Reaching a financial settlement in your divorce can be a stressful, arduous process. Whether or not you and your spouse agree matters privately or you have to ask a family judge to decide how to split your assets, you’ll end up with a legally enforceable financial order. Unfortunately getting the order does not always provide the finality that it should. What happens if the paying spouse disregards the order in whole or on part?
If there’s any suggestion that compliance with a financial order is in doubt, it’s important for the spouse to whom payments are due to act quickly to safeguard his or her future financial position. A spouse who does not comply with a financial order does not automatically face any sanction by the court. It’s up to the other spouse to proactively take enforcement action.
Our advice to clients who find themselves in this position is usually for them to approach their ex informally and encourage him or her to comply with the court order. If this fails, we can advise you on the legal remedies available to force your ex to fulfil their financial obligation to you.
My Ex Can’t Afford to Pay Me
Financial orders are geared toward providing certainty for the parties. Even where financial circumstances change dramatically (the paying spouse loses a job for example) he or she cannot unilaterally decide to ignore a financial order or change the amount payable. If you are not receiving the payments due and your ex fails to respond to requests for payment you may have to take enforcement action.
We look at what this involves below.
How Do I Enforce a Financial Order?
The ways you can secure money due to you under a divorce financial order are similar to the way other legal debts are enforced. The method you choose will depend on the nature of the debt. For example:
- Enforcing a lump sum order – At the time the original order was made an asset or specific amount of cash would have been identified to discharge the sum due. This may have been a property owned by your spouse. In such a case you can ask the court to place a legal charge on the property so that your ex will be unable to sell or raise a mortgage on the property without first discharging the debt to you. You may also be able to obtain an order for sale of the charged property if your ex refuses to pay the lump sum owed. If your spouse has a lump sum of money in cash it’s possible –by asking the court to intervene – to get the money released directly to you.
- Maintenance and other regular payments – If your ex begins to default on maintenance or other set payments you need to act quickly. After 12 months of incomplete or missing payments it becomes more difficult to secure any outstanding amounts. You can ask the court to put in place what’s known as an ‘attachment of earnings order’ where the money is automatically deducted from your ex’s wages at source. A ‘charging order’ over specific assets of a spouse who has not complied with a financial order may be another option. This will prevent your ex from selling the charged asset without first paying the debt owed to you. If your ex is self-employed there are other ways to enforce payment, including bankruptcy proceedings.
Where your spouse is unable to pay maintenance because they have lost their job the courts will usually approach the situation flexibly. Your spouse cannot simply stop paying maintenance altogether, but the court will usually allow them time to deal with missed payments and discharge arrears over a set timeframe.
You can either specify a particular method of enforcement or ask the court to decide which way to secure payment is most appropriate (this is done using Form D50K).
What If My Ex Ignores Orders?
Courts have a range of tools at their disposal when financial orders are ignored and enforcement proves difficult. In Michael v Michael, 2025, for example, the High Court appointed receivers over the defendant’s shares and commercial assets to ensure payment of more than £1million outstanding under the financial order. Because of the way the husband’s assets were held and his ‘very obvious refusal’ to cooperate in any way, the judge felt that normal charging orders or other such enforcement orders would be too complicated. In the circumstances a receivership order was the most sensible and appropriate way forward.
In extreme cases of non-payment the sanction of last resort is a prison sentence. One example of the prospect of prison being raised was the divorce case of Sir Frederick Barclay, the former owner of the Daily Telegraph. In 2022 the court heard that he had of his own accord halved the maintenance payments he had been ordered to pay his ex-wife. She succeeded in a request for him to face criminal charges for non-payment. Ultimately Sir Frederick was spared jail, largely due to age and health-related factors.
Enforcing Financial Orders Abroad
What happens if maintenance and other orders made in one country need to be enforced by the courts of another country? This could happen where assets are located overseas, or one spouse resides overseas.
Various international protocols exist to make cross border enforcement of financial orders more straightforward. In relation to maintenance orders these agreements include the Lugano Convention 2007 and the 2007 Hague Convention.
Lugano is an EU-based treaty which enables comprehensive mutual enforcement of judgments across the EU. Post Brexit UK citizens wishing to enforce orders in the EU and elsewhere must rely on country – specific reciprocal agreements on enforcement of maintenance orders under the REMO (Reciprocal Enforcement of Maintenance Orders) scheme. Enforcement is more complex if the country you wish to enforce an order in is not one which the UK has a REMO understanding with. Jurisdictions in this category include the UAE and Russia.
Comment
Enforcement proceedings should only be taken when you have failed to persuade your former spouse to comply with his or her obligations. Even if your spouse claims that their financial circumstances have changed to such an extent that they cannot comply with the financial order, it will still be difficult for them to get the court to change the order. Remember that there will be a cost in terms of court charges and lawyer fees if you do take any kind of enforcement action. While you may be able to recover these sums from your ex, the money may ultimately have to come from the same pot of money available to satisfy the order.
Additionally, the fact that enforcement proceedings have had to be taken in the first place could be a sign that there are insufficient assets available to satisfy your claim.
So you should proceed with caution and carefully consider whether there is a realistic prospect of recovering monies due through further legal action. An experienced family lawyer will always factor in the possibility of non- compliance at the time of negotiating a settlement or finalising a court order. If there’s a likelihood that enforcement may be necessary, taking out an injunction at that point may be considered.