4 Common Divorce Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Divorce is stressful, emotional, and often completely unfamiliar. You’re dealing with one of the most significant transitions of your life while trying to make crucial decisions about your finances, your home, and your children’s future.

It’s no wonder people make mistakes. Some are just inconvenient. Others can cost you thousands of pounds, delay your divorce by months, or create problems that follow you for years to come. 

The good news is that most of these mistakes are completely avoidable once you know what to watch out for. Here are four of the most common (and costly) divorce mistakes, and what you can do to avoid them.

1. Not getting a financial consent order 

The Mistake: 

You and your ex agree on how to split everything financially. Maybe you decide who keeps the house, you divide the savings, and you sort out the cars. You both feel it’s fair. You shake hands, you move on. Job done, right? Wrong. 

Without a court-approved financial consent order, you have not, legally speaking, settled anything. Either of you can come back months, years, or even decades later and make a financial claim against the other. 

Imagine these scenarios: 

• A client who divorced 15 years ago, remarried, built a successful business, then faced a claim from their first spouse who feels they “never got their fair share.” 
• Someone who received a substantial inheritance, only to discover their ex-spouse (who they divorced amicably 10 years earlier) is now entitled to a portion of it.
• A person who assumed their verbal agreement was binding, only to face a claim when their ex fell on hard times.

These all could have been avoided if the couples got a consent order when they were divorcing. 

How to Avoid It: 

Get a consent order. Even if you completely trust your ex, you don’t have major assets to divide, or you’ve been separated for years.

A consent order is a legal document that records your financial agreement and, once approved by the court, makes it legally binding and final. It prevents either party from making future claims and gives you complete financial closure.

The process is straightforward when you both agree and you don’t usually need to attend court. Your solicitor can help you through the process.

Bottom line: Never skip this step. A consent order is essential protection for your financial future. 

2. Making decisions based on emotion over logic 

The Mistake: 

Divorce brings out powerful emotions. Anger, hurt, betrayal, grief are all completely natural to feel. The mistake is letting those emotions drive your decisions. 

Some examples: 

• Fighting to keep the family home at all costs because of emotional attachment, even when you can’t actually afford to maintain it alone.
• Refusing a reasonable settlement offer because you’re angry and want to “punish” your ex, even though continuing to fight will cost you more in legal fees than you’d gain.
• Making impulsive decisions about child arrangements based on wanting to “win” rather than what’s genuinely best for them.
• Hiding assets or lying in financial disclosure because you feel your ex doesn’t “deserve” their fair share.
• Spending £20,000 in legal fees fighting over assets worth £5,000 because “it’s the principle.” 

In reality, none of these situations are in anyone’s best interests, and can make a divorce even more difficult and stressful. 

How to Avoid It: 

Separate the emotional from the practical. That doesn’t mean suppressing your feelings, just not letting them dictate your legal strategy.

Practical steps:

• Get emotional support separately so you don’t feel the need to take things out on your ex. Use friends, family, or a therapist to process your feelings.
• Ask “what would I advise a friend?” If someone you cared about were in your situation, what would you tell them to do? Often, the answer is clearer when you remove yourself from the equation.
• Focus on your future, not the past. You can’t change what happened, but you can shape what comes next. Make decisions based on building your new life, not punishing your ex for the old one.
• Run the numbers. Before rejecting an offer or escalating a dispute, calculate the actual financial cost of continuing to fight. Is it worth it?

Some battles are worth fighting, particularly where children’s safety or best interests are concerned, or where a proposed settlement is genuinely unfair. But many aren’t.

Bottom line: The most successful divorce outcomes come from taking the emotions out and treating it more like a business transaction that needs unwinding, not a war that needs winning. 

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3. Hiding assets or being dishonest in financial disclosure 

The Mistake: 

Some people think they can hide assets, undervalue property, or simply “forget” to mention certain bank accounts during financial disclosure. This is a mistake on multiple levels.

When you’re dealing with finances in divorce, you’re required to provide a “full and frank disclosure” of all your financial circumstances. This means everything:

• All bank accounts and savings 
• Property and land 
• Investments and shares 
• Pensions 
• Business interests 
• Valuables 
• Debts 
• Income from all sources 

Some people try to transfer money to friends or family members to hide it, undervalue businesses or assets, “forget” about offshore accounts or additional properties, spend money recklessly to reduce the pot available for division or simply lie about what they earn or own.

This usually backfires in several ways. First, you’ll probably get caught. Solicitors and judges have seen it all before. They know what to look for, and there are legal tools to uncover hidden assets, including everything from forensic accountants to court orders requiring banks to disclose information.

Secondly, the consequences are severe, from the court ordering you to pay your ex’s legal fees to criminal charges for fraud in the most serious cases.

Finally, even if you initially get away with it, your ex-spouse can apply to set aside the financial order if they later discover you weren’t honest. This can happen years later, reopening everything and potentially meaning you need to pay more.

How to Avoid It: 

Be completely honest. Disclose everything, even if you think it’s not relevant or won’t be included in the settlement. This might mean disclosing assets you’d rather keep or admitting you earn more than your ex realised. But, if you’re concerned about certain assets (perhaps an inheritance or something you owned before the marriage), the answer isn’t to hide them. It’s to take legal advice about how they might be treated.

Bottom line: Hiding assets is a high-risk strategy that rarely works and almost always makes things worse. Be honest from the start.

4. Not taking legal advice early enough 

The Mistake:

Many people try to navigate divorce alone or leave getting legal advice until late in the process. By the time they finally speak to a solicitor, they’ve already:

• Moved out of the family home (potentially affecting their claim to it) 
• Agreed to things they shouldn’t have 
• Made financial decisions they can’t reverse 
• Said things in emails or messages that undermine their position 
• Missed important deadlines 
• Spent money on the wrong things 

The reasons people delay are understandable, whether they want to try and sort it amicably first, feel like their divorce is too straightforward for legal advice, or have concerns about costs.

But early legal advice simply means understanding your position, your rights, and your options before making irreversible decisions. 

How to Avoid It: 

Get initial advice early. Meeting with a family law solicitor can: 

• Explain what you’re entitled to 
• Identify potential pitfalls in your situation 
• Help you understand the process ahead 
• Give you realistic expectations about outcomes 
• Ensure you don’t inadvertently damage your position 
• Provide guidance on what to do (and what not to do) next 

You can still be amicable, use mediation, and try to keep costs down, just from a better position than you’d be in by doing it alone. 

If you’re seriously considering divorce or separation, you should seek legal advice before you agree to any financial arrangements or move out of the family home – and definitely if your spouse has already instructed their own solicitor.  

Bottom line: Early legal advice helps you avoid mistakes, not create conflict. Don’t wait until you’ve already made errors to seek help fixing them. 

Get it right the first time 

Divorce is challenging enough without making avoidable mistakes that create additional problems or cost you more money. 

The four mistakes above are common, but they’re not inevitable. With the right guidance, clear thinking, and proper legal advice, you can navigate your divorce while protecting your interests and setting yourself up for a positive future. 

Whether you’re just starting to think about divorce or you’re already in the middle of the process, our expert family lawyers can help you understand your rights and entitlements, negotiate fair settlements and avoid common mistakes that could cost you.