Spouse making dishonest statements to court via their solicitor

My divorce process has been dragging on as my spouse doesn't want to divorce. We are divorcing on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour on their part.

There are 2 major false accusations they have made through their solicitor accusing me of dishonesty/financially abusive behaviour. They've made the accusations more than once and have now ramped them up to a random application to court in connection with them.

These aren't just a matter of "well, there's 2 sides to every story" and this being their perceived version of events. Theya re simply untrue and I have evidence/ a witness.

I've previously provided evidence to my solicitor as to the false nature of these statements and assumed this would be communicated to my spouse's solicitor to stop the accusations being repeated but this hasn't happened and I was given the impression that we don't want to get in to a "he said, she said" war of words so I'm being unreasonable in wanting these accusations de-bunked with the evidence I have.

Now there's a court application involved I'm pretty mad that my solicitor advised it wasn't necessary to tackle the accusations at this point and to wait until we actually got a court hearing but my spouse is doing everything they can to avoid us getting to the point of a court date. They're an educated individual who clearly knows or has researched how to drag this out as much as possible (ramping up our solicitors' fees along the way).

Can I take my spouse and their solicitor to task regarding them making libellous accusations ? Their solicitor just takes whatever they say at face value and writes a letter, submits a court order application accordingly. They don't ask any for any factual evidence.

The reasons for the divorce and the financial settlement are separate.
Is your ex defending a divorce brought under the old rules??
There's little point in doing that as no fault divorce has been law for nearly a year. All they are doing is racking up costs. A judge at the hearing will deal with the matter once and for all. Sending solicitors letters backwards and forwards will just add to the costs.

Alternatively you could withdraw the existing petition and bring a new one under no fault rules.

NB conduct is almost never a factor in financial settlement. The first consideration is always needs.

Hadenoughnow

Thansk for your reply hadenoughnow

The accusations being made by my spouse are unrelated to the grounds for divorce (which they haven't contested). They relate to our current circumstances.

It would be re-assuring to know that these accusations will mean nothing as far as the financial division of assets is concerned (and we have enough to house us both and leave each of us with accumulated pension funds accumulated).

It's just the utter waste of money having their solicitor write to my solicitor repeating these accusations/variations on them, my solicitor passing that on to me in a letter and the court orders spouse and their solicitor are applying for in respect of the false accusations.

Spouse voluntarily gave up their only source of income when divorce proceedings started so I'm paying for everything and our savings are almost gone now. Is there no way to make them responsible for their own costs in order to deter them from dragging out the divorce process/racking up additional unecessary costs based on dishonest statements to their solicitor.

I question why their solicitor is not advising them that they're just wasting money on fees if, as you say, behaviour (whether true or not) will have no bearings on the financial outcome for either of us.

The solicitor may well advise against the course of action but it is up to the client to decide which issues require the most attention.

As regards any action against your ex or the solicitor, that is destined to fail. The proceedings are private and you cannot suffer damage if any lies are said in private. Any action for libel requires that you suffer some kind of damage.

The remedy in family proceedings is to go to trial and give evidence. The judge will decide which account is correct and make the appropriate order. Unfortunately that is an expensive process which usually ends up hurting both parties.

The solicitor has a duty to believe what their client tells them, no matter how unlikely this might seem. If a client were to doubt their client's account they couldn't properly act for them.

On the same issue if a solicitor finds out that their client is lying they must cease to act. This happened to a colleague of mine where his client said she didn't have the family jewellery, despite the other side's account that she had. She later confirmed that she had it and my colleague had disinstruct himself.

Charles