Court costs

My wife has committed adultery but she is divorcing me on grounds of unreasonable behaviour. I have accepted this just to get the divorce done and dusted, but on the original Petition where she stated she was asking me to pay costs i wrote on it that i was refusing to pay costs due to her adultery. I do not have a solicitor. I have just received the notice to say that the divorce is being granted and the court date is 26 october but that i have to pay costs and if i want to contest this i have to go to the hearing. i dont see why i should pay costs when she is the adulterer but has sited my unreasonable behaviour. how can i appeal please?

You go to the hearing but to be honest you won''t get far, she is divorcing you based on behaviour, you can''t then say well actually it''s her fault after signing the form from court.

Your only real defence would be if you can''t afford to pay the costs, or he costs as unreasonable, best course of action would be to try and agree costs without going to court.

I do understand that but I only agreed to the divorce, not to paying the costs, thats why i made it quite clear on the form i sent back that as she was the adulterer she should pay all costs. The unreasonable behaviour she sited was something that happened the night before our wedding 22 years ago!!

The way it works is that if a person decides to divorce a spouse using the reason of unreasonable behaviour or adultery then they can ask the court order the spouse at fault to pay their divorce costs, when you signed that form you agreed to this, on the other hand if your ex is using something that happened 22 years ago that is unacceptable, still the problem is you signed the D10.

hmm ok thank you. Is it just court costs or her solicitors costs too? surely she has to pay her solicitor not me?

Bad news, it''s the costs for the actual divorce, so court fees and the solicitors charge for lodging applications, with a high street solicitor your talking £1000 to maybe £1500 top end.

For anyone reading this who has received a divorce application wiki offer a respondent service for £99, it''s avoids all this, sadly it''s a bit late for the OP.

There could be some mileage in arguing when this behaviour allegedly happened, don''t get your hopes up though, chances are you''ll have to pay the bill.

great stuff:( . ok thanks for your help