Thanks for the welcome Moderator Terpe.

I am dual citizen British and Canadian living in Canada.

I typed out a long answer to your question on why not go the divorce route, but decided it was too detailed for a public forum. The short answer is I had promised her parents that I would never divorce their daughter, and was clearly told by the Priest in our talks beforehand that divorce is not acceptable, so I decided to take the honourable route as much as possible which was letting the ex do the deed and pay for it.