Who keeps the house in Boley Park, and can either of them afford to? Lichfield divorces tend to involve more money than the Staffordshire average and the same hard arithmetic as anywhere else: a family home bought for the schools and the Birmingham trains, two careers of unequal earning power, and pensions that are often the largest asset after the house. Divorce solicitors in Lichfield spend most of their time on that arithmetic rather than on the divorce itself, which since April 2022 has needed no blame, is applied for online and runs to a fixed timetable of twenty weeks to the conditional order and six more to the final order.
Pensions deserve particular care here. Many Lichfield residents hold NHS, teachers' or civil service pensions from careers in Birmingham, and the service families at Whittington Barracks have armed forces pensions, which have their own rules on sharing and are easy to undervalue. A pension sharing order needs an actuary's report in all but the simplest cases, and a solicitor will say when one is worth paying for. Business owners, of whom Lichfield has many, need the company valued and a way of paying the other spouse out without selling it.
Agreed terms become a consent order, approved by the family court that serves south Staffordshire almost always on paper. Where the couple cannot agree, a mediation information and assessment meeting comes first, and a Lichfield solicitor will say which court centre the application will be listed at.
Most firms in Lichfield offer a fixed fee for the application and hourly rates for the financial negotiations; legal aid is granted only where there is evidence of domestic abuse.
The divorce solicitors below serve Lichfield and the villages, verified firms first. The guides to the divorce process and how much a divorce costs explain the stages and the likely bills, the general divorce solicitors page describes the service, and children are covered on the family law solicitors in Lichfield page.
