Some time ago the Court service produced a series of templates which form the basis of the orders that are approved by the Court.
The difficulty with the templates is that they cover all eventualities, are updated reasonably regularly and have the instructions "adapt as necessary".
Some solicitors are not as diligent as others and produce their own template from the master template to save themselves time. This is a problem as the master template gets updated, the other version does not and the same errors are repeated over and over.
You would think that the court would spot this but judges do not check the version submitted to them against the master template. The whole point of the template is to automate part of the drafting task in the hope that orders 'hold water' merely by using standard wording that has been carefully drafted. This breaks down when someone thinks they know better, is lazy or don't "do English good".
The process of drafting and checking an order has many pitfalls and I would urge you to seek legal advice on the draft order and the intention of the document (what it's meant to achieve). The draft order you receive might look like an order, it might make sense and the court might approve it but it might contain errors which might be serious.
In a different example, someone might build a house and it will look like a house but only on closer inspection can you tell if it has been constructed properly with the appropriate supports and building regulations. The same is true of a Court order.
Now, all of this might seem extreme but below there is a link to a version of the master template. That version has red text to show the bits that need to be modified to reflect each matter. A lot of the template will have to be deleted as it won't be relevant and most orders can be whittled down to 4 or 5 pages.
The skill is knowing which bits to leave in and ensuring there is integrity in what is left e.g. there is no point in cross-referencing to paragraph 9(2)(iii) if paragraph 9 ends at (2)(ii).
www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022...-Order-1-Mar-22.docx
In relation to your own case, it depends what the terms of the agreement are to determine what the stages to completion are. For instance if there is a house sale you need to specify who is to have conduct of the sale, what happens if an offer is made on a property and only one party wants to accept, what to do if there are no offers on the property and one of the parties refuses to reduce the price, how the sale proceeds are to be distributed (normally the mortgage, estate agent fees, legal fees for sale come off first the net proceeds of sale are then distributed as per the terms of the order). The minutiae is important and experience is needed to avoid issues that might occur.
Charles
