Today I just fired my solicitors -- mainly because I could no longer afford them as I'm drowning in a downward whirlpool of debt, but also because I got fed up with them taking so long to sort out the final details of my financial settlement.
A brief history:
(1)
Decree Absolute pronounced in May
(2) Agreement reached on access to our daughter at the same time (and has been working out very amicably thus far)
(3) Could not agree a financial settlement in Court in June at a First Directions Appointment, despite my solicitor and I and the judge pushing very hard to use the hearing as a Financial Dispute Resolution.
(4) The next week I approached my ex directly and agreed a settlement with her. We agreed a modest lump sum payment to me and
child maintenance from me to her (I have a decent job but lots of debts and she has lots of money from a trust fund)
(5) 4 months and 2 postponed Court hearings later, and our solicitors were still arguing over the small print, at which point I'd finally had enough.
The final sticking point was over life insurance for my maintenance - her solicitors have asked for me to take out a Decreasing Term Life Insurance policy (not part of our original agreement) and I proposed to nominate sufficient proportion of my work Life Insurance to cover the same amount (in order to save ~£2000 in premiums). The solicitors seemed unable to come up with some suitable wording.
I'd be grateful if anyone could help with the following questions:
(a) Now that I have chosen to self-represent, can I still resolve this case directly with her solicitors and get them to draft the wording and prepare the necessary documents? Or is there some protocol by which solicitors will only deal with other solicitors?
(b) If her solicitors are deliberatly obstructive (as far as I can tell they seem to be royally milking her of her savings resulting in a lot of stress), is there anything I can do about it?
(c) If I end up going to Court, can I simply present the judge with all the agreed parts of the settlement and get him/her to instruct on the insurance piece?
(d) Was I really dumb to fire my solicitor when we were so close...!?
Many thanks!