Divorce Negotiator advises why you shouldn't lose your Ex!
Legal advisory expert, Divorce Negotiator is offering advice to partners in strained marriages.
When a married couple separate, the first reaction is to distance yourself from your Ex, especially when there are no children involved.
Many people call them the ‘ex,’ even though they are still married. But when you legally want them to be an ex, it can prove difficult. There are hundreds of lost husbands and wives all over the country, but they didn’t know they were lost.
But is it a good idea to lose your Ex?
When it does come around to divorce, what happens if you cannot locate your spouse? Do you need to wait 5 years before you can get a divorce?
Often when couples separate, one party will quite simply disappear without a trace. This happened to a recent client of Divorce Negotiator.
Her husband went out to get some milk from the shop and never returned. This is quite unusual, in that the husband left everything at the house. For the wife, what turned from worry over his wellbeing to anger when no trace was found at hospitals, police etc. She eventually found him through friends. He had just upped and left and started a new life in the north, with a new partner.
The wife soon realised she had been used just to gain entry to the country. Her husband was from Ghana and used the marriage to get into the country and get a working visa. However, when a relationship does end, so does the sponsorship of the immigrant. They would need to tell the home office about their new relationship status and re-apply for a visa.
Poor Judgement
Upon accepting her poor judgment, the wife thought that getting a divorce would be easy, given her circumstances.
Her divorce application cited desertion as the reason for divorce, which by everybody’s agreement was true. Everyone, that is except the court. The court decided there was insufficient evidence to use desertion. The application had to be re-filed using unreasonable behaviour as the reason for divorce.
This was accepted, but as the whereabouts of the husband were unknown, a tracing service had to be used to track him down. The tracing service couldn’t find him despite him appearing on social media. After this, an application to the court to dispense with services had to be issued.
Each re-filing and dispensation of services incurred additional court fees to this poor lady.
What are your options if you cannot locate your ex?
If the Petition is returned unopened or you don't know where to send it, you can ask the court to do either of the following:
Send the Petition via email. This incurs an additional fee of £50 payable to the court. This, of course, depends on having a valid email address for them.
Use a Tracing Service. You can expect to pay in excess of £125 plus VAT for this service. They are able to search into records which you cannot due to data protection.
Use the court bailiff to issue the document. This tends to be very slow, as the judge needs to order this (at an additional cost), The court bailiffs are very busy and can take months before getting round to it.
Ask the court to use other government departments to find his/her address. This usually requires their National Insurance Number and Date of Birth etc. This has an additional fee of £50 payable to the court.
Carol Sullivan from Divorce Negotiator says "Do try to keep in touch with a friend or two of your partner and be extra vigilant when getting married. Some people have been separated for over 20 years, have had children with new partners, and remain married to another person.
Trying to track someone down after this amount of time can be difficult. You probably don’t have any reference to them anymore. National Insurance numbers are extremely helpful when trying to trace someone, but how many of us would keep or remember that type of information.
So without suggesting you be a stalker or anything like that, but either get divorced when you split or make sure you always know or have an idea of where they move to just in case, one day you want to file for divorce.
There is an option to file for desertion, but I promise you that it is SO DIFFICULT and Judges often reject them, and, you guessed it, it costs you more."