Typical waiting period for 5 day Final Hearing

Hello friends

We had the FDR in beginning of Dec 2022. A Directions hearing was in Feb 2023 said Final Hearing was for first available date after end June 2023. The Directions hearing said it was to be for five days.

For the folks that have already got dates for five day Final Hearing (Financials) with the Central Family Court in London , how many months prior to this did you have your FDR? I am trying to work backwards (or forwards!) to approximately estimate my date for a Five Day Final Hearing.

Ballpark months will do - just trying to get a sense.

I tried calling the Central Family Court but they don't have this information. All they could tell me was that I don't have a date yet.

Thanks for your help

Five days is a lot to shoehorn into a busy court timetable. Every court will have a different set of pressures so won't be comparable. I imagine it will have to be scheduled many months ahead.

Hadenoughnow

Thanks Hadenoughnow

My current working assumption is that I will have a Final Hearing date somewhere between October 2023 (10 months from FDR) to January 2023 (13 months from FDR). If it comes much sooner no issues as my S25 draft is already almost ready (pending lawyer tweaks), my evidence bundle is almost ready (pending one or two third party docs) and my disclosure pack is all done (just updating every month).

The challenge is finding a barrister who will engage when you don't have a court date. In my case the barrister will need to read over 1000 pages to prep. I am trying to keep barrister costs low and shop around as in my situation there is a law of diminishing returns - complex case, could go either way irrespective of how slick a lawyer I have

You would not normally engage a barrister until shortly before a hearing. They are very practised at reading a bundle and working out the case they will argue in court.
If you need barrister input at this stage you may be able to book a conference but if there's that much evidence they will need to read it all to advise.
They would not retain the information for months so would need to read it again before the hearing.

Hadenoughnow