How lawyers made my six-week house transfer take six months

After seven months of financial negotiations when divorcing my ex, it then took six months for our house transfer to go through. Here’s the story of how poor communication by lawyers made this process take so long.

8 min read2 days ago

Racing to get an agreement signed before my trip

In my divorce, I worked with a lawyer to draw up a separation agreement to stipulate things like how much my ex was going to pay me out of our shared house and when.

The end of the negotiations process turned into a bit of a time crunch to agree on a number before I was off to the US for six weeks to visit family. We finally agreed on a number two weeks before I was set to leave.

After sending that number to my lawyer, she sent back an agreement for us to sign. My ex wasn’t happy with the wording of something, which meant a delay until my lawyer sent through a new copy with the change my ex asked for.

My ex finally signed the agreement two days before my flight to the US, and I mailed it to my lawyer the next day.

Unclear labeling meant my separation agreement could not be registered

Two days after arriving in America, my lawyer emailed me. She told me the agreement could not be registered because our signatures were over two separate pages and not all on the same page.

I’ll get back to what being registered means, but first, how did this happen?

Turns out, what I thought was a revised final version from my lawyer was a draft.

Her email didn’t say anything obvious about it being a draft. The document didn’t have some sort of watermark calling it a draft. The file name had draft in it, but that’s an easy thing to miss and not look at (especially when racing to get this signed in time).

My lawyer didn’t just send through a new final version because she was waiting on my ex to okay the version she sent through.

My ex wasn’t exactly the most compliant or proactive person going through the divorce process. I couldn’t believe my lawyer would leave an approval like that up to my ex before sending through a final version.

But she did, and he never emailed her. We just both signed it, and now I was left with a document that couldn’t be registered.

What did that mean in practice? According to my lawyer, an unregistered agreement meant I would need to raise court proceedings to get a decree to get the money I was owed if he didn’t comply.

Had it been registered, I wouldn’t need to go the court route; the obligations in the agreement would be automatically enforceable.

Do I understand what that means in practice? No. It’s a bit too technical for me.

What I was most concerned about was if our agreement was still legally binding despite the signatures being on two different pages. She said yes.

She didn’t clarify this is in her original email to me, though. She just said the document was not able to be registered. But by not specifying that the document was still legally valid (which is what I’m sure most clients would want to know), she left me freaking out for 24 hours before she replied to my questions.

The ‘strength’ of our agreement

I didn’t know what to do. Here I was at the start of my six weeks in America. It would be a challenge to try to get my ex to sign another agreement while I was an ocean away (and yes, we had to physically sign it, not digital option allowed).

At the same time, I felt uneasy about it being unregistered. If my ex didn’t comply, there was an extra step to go through to get him to comply. Dealing with an unknown legal process that would throw more confusing terms my way and take more time didn’t sound ideal.

My lawyer’s advice was to not say anything to my ex about it being unregistered and go ahead on the ‘strength’ of our agreement.

I was really struck by that phrase. Like my lawyer assumed writing out this document meant he would comply. I couldn’t believe someone who regularly speaks to divorcing couples would make assumptions like that.

In the end, I took her advice because there wasn’t any other viable option while in the US. I now had to wait for the house transfer to go through.

Expecting a six-week process but hearing nothing

Our separation agreement said the house transfer process had to be done within six weeks of signing, or my ex had to face financial penalties.

My divorce lawyer handed over the transfer process to a property lawyer in her firm. The property lawyer reached out to me just before I left for the US to ask for my ex’s lawyer’s name to keep the process moving. This was mid-November. I didn’t hear anything more from her for the rest of the year.

Before the end of the year, though, our mortgage lender sent us a form we had to sign.

I started panicking as it got toward late December as the six-week deadline was coming up.

I asked my ex if he had an update from his lawyer. He said no. Neither legal representative seemed to care about this six-week deadline.

An email two months after the deadline

I never heard from my property lawyer until the end of February in the new year. Two months after the six-week deadline.

I didn’t chase up my lawyer before then for a few reasons, but the most important being, our mortgage lender had gotten in touch, so surely something was happening?

When my lawyer got in touch, she said she would have the deeds for me to sign next week.

She also asked for my new address. I gave it to her, not asking why she needed it. I thought she just needed to know this information about her client.

