Money and property issues

One of the most difficult issues to be resolved when a relationship breaks down is the division of financial assets belonging to you and your partner. There are two categories of court orders which can be made when a marriage or civil partnership is dissolved:

• those which divide the parties’ income
• those which divide the parties’ capital assets

• Maintenance Pending Suite (an order for regular payments designed to tide a spouse over until the divorce is determined)

• Periodical Payments Order (an order in the form of weekly or monthly sums from one spouse to the other from the date of pronouncement of Decree Absolute onwards)

• Secured Provision Order (an order to obtain maintenance payments backed up by some form of security which can be called upon if the payer defaults)

• Lump Sum Order (an order to adjust the parties’ respective capital positions to ensure that the assets are divided fairly)

• Property Adjustment Order (an order that one party must transfer his interest in the property to the other party, or to a child of the family)

• Orders for Sale of Property (an order specifying that certain property can be sold to satisfy the terms of any of the above three orders)

• Pension Attachment Order (an order that a specified amount of received pension payments must be paid to the other party)

• Pension Sharing Order (an order that one party must transfer a specified percentage of their pension fund to the other party)

When making such orders the court is required to apply the following criteria to decide what is fair and equitable in each case, always bearing in mind that the welfare of any dependent children is the first consideration:

• the parties’ financial resources
• the parties’ financial needs
• standard of living
• age of the parties and the duration of the marriage
• any physical or mental disability of either party
• contributions made by each party to the welfare of the family
• conduct if it would be inequitable to disregard
• the value of any benefit which may be lost as a result of the dissolution