The new no-fault divorce law has prompted a “flurry” of break-ups, with 3,000 applications for separation in a week, new figures have shown.

Under the old rules in England and Wales, anyone who wanted a quick divorce had to accuse their partner of either desertion, adultery or unreasonable behaviour.

If not, they either had to spend two years apart if both partners agreed, or five years if one of the couple objected to the separation.

However on April 6, the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020 came into force, allowing married couples to divorce without assigning blame for the breakdown for the relationship for the first time. 

Couples ‘holding out’ for no-fault divorce

Family court data relating to divorce is usually published quarterly by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). 

However Hannah Gumbrill-Ward, a solicitor in the family team at Winckworth Sherwood, said that Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service – an executive agency of the MoJ – confirmed during an industry event that it received about 3,000 applications for divorce since the new law was introduced last Wednesday.

According to the latest family court statistics, published at the end of March, in the last quarter of 2021 there were around 1,890 petitions per week. That was a fall from the third quarter, where that number was around 2,132 per week. 

Across the year, there were 107,724 divorce petitions filed in 2021, with an average of about 2,072 a week. In 2020, that number was 111,996, equating to around 2,154 per week.