Steve and Heidi decided they wanted a conscious uncoupling of their long term de facto partnership. The following case study is an excerpt of a conversation that took place in January 2018.
“I had a few dramas at home. We decided that we were going to go through a conscious uncoupling of the relationship.”
I had a friend of mine who got divorced and went through it all and he said ‘you really need to get on and organise this now so you cover your future financial issues… Ian (from RP Emery) is great’. So I rang Ian and we talked through it all.
(For us), it was very amicable. There was no animosity either way. We just weren’t making each other happy. We have a nine-year-old daughter so we’re just pretty casual with it all. She just wanted to write it on a bit of paper but I said no I really need to get it written on the right documents.
We already had it in our heads what we wanted. Your house is your house. My house is my house. 50:50 for Eliza’s (daughter’s) financial welfare. We just pay half of everything for Eliza. Pretty straight forward really.
I got glowing reviews from a mate of mine. So we went with that. Rang them (RP Emery) up, had a bit of a chat, talked about what we would need and then bought it, paid for it with a credit card.
We sat down and did it everything together. Heidi’s a chartered accountant and she’s used to all that sort of speak if you like. We went through all that stuff. We sat down and did it all together pretty well. And went through each different statement and went “well does that apply to us?”. “No, this one’s better so let’s get rid of that one and put this statement in”. That all went pretty well.
There was a little bit of toing and froing with the lawyers. My lawyer wanted to make some amendments and she’d ring to get some more information and then she’d go off and have a bit of a play with it and then she’d have to send it on to Heidi’s lawyer and he’d have to read it and then talk to Heidi about it and yeah.
Two different lawyers. Two different sides. A lot of the stuff that my lawyer found in the wording covered both of us. Which was good.
Heidi had been divorced before and we had buckleys of going near a lawyer. That cost her a lot of money when she got divorced 20 years ago. She was like, adamant, no lawyers. I said well, “we really need to get this written on the right paperwork so we’ll do it this way. We’ll do it all online and in the end, we’ll just have a review process with a lawyer.” She was happy with that.
I got a bit of paper that says yep legally this is my house and legally that’s your house. I’m not going to come and have a crack at your house and you’re not going to have a crack at my house.
Overall. Positive experience. Happy to get it done and put behind us.