D81 FORM

My wife and I have filled in the D81 financial disclosure, we have agreed on everything 50/50. She is applicant , I am the respondent. She has asked me to sign the form and then she will hand it to her solicitor to draft a consent form. This is my question , what if she changes anything on it , what can I do? And the consent order , will I have to sign it? My solicitor has seen the form but was utterly useless, having spent 4 months going to and fro , I just want it over with. She is buying me out and we not sharing our pensions. All I want to know is , can she swindle me or change the D81 form without my consent?

Disclosure by way of a D81 form needs to be mutual. If it is not mutual it is meaningless. Obviously you can take a copy of the form as you have signed it and her solicitor can be informed that no Form D81 or consent order is to be filed with the court unless you have first seen a copy of what is to be filed. If this is put in writing and you keep a copy then your position should be protected. In fact if you have a solicitor acting for you these things are normally dealt with between solicitors on the basis of undertakings (which can be enforced and which it would be a serious matter to breach).

Thank you for the response.

May I ask now the consent order is based on the D81 FORM , her solicitors are drafting this up, will I have to sign it before it goes to a judge? How does it work?

A consent order does what it says on the tin - it is by CONSENT. You need to see it, approve it and sign it before it can be submitted to the court otherwise it is self evidently not by consent.

Oh, and one other thing. You should NOT sign anything prepared by your wife's solicitor before you have taken your own independent legal advice on it. Your wife's solicitor is acting for her not for you. And although you may think the meaning of the order which you are asked to sign is obvious there are many things about court orders which are not obvious to someone who is not a lawyer. You should not sign a document like this without first taking independent legal advice of your own.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/2023 10:56AM by David Terry.

For what it’s worth, my ex wife and I agreed our financial split between us and she had her solicitor draw up the consent order based on what we had agreed. When I was sent the copy to sign I engaged with a solicitor (I hadn’t used one up until that point) to go over it to make sure I was not being stitched up with legal jargon I didn’t understand. It was money well spent as she answered questions I had about some terms I didn’t understand and pointed out an error that needed to be corrected before I signed it.