Giving my ex my address without my permission

I went to my lawyer’s office the following week to sign the documents.

I was absolutely shocked and appalled to see my new address on a document my ex would be given to sign.

I did not tell my ex where I moved to. I didn’t feel comfortable with him knowing where I lived.

I asked about removing it, but was told that would have involved drawing up a new document I would have to come back to sign.

This process was now over two months delayed. As much as I didn’t want my ex to know where I lived, I reasoned with myself that where I was living was temporary. As soon as I moved again, he wouldn’t know where that was.

Being told unrealistic timescales

I asked the lawyer who was at the signing how long it would take to get the rest of the money I was owed. He said a week. (My ex had paid me part in cash already as per our agreement. The rest was coming as part of the transfer process.)

Ten days went by. No money. I asked for an update. My lawyer said she was only then sending the paperwork to my ex’s lawyer for him to sign.

At the end of March, my lawyer told me I could expect settlement to happen next week.

That next week, my ex signed the papers. He forwarded me an email from his lawyer that said it would be a few more weeks until settlement. Why did my lawyer say it would only take a week?

Waiting on a registered separation agreement that would never come

By April, I had had enough. I asked my lawyer what could we do to speed this along. This should have happened end of December.

My lawyer called me when she realized how frustrated I was. She realized a mistake she made at her end.

Apparently, the reason I didn’t hear from her until February was because she was waiting on a registered separation agreement to come through.

Turns out, the divorce part of the law firm did a terrible job communicating to the property side. The divorce side told the property side the separation agreement we signed was a draft version, and it was incapable of being registered. My property lawyer assumed that to mean we’d be signing a new agreement.

She was only told in February this was not the case.

I was furious. The lack of clear communication and assumptions on the part of the law firm had set this process back three months.

She offered me the chance to speak with her superior. I accepted. First off, he said house transfer processes usually take 12 weeks. So why in the world did my divorce lawyer put six weeks in my separation agreement?

He also did not offer any compensation or anything at all to make up for this misunderstanding that had delayed this process significantly. He just apologized.

I wasn’t having any of that. I needed something to make up for their failure.

I knew I needed a notary public (such as a lawyer) to sign my upcoming divorce application. I asked him to act as my notary public and sign it free of charge. He accepted and did sign it when the time came. (This was a service the law firm was originally going to charge me £150 + VAT for.)

Sending me less money than what I was owed

After a few more weeks of back and forth between lawyers and delays due to the mortgage lender, settlement finally happened in mid-May.

What was meant to be a six-week process in the end took six months.

My lawyer emailed me that day with confirmation of the funds she was sending me. It was a few hundred less than what I was owed.

It was less because she was charging me for legal fees, when our separation agreement stipulated that my ex would pay all legal fees related to the house. I was paying for the legal fees related to the divorce.

I didn’t realize the amount she was going to send me was minus legal fees. She didn’t tell me that before.

So only after setting up the transfer of funds, I had to tell my lawyer what our separation agreement, which I would have expected her to read more carefully, actually said.

She eventually sorted this with my ex’s lawyer and paid me the rest of what I was owed.

The disregard and disrespect of lawyers

What stands out the most about dealing with these lawyers is the overall disregard and disrespect they had in dealing with my divorce and house transfer processes.

They charged outrageous fees for their services, but had no sense of customer service.

I had to chase them to do their job and ask for updates.

They made assumptions about my situation rather than speaking to me.

They gave unrealistic expectations of timings continually throughout the process.

By stipulating a six-week house transfer process in the separation agreement, they created needless intensity and the potential for greater animosity in my divorce when that deadline was not met.

What angered me most of all, though, was both of my lawyers constantly spelled my ex’s name wrong in nearly every email or legal document they created.

I don’t like my ex. But he’s a human being with a name, and my lawyers’ constant misspelling of his name felt so disrespectful and careless. They’re tasked with dealing with people going through a difficult time, and they can’t even do the courtesy of ensuring they spell names right.

I told the Scottish legal system to be better in a previous post, and now I say the same to lawyers.

If your job is taking people through complex legal processes during difficult or stressful situations, show some care for the work you do and the people you’re doing it for.

The divorce series

This is post four in my series of divorce blogs, following my previous three:

In my next and final post, I will share how two companies made life difficult when trying to break up joint accounts.