Solicitor Errors

Hiya, I am currently coming to the end (hopefully!!) of divorce proceedings.At the end of June at final hearing I was awarded a lump sum of £3000 to be paid within 6 weeks, Aug 8th but still not received.The time period was specified to enable an endowment policy to be surrendered but nothing has happened.At the same hearing my solicitor told me that my divorce would be through in a week or 2 max (July 10), still not happened!!! Also, I heard for the first time at that hearing that £1000 would immediately be taken off the amount awarded towards final bill - gobsmacked!! After waiting till August , I then began to pursue matters as nothing was coming from my solicitor.Nothing had been done in pursuit of applying to cash in the endowment policy and only recently after my own endeavours have matters began to be addressed - ie.receiving necessary documents to be signed and still currently unresolved.Since then, I have discovered that errors have been made on sols behalf - "paperwork" from final hearing stated that my ex was applying for decree absolut, when I myself was the Petitioner (ERROR and uninformed of such) - knew nothing about this, thought all was being dealt with by my solicitor.So, now I have had to provide all documentary evidence again and am still stuck in process of waiting for confirmation of aforementioned being finalised.I feel that everything should have been resolved in the timeframe specified at the final hearing in June and hence 6 weeks later date of August 8th.I have to pay £56 per month Legal Aid contributions regardless of progress or not and feel that at least the last 4 months should be refunded or struck from the final bill as they have been through no fault of my own and the stress has been unnecessary and detrimental to my continuing battle with Bipolar Affective Disorder.Frustrated at this unjust process.

I would be interested to hear thoughts and comments generated by this or similiar situations. Regards, Mark

MArk

Welcome to wikivorce. I hope you find it helpful.

If you have a complaint about your solicitor, the first thing to do would be to find out who handles complaints at the firm and write to them setting out your concerns and detailing the costs incurred as a consequence.

However you should be aware that the delays you mention may not be anything to do with your solicitor; it could be that the other side has been slow in producing paperwork etc. I know it took months for my ex's solicitor to organise him to sign the transfer for the house - and it did not happen until a long time after I had done my bit with endowment transfers etc.

Did you instruct your solicitor to apply for the absolute? It is possible that your ex has applied for it - they can do this if the Decree Nisi was a long while ago (3 months+?).

If you have been awarded a lump sum then you will have to pay a contribution towards legal aid - this should have been explained to you. If you search the site for statutory charge (use the search bar at the top) you will find explanations of how it all works.

Hadenoughnow

Any monies or assets that you receive will be used first to discharge your legal fees and the balance will be paid to you.

If you are paying a contribution this will reduce your liability for legal fees so the more you pay in contributions, the more you will get back.

Charles