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Divorces in England and Wales: 2022

ended 22. February 2024

The ONS has just published data about the level of divorces in 2022. Key points below, full report >> here <<. Any thoughts, send them across ASAP as this story is BREAKING.

  • There were 80,057 divorces granted in England and Wales in 2022; a 29.5% decrease compared with 2021 (113,505 divorces) and the lowest number of divorces since 1971.
  • In 2022, the median duration of marriages that ended in divorce (the mid-point of all durations) was 12.9 years for opposite-sex couples and 7.5 and 6.3 years for male and female same-sex couples, respectively; the longest seen in our timeseries.
  • Divorce rates in 2022 were 6.7 for men and 6.6 for women per 1,000 of the male or female married population (including both opposite-sex and same-sex couples); lower than rates in 2021, with 9.5 for men and 9.4 for women per 1,000 of the married population.
  • There were 525 civil partnership dissolutions (including same-sex and opposite-sex couples) in 2022; a 22.8% decrease compared with 2021 (680 dissolutions) and the lowest recorded since 2010.
  • The number of divorces and dissolutions granted during 2022 may have been affected by the introduction of the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act, which came into effect on 6 April 2022; this act introduced new mandatory waiting periods at important stages, and other changes including allowing couples to end a partnership jointly, and the removal of grounds for divorce (also known as “Facts”).
  • There were 7,394 divorces and 54 dissolutions (9.2% of all divorces and 10.3% of all dissolutions) granted under the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act; 28.8% of these new-law divorces, and 61.1% of new-law dissolutions, were granted under joint application.

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Samuel Mather-Holgate
Independent Financial Adviser at Mather and Murray Financial
We have to remember this data comes a year after a bumper year for divorces following the breakdown of many relationships in lockdown. A longer trend contributing to fewer divorces, not necessarily bearing out in the current figures, is the ever reducing number of marriages.
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Tahina Akther
Barrister and Co-Founder at Wildcat Law
Too poor to divorce!
What is interesting in the data is that we are seeing some of the lowest divorce rates in recent years, we have to go back to 2018 when we had circa 90,000 divorces to find figures as low. One reason is that in 2020 we saw the lowest rate of mariages since 1838 due to Covid, this in turn has meant fewer very short marriages and hence why the average duration of marriage before divorce has risen.
However we are also increasingly seeing people that would like to divorce but are being forced to remain together because they cannot afford to live apart. Even normally comfortably off middle class couples are finding it impossible to split equity and set up separately, with significantly higher mortgage rates and the cost of living.
This is also translating through to situations where couples do divorce have unrealistic expectations regarding financial settlements. We have seen a rise of enquiries related to "hidden" assets.
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Peter Marples
Director at Fair Result Limited
Divorces may have been at the lowest rates since 1971, however what we have to remember is that the number of marriages during COVID also fell drastically to the lowest levels since 1838. Given the cost pressures of divorce, rising interest rates, cost of living increases, it has to be considered that many couples out there may be contemplating divorce but may be unable to afford the actual process and the uncertainty of being able to financially sustain themselves post-divorce. If couples are remaining together in an unhappy marriage due to the risk of getting divorced we have to look at the sector to provide an alternative way of facilitating couples to divorce to mitigate the additional issues that could prevail in a family setting.