How long to rubberstamp Consent Order?

Does anybody know how long it normally takes for a Court to turn a Consent Order into a Court Order? My solicitor won't give me an answer as she wants me to go to court so she can make more money out of me!

Currently, some of us are waiting aprox 2 months to get things heard in court.

My ex served notice of Conduct Order / Non-Molestation on17th Sept 07.... he paid thru-the-nose for Sol to type up heaps of rubbish about me. We had a half-hour Hearing, a week later 25th Sept, I chose to defend - so Hearing (1 day) is scheduled for 14th Nov 07.

Apparently UK Courts are quite busy!

What is the nature of yr order???

Hi Sera, thanks for your response. The consent order I am trying to draw up with my ex is for transfer of our marital of home and child/spousal maintenance etc. We had agreed a similar order last year but he failed to sign up to it. He is now keen to settle having been threatened with a penal order for not turning up at our First Appointment or submitting his form E, however I am trying to hurry it through as I have a great mortgage offer which will expire at Christmas. We have a rescheduled First Appointment at the end of November which we can apparently use to get the Consent Order approved, however I would prefer it to happen before then if possible so that I can avoid the expense of actually going to court (ie. barrister and the millions of unecessary letters my solicitor loves to send out without my knowledge!) Given that rubberstamping a Consent Order does not require an appearance by us at Court, I was assuming that it would not entail the usual 2-3 month wait?

Motherof2

The consent order depends on YOU! If its signed by you both then the only thing left to do is get it stamped by a Judge.
Its upto YOU to TELL your solicitor what YOU want doing!
If its in front of the Judge then the Judge will decide if you need a short hearing IF he/she is not happy with something then he/she will call you to court to ask if you are BOTH happy with the contents of this consent order, if th Judge thinks its fair he/she will stamp it and turn it into an order.

Dont let the solicitor railroad you, take it in your own hands and get it sorted. Tell your solicitor what YOU want and DONT take NO for an answer!

Kind ones
Louise

Ouch... my virtual ears are ringing!

Louise is absolutely correct, your sol takes instructions from you. However, I wouldn't be too quick to jump to conclusions. I'm sure your sol didn't say she wants you to go to court to make more money. Any astute lawyer is going to know such an approach isn't good business. I'd be asking (and listening) to why she thinks you should proceed to court.

Thanks Fiona and Louise for your input. I totally agree with you and I am trying to negotiate a consent order (again!) with my ex with minimal involvement of solicitors as they have not moved matters on at all in the past 2 years and have cost lots of money.

What I don't know is how to go about getting my Consent Order before a judge without involving solicitors in the process and how long it would take the judge to approve it after they've received it.

Anyway, I've just heard my ex has been made redundant so it might all end up in court anyway. The bottom line is I'm just trying to get this all tied up as I've had 3 years of uncertainty bringing up my 2 young children alone and if it takes thousands of pounds to achieve it I guess I'll just have to swallow it. Just seems so unfair that I have to borrow the money to do this when my husband is the one who left me in this predicament. There you go... rant over, sorry!

Hi

My advice is to ring the courts and ask them, if its just a case of typing out an agreement and asking a Judge to rubberstamp it then it should incur no costs at all cept maybe £40, it seems £40 or £80 is the normal get "anything done" at court fee. In your position i would just ring and say to court official "i have a court order that needs to be signed and stamped by a Judge, my ex husband and i agree with it, so can you tell me how i go about getting the judge to stamp it up? They should know how to do that but my god keep your fingers crossed, half the time the court officials could be working at a supermarket for all they know on the subject of how a court works??? But my advice is try there first, dont ring a Solicitor they will charge you £6 per minute for the call!

kind ones
Louise