Court fees in 2015 – what does divorce cost?

I want to talk to you about court fees. Now we all know that legal fees can be expensive, but part of the process involves payments that are made to the court itself and they’re what we call ‘court fees’.

Now if you’re going to get divorced you have to pay the court a fee for filing your divorce petition. And that at the moment is £410.

There used to be a further fee for your Decree Absolute. They have done away with that now. Although they haven’t really lost any money because they’ve put up a petition fee. I think overall the court fee’s gone up by about £20. So there is a £410 court fee for your divorce.

If you have contested financial proceedings then you have to pay another court fee for that. And that is £255. That is what you pay when you file what is called a ‘Form A’, which is your application for a financial order.

The only other court fee that you would pay in those financial proceedings is possibly a £50 court fee if you come to an agreement with your spouse. That is what happens when you have what is called a ‘Consent Order’. And when you file your application for a Consent Order, there’s a court fee that’s payable – that’s £50 – and the usual method is that it’s shared, alright? So both of you pay £25 each.

That would be the only other court fee that you pay in financial proceedings.

If you have proceedings in the Family Court over your children then the court fee for a C100 application is £215.

So you need to be aware of all of these things.

You can possibly be exempt from paying court fees, it depends if you’re on benefits.

If there are no exemptions at the time that you apply then what you can do is you can apply for a refund within six months if you then become exempt. Now I wouldn’t hold myself out as an expert on exemptions because I don’t deal with it as a matter of course, but the rules are there. But you will find that the civil service, who operate the courtrooms are not keen on refunds, so you may well have to argue your corner, and you may find that it does get rejected a few times before they finally relent. That’s been my experience anyway.