Disbursements are the out-of-pocket costs your lawyer pays to third parties on your behalf and then charges back to you. They are not the lawyer’s fee for their own work. When you file for divorce, the court charges to accept the papers, a process server charges to deliver them, and a valuer charges to value a property. Your lawyer pays those bills as your case moves, then lists them on your invoice as disbursements. Understanding the difference between this and the professional fee is the key to reading a legal bill without confusion.
This guide explains what disbursements are, the common ones you will see in a divorce, why they sit in a separate column on your bill, and how GST fits in. For how firms structure the fee side of the equation, read alongside our guide to divorce and family lawyer fees.
Disbursements versus professional fees
Every legal bill has two halves, and it helps to picture them as two different pockets.
Professional fees are what you pay the firm for its own labour: the hours a lawyer spends advising you, drafting the application, preparing affidavits, negotiating, and appearing in court. This is time, and it is where most of the cost of a contested matter lives.
Disbursements are different in kind. They are real money the firm pays out to someone else, such as the court, a valuer or a courier, because your case required it. The firm is not profiting from a disbursement; it is advancing a cost on your behalf and recovering it. That is why the two are shown separately, and why they behave differently when it comes to negotiation, which we come to below.
The common disbursements in a divorce
Most family matters draw on a familiar set of third-party costs. You will not incur all of them, and a simple uncontested matter incurs few, but these are the ones to recognise.
- Court filing fees. The Family Justice Courts charge to file the originating application and for various steps along the way. These are fixed by the court and identical for everyone.
- Commissioning of affidavits. An affidavit must be sworn or affirmed before a commissioner for oaths, who charges a small fee per document and per exhibit. A contested matter with several affidavits accumulates these.
- Process server. Where court documents must be formally served on your spouse and cannot simply be handed over, a process server is engaged to effect and prove service.
- Search and copying fees. Official searches, for example to confirm property ownership, carry a charge, as does the photocopying and printing of the bundles a court matter generates.
- Expert and valuer fees. Where an asset must be valued or an issue needs expert evidence, the valuer or expert charges their own fee, which the firm passes on. In a matter turning on a business or a disputed property, this can be significant. The role these professionals play is set out in our guide to expert witnesses in a divorce.
- Agency reports. Where the court calls for a report from a relevant agency, for instance on arrangements for a child, the cost of obtaining it is a disbursement.
Deliberately, we put no figures on any of these. Court fees are set by the court and change; third-party charges vary with the provider and the work. What matters is that you recognise each item and can ask what it is for.
Why they appear separately and are generally non-negotiable
A properly drawn bill keeps disbursements in their own column rather than folding them into a single number. There is a good reason for this. A disbursement is a pass-through cost: the firm paid the court, the valuer or the process server a real amount, and it is recovering exactly that. Separating them lets you see precisely where your money went and check that each item corresponds to something the case actually needed.
It also explains why disbursements are, for the most part, not negotiable. You cannot haggle down a court filing fee, which is set by the court. A valuer quotes their own price. A commissioner for oaths charges a standard amount per affidavit. Because the firm is not marking these up for profit but passing on what it was charged, there is little room to negotiate, and a firm that discounts them is simply absorbing a cost. The professional fee is where negotiation over value properly happens; the disbursement column is largely fixed by outsiders. This distinction runs through our wider guide to costs in divorce proceedings.
What you can control is being told about disbursements early. Ask, at the outset and whenever the case shifts, which disbursements the next stage is likely to bring. A void surprise on the final bill is nearly always a failure of communication rather than an unavoidable one.
How GST fits in
Goods and Services Tax adds a further layer to a legal bill, and it does not apply uniformly. Where the firm is registered for GST, its professional fees carry the tax. Disbursements are less straightforward: some attract GST and some do not, depending on the nature of the charge and how it is billed. A court fee behaves differently from a valuer’s invoice.
The practical point is not to guess. Ask the firm to explain which items on your bill carry GST and which do not, and whether the figures quoted to you are inclusive or exclusive of it. This matters most when you are comparing what one firm quotes against another, because a GST-inclusive figure and a GST-exclusive one are not the same number even when they look similar.
Reading disbursements on your bill
When your bill arrives, work through it in the order the money moved. Identify the professional fee, the charge for the lawyer’s own work, then read down the disbursement list and match each item to a step in your case. A filing fee should correspond to a document filed; a valuer’s fee to a valuation you knew was being obtained; a process server’s charge to service that had to be effected formally.
If an item is unclear, ask. You are entitled to an itemised breakdown, and a reputable firm will provide one without resistance. The way your engagement letter set out how the firm would bill you, including how disbursements would be handled, is the reference point for all of this, and our guide to legal fee agreements and engagement letters explains what that document should have told you before any charge was ever incurred.
Understanding disbursements will not lower your bill on its own. But it turns an opaque total into something you can read line by line, question where it does not add up, and pay knowing exactly what each part of it bought.
