Why finalising a consent order on divorce is so important

A recent court judgment has highlighted the importance of ensuring that your ‘clean break’ is finalised properly and showing how expensive failing to do so can be.

The case in question is LIN v PAR [2025] EWFC 401 where a wife chose to bring court proceedings to deal with the finances 20 years after divorcing from her husband.

The parties divorced in 2002, at which time they had reached a financial settlement, which was incorporated into a draft consent order but for some unknown reason, was never submitted to the Court. Despite it never being made into a sealed Court Order, the parties’ thought they had obtained a ‘clean break’ at that time. It was only 20 years later when the wife sought further legal advice that she discovered the consent order was never submitted and therefore, the parties had not obtained a legally binding clean break.

When the parties’ separated they had very modest assets, which they had agreed would be split equally between them. Whilst the wife had assets in the region of £100,000 some 20 years later, the husband had accumulated wealth estimated in excess of £100 million.

Mr Justice Peel, having considered the facts in the case, came to the conclusion that the parties’ had reached a financial settlement in 2001 and despite the fact the consent order was not sealed by the Court, it was intended as a legally binding agreement and therefore, should stand.

In getting to this point, the wife had accumulated legal fees totalling £339,014, which coincidentally were paid by the husband, and the husband had accumulated his own legal fees in the region of £1.4m, so an overall total of £1.7m in legal fees.

Mr Justice Peel decided that wife should not receive a penny from the husband, particularly as he had already paid her legal fees to bring the claim against him! In summary, the husband got the ‘clean break’ he thought he always had, the wife received nothing, although one could argue she did not lose anything by bringing the claim either, whereas husband lost a whopping £1.7m in legal fees.

And the takeaway from this is? We cannot say it enough – do not forget about or delay dealing with the financial matters if you divorce. If you do go to all the effort of reaching a financial settlement and getting it drawn up into a consent order – at least check the order is submitted to the Court and you receive the legally binding clean break you are seeking.

Thankfully, it seems in this case the right decision was made but it would have been much easier and cheaper to send the wife away with a piece of paper showing that the legal processes had been completed, rather than spending almost £2m in legal fees to reach the right decision.