No Fault Divorce: One Year On

With the one-year anniversary of No Fault Divorce coming into effect on 6 April, we explain how we are bucking the trend by encouraging clients to save money and take a more ‘agreeable’ route to divorce.

With on average 42% of marriages ending in divorce and the average cost of divorce estimated at £14,500+VAT as well as continued extreme delays in family court proceedings, we are questioning whether other lawyers are failing to advise clients about more conciliary routes towards divorce to resolve their marital disputes.

Since the No Fault Divorce legislation came into effect last April, our team are seeing increasing numbers of clients take up our ‘Agreeable’ model, where one of our specialist family lawyer and a relationship coach work together with the divorcing couple to reduce legal costs and the emotional impact and to keep the dispute out of the courts. In a time when many are being crippled by increased cost of living expenses, this fixed fee model saves the average couple save thousands of pounds (as much as 37%) on an average divorce.

Our client Justin and his now former spouse came to our Agreeable team to help legally sort out their finances, as they had already agreed to co-parent their children, who are all either financially independent or teenagers. Their finances involved selling a jointly owned property as well as how they work out their pension sharing and child support.

Justin comments:

“I cannot stress how much I think that this solution is perfect for people separating on good terms, but I also think the approach could help people who are struggling to come to an agreement.”

Gemma Hope, Director, comments:

“We are 12 months on from the ‘no fault’ divorce legislation that helps make the process a little easier during which for many is already a stressful, and expensive period of their lives – the end to their marital relationship. However, some lawyers working with people getting divorced still seem to be thinking more about their profits rather than their principles and are continuing to drive people down the court route.  We know not all divorces can be settled through non court processes, but surely, we should be advising those couples where this is the best option to do this, for their sake as well as the court system that is reaching crisis point.”

What do the statistics show?

Divorce applications since No Fault Divorce became law have increased by nearly 16% YOY:

Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/family-court-statistics-quarterly

During Resolution’s recent ‘Good Divorce Week’ (November 2022) they reported that official figures show that private children’s cases are taking nearly a year to reach conclusion, six weeks longer than the previous year, with financial remedy cases taking even longer. This is having a huge impact and a survey of Resolution members found:

• 20% said court delays caused clients to rely on benefits
• 34% said they’d referred a client to a counsellor or therapist to help them cope with the stress of ongoing court delays
• 90% said court backlogs were causing additional and unnecessary stress and pressure for clients.

Find out more

For further information about Agreeable, click here.