Thinking about divorcing? A beginners' guide

• It takes ages. It’s best to accept that you will have quite a few months of not really knowing what the future will look like. This is very stressful, particularly if you have kids. But there’s often no alternative, and banging your head against a brick wall increases the stress, rather reduces it.
• Chances are it will take two or three stages - agreeing to separate, moving out and coming up with a temporary plan, and then divorce. Each person will need their own time to get used to each stage before you can move on.
• It’s not one process, but three. People think of divorce as ending the marriage, dealing with issues like how to divide the home and money or property, and sorting arrangements for the children (sometimes people call this custody, contact and residence but these are the old names) all in one go. But these are really three different processes, dealt with separately, but often going on at the same time. 
• If you have children, the first thing you will want to get clear in your head is how you will arrange things for them, in the short and the long-term. We have another guide that shows you how to agree where your children will live and when they will see their other parent help guide you through.

• Life is not like American TV.  Few people can afford, financially or emotionally, to fight a legal battle. Some people think they need to get solicitors involved right away or go to court in order to ‘protect themselves’ and ‘get what they are entitled to’, but this is a costly and stressful misunderstanding of the system. It’s best to agree as much as you can, either on your own, using family mediation, or (if you can afford them) having solicitors negotiate for you. Going to court is very much a last resort. In fact most people can’t go to court about a family matter without showing that they have explored family mediation first.

• Family mediation aims to help you agree how you will live (and parent) apart. You can use it to help you agree how you will divorce, divide money or property, and/or how you will both continue to care for your children. This year there is an extra reason to try to come to agreements rather than go to court over it - the court continues to have a huge backlog of cases caused by the pandemic and understaffing so going to court will likely take longer than ever before. We have another guide to using family mediation to organise things after a break-up to help you understand what it involves.

• You’re very unlikely to have to go to a court hearing. If you can come to agreements about children, money and property, it all happens on paper (or online), which is good because going to an actual court hearing is more expensive and not a fun day out. 

• 'No fault’ divorce became law in April 2022. You no longer need to find a reason to blame each other to get divorced. You can apply online or use a paper application form. 

• There are no rewards for good behaviour or punishments for bad. What happens to the money isn’t affected by who had an affair, or who did what hurtful thing.  'Past behaviour' is listed as one of the criteria for deciding how money is divided, but generally speaking, it doesn't work like that. It only counts if it has been really, really bad or if someone is trying to hide money and assets.

• There are no set formulas for working out who gets what. You need to try to agree between you on what happens to the money or the home (on your own or with the help of a mediator or solicitor). But it's not about who put what in, but about what any children and you both need for the future. If you do take it to a court hearing, that is what the court will look at.

April 2023