When I started going through the process of divorce, I did what most people do. I Googled things. Obsessively, at odd hours, with the particular kind of focus that kicks in when something important is happening and you feel completely unprepared for it.
What I found was not very good.
There were law firm websites that answered questions in the most hedged, non-committal way possible, presumably for liability reasons. There were forums full of people in the same position as me, which was useful for feeling less alone but not particularly useful for understanding what was actually going to happen. There were American resources that kept showing up in search results and were entirely irrelevant to England and Wales. And there were a handful of government websites that were accurate but read like they had been written for a different species.
What I could not find was someone who would just explain how this actually worked. Not in a legal disclaimer-heavy way. Not in a way designed to make me feel like I needed to call them immediately. Just a straight account of what the process looked like, what to expect at each stage, what the financial considerations were, and what I could do to help myself through it.
The thing that frustrated me most
The gap I kept running into was between the legal information — which existed, if you worked hard enough to find it — and the practical reality of living through a divorce. The two things are quite different.
The legal information tells you that financial disclosure is required before a financial remedy order can be made. It does not tell you that the most useful thing you can do in the early weeks is to spend a couple of hours getting a clear picture of what you own, what you owe, and what your pensions are worth — before you pay a solicitor to help you do it at a considerable hourly rate.
The legal information tells you that child arrangements are agreed between the parties or determined by the court. It does not tell you that the language you use with your children in the first few weeks, when they are trying to make sense of what is happening, matters in ways that research has been quite clear about for decades.
The legal information is about the process. What most people actually need is help understanding the process and how to get through it without making it worse than it needs to be.
What I eventually worked out
The useful stuff, I found, was mostly on the other side of a significant amount of reading. It was in academic papers on child psychology and parental separation. It was in the judgment archives from financial remedy cases, which are public and surprisingly readable. It was in the technical guidance published by pension specialists about CETVs and sharing orders. It was in conversations with people who had been through it and had the benefit of hindsight.
None of that is particularly accessible to someone who has just been served with divorce papers, or who has just told their spouse that the marriage is over, and who is trying to work out what happens next while holding down a job and parenting their children and, frankly, not sleeping very well.
So I wrote it down. First for myself, to make sense of it. Then in a more organised way, because it seemed like the kind of thing other people would find useful. The book came out of that process. This site came out of the book.
What this site is, and what it is not
Everything on this site is written for England and Wales. The law is different in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and it is substantially different in the United States, Australia, and everywhere else. If you are not going through a divorce in England or Wales, this is not the right resource for you.
Nothing on this site is legal advice. I am not a lawyer. The tools and guides are designed to help you understand your situation and prepare for the conversations you will have with people who are. Getting independent legal advice from a qualified family law solicitor is not optional — it is genuinely important, and nothing here is a substitute for it.
What I have tried to do is write the things that a knowledgeable friend would tell you. Someone who had been through it, had done the reading, and could give you a straight answer without hedging everything into uselessness. Someone who would tell you how long it actually takes, what the financial settlement process actually involves, and what actually helps children through a difficult period — rather than a liability-managed version of those things that protects the writer but does not much help the reader.
If that is useful to you, I am glad. If you have questions the site does not answer, the contact page is there. And if you are in the middle of this right now and it feels impossible — it is hard, but it does not stay this hard.
James
This Wasn’t The Plan