I want a divorce, but I don’t know where my spouse is!
You’ve decided to get a divorce, but there is one small problem. You don’t know where your spouse lives. To start a divorce, the court must serve divorce papers on your spouse, and therefore you need to know where they are to achieve that. So now, what do you do?
This problem is more common than you think. You may have separated from your husband or wife some time ago and had no communication since. Now you decide that it’s finally time to get a divorce. And that’s when we get a call. ‘I don’t know where they are’ they say, usually followed by, ‘they could be dead for all I know.’
There is a common misconception that after several years divorce is automatic, but this isn’t the case. To get a divorce, you must use one of the five facts; adultery, unreasonable behaviour, desertion, or two or five years separation.
How do I divorce if I don’t know where my spouse is?
If you want to divorce but don’t know where your spouse is you have two options. You can find your spouse, or prove to the court that you have done everything in your power to locate your spouse.
The starting point would be to check on social media and reach out to old friends and family members. But if that isn’t successful and you still want to divorce without knowing your spouse’s address, you must complete a form known as a D13B. And this is where it becomes difficult and expensive because there are many hoops to jump through.
You must provide evidence that they no longer live at the last know address, which means providing letters that have been returned ‘not known at this address’ or details of enquiries made with the neighbours.
You have to provide details of your contact with known relatives and friends, make inquiries with their last known employer, and other professional organisations.
If you do not have contact with these people, then you would have to ask the court for an order that makes a government agency such as HMRC to provide the address they have on file. If this sounds like a headache, it is, but there is an easier way.
The easiest way to find missing spouses
The easiest and fastest way to locate a missing spouse is to put a trace on them. A trace is where a specialist will follow a track to find a person. This can be credit references, purchases and so on. Historically this would require the cost of an expensive private investigator, but in our data-driven society, our highly trained specialists can comb through a myriad of data in record time and find your spouse often within just 24 hours.
Our success rate is 98%, and if we don’t find your spouse, you get a full refund, so there is no risk. For more information, visit our spouse finding service here.
Finding your spouse is the easiest and least expensive way to divorce. It means that you can divorce using our fully managed service for £249. A client who asked us to trace her husband yesterday told me that a solicitor had quoted her a minimum of £3000 to file a missing spouse divorce using a D13B! For more details about our trace service or to discuss your divorce in general email us or call 02045308101. Alternatively, you can schedule a call back below.
