The question of whether you should apply for a divorce on your own or jointly with your spouse is something that you need to consider if you are planning to get divorced.

You may wish to consider making a joint application if you and your husband/wife wish to keep matters amicable. However, there are differences in making an application solely or jointly which you must consider before proceeding.

Since the introduction of ‘no-fault’ divorce in April 2022, making a joint application for divorce is now an option. In this blog, we consider the pros and cons of each.

Making a joint application for divorce

When you make a joint application, your spouse will be required to review and approve this. Once the application has been made, the court will send a notice of the proceedings to both you and your spouse where you must both confirm receipt to the court within 14 days.

Once the divorce application is issued by the court, an application for a conditional order can be jointly made by both you and your spouse 20 weeks later.

Once a conditional order has been made, a final order can be applied for six weeks later, jointly by both you and your spouse.

Making a sole application for divorce

If you were to make a sole application for divorce, you would not need to apply jointly with your spouse in the process. If your spouse does not respond to the notice of proceedings, you can still proceed if you show the court your spouse has received the application, or you have made all reasonable attempts to inform your spouse of the proceedings.

You can then apply for a conditional order yourself, 20 weeks after the divorce application is issued and six weeks after the conditional order for the final order to be made. Your spouse will be able to apply for a final order three months after the conditional order in this scenario.

Therefore, the difference in proceeding with a joint application instead of a sole application is that you would need to do everything jointly with your spouse throughout the process. If you make the application jointly and your spouse no longer wishes to proceed, you will then have to apply to change the joint application to a sole application. To change the application in this way, you must provide notice to your spouse 14 days in advance. Similarly, if you do not wish to proceed, your spouse can apply to change the joint application to sole and then proceed with the divorce.

Implications on finances

An advantage of making a sole application on divorce is if you believe your spouse may try and proceed with obtaining the final order in the divorce without your agreement (which can have financial implications). In this case, making a sole application provides you more control over the divorce process.

When you can apply for a conditional order, this can only be done by you at this point in a sole application. If your spouse wishes to proceed, he/she would have to seek their own divorce application and for yours to be withdrawn, which can be difficult and take a substantial amount of time.

This would allow an opportunity to make an application to the court as to why proceeding with the final order for divorce is not appropriate. There are different reasons why this would not be appropriate, and this would be dependent on the finances and any potential financial settlement.