place. Is it possible that they can represent themselves in court and if so how do they need to go about it??

Any advice you can give regarding all of the above points would be appreciated. They have already spent thousands in legal fees and nothing has come of it.

Hi John,

Most people readily comply with orders made by the court, whether the order has been negotiated by agreement or made by a Judge following a contested hearing. In some cases, however, steps have to be taken to make one of the parties (the defaulting party) obey the order. The courts have a wide range of remedies, which include:

Attachment of earnings order. This type of order requires the defaulting party’s employer to deduct payments from his or her salary at source. It is often used as a way of enforcing maintenance orders.

Charging order. This type of order gives the person enforcing the order a charge over one of the defaulting party’s assets for the amount due. Assets that can be charged include houses and shares. Once a charging order has been obtained then an application can be made to the court for the asset to be sold so that debt can be paid off out of the proceeds of sale.

Committal. The court has the power to commit a defaulting party to prison for failing to obey a court order. However, committal proceedings cannot be used to enforce payment of money. They can only be used to enforce performance of an order or undertaking to perform a specific act (such as to transfer a property or a life insurance policy or make a child available for contact).

Execution of instrument. The Judge has the power to sign an instrument (i.e. document) if the defaulting party refuses to do so, for example, if the court has ordered that a property be transferred but one party refuses to sign the transfer.

Judgment summons. This is a procedure by which a defaulting party is cross examined before a Judge and, if they fail to explain satisfactorily why they have not complied with the court order, they can be sent to prison. However, the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 means that the same standard of proof and evidential rights as in criminal trials applies.

There are also other forms of enforcement less commonly used. These include sequestration (under which the assets of the defaulting party are seized and placed under the control of a sequestrator appointed by the court), bankruptcy (under which the defaulting party is made bankrupt though matrimonial orders are not provable in bankruptcy, oral examination (whereby the defaulting party is required to attend court and examined by a court official so as to disclose details of his financial position) and registration in the Magistrates Court (whereby the order is registered in a Magistrates Court which then takes over responsibility for enforcement of the order).

Best of luck

Elle