Twenty weeks must pass between a divorce application and the conditional order, and divorce solicitors in Canterbury use that time to sort out the money, because the application itself, no-fault since April 2022 and made online, is the easy part. What takes longer in and around Canterbury is working out what a family actually owns: a house in a village like Chartham or Sturry bought on one London salary, a teacher's or NHS pension, a share in a farm or a fruit business that the wider family also depends on, and sometimes a second property let to students near the universities.
Pensions are undervalued by almost everyone. A public-sector pension built up over twenty years at the hospital, a school or the council can be worth more than the house, and a pension sharing order is the usual answer. Farming families face a familiar problem: the land is the home, the income and the inheritance, and a court will try to meet both spouses' needs without breaking up the holding. Where one partner commutes to London on the high-speed line and the other has taken a smaller local job to look after children, earning capacities need honest assessment before any settlement is fair.
Where the couple agree, the solicitor drafts a consent order and sends it to the court for approval. Canterbury's county court, which also hears family cases, deals with contested finance and children applications, after a mediation information and assessment meeting in most cases.
Divorce or dissolution itself is usually a fixed fee in Canterbury; financial negotiations are hourly or staged. Legal aid is available only where domestic abuse can be evidenced.
Below are the divorce firms serving Canterbury, verified firms first. Two guides are worth reading before a first meeting, the divorce process and how much a divorce costs; the general divorce solicitors page covers the field, and children and cohabitation questions belong with family law solicitors in Canterbury.