Summary:
- 102,678 divorces were granted in England and Wales in 2023, and only around 1 in 10 divorcing couples formally address pension assets in their financial settlement, despite courts being legally required to consider them since 1995
- A Legal & General survey of 2,945 divorced UK adults found women’s household income falls by an average of 50% in the year after divorce, compared to 30% for men
- A no-fault divorce takes a legal minimum of 20 weeks to conditional order, but the current median is closer to 28 weeks, and 65 weeks on average to a final order once finances are involved
Divorce is rarely just an emotional event. It’s also one of the largest financial shocks most people will experience, and one that many go through without a clear picture of what’s actually at stake.
102,678 divorces were granted in England and Wales in 2023, the latest full year for which the Office for National Statistics has published data. Behind each of those numbers is a household splitting its income, its property, its debts, and its future retirement savings into two.
Here’s what the data says actually happens, financially, and where the most common mistakes happen.
Pensions are the most overlooked asset in divorce
For many couples, a pension is the single largest asset either partner owns, often larger than the family home once you account for the mortgage. And yet it’s the asset most likely to be ignored entirely during a divorce settlement.
Since the Pensions Act 1995, UK courts have been legally required to consider pension rights as part of a financial settlement. In practice, that rarely happens. A study by the Nuffield Foundation, published November 2023, found that pension sharing was included in only around 10% of all divorces. A separate Legal & General survey of 2,945 divorced UK adults, published April 2025, put the figure at 13%, with 29% of respondents saying they actively turned down a share of their partner’s pension. Women were more likely to waive their pension rights than men (28% versus 17%).
The same Legal & General research found that, at the point of divorce, women had saved an average of £23,000 into their own pension, compared to £60,000 for men. That gap, sitting untouched in a settlement that doesn’t address pensions, becomes permanent.
If you’re trying to understand how UK pensions work before you’re in the middle of a divorce, our guide to UK personal pensions is a good place to start, and it’s a far easier conversation to have before a relationship breaks down than during one.
The financial hit isn’t shared equally
Divorce doesn’t affect both partners’ finances in the same way, and the gap is significant.
According to the same Legal & General survey (Opinium fieldwork, October-November 2024), women’s household income falls by an average of 50% in the year after divorce, compared to 30% for men. 24% of women said they struggled financially post-divorce, compared to 16% of men. 19% of women said they struggled to meet essential costs, compared to 10% of men. Women were also twice as likely as men to cut their working hours to manage childcare (14% versus 7%).
This is self-reported survey data rather than administrative income records, so it should be read as a strong directional signal rather than an exact measurement. But it’s consistent with a wider pattern: a study by the Nuffield Foundation found that women, particularly mothers and older women, were financially worse off than men for up to five years after divorce, even after re-partnering.
The same Nuffield study found the median value of assets divided in a divorce was just £135,000, and 23% of divorcing people ended up with nothing, or only debts, once assets were split. Half of all divorcees received under £50,000.
Later-life divorce carries its own risks
Divorce among people aged 50 and over now accounts for 17% of all UK divorces, and about one in three divorcing couples includes someone in that age bracket, according to the Legal & General research cited above.
It’s worth noting here that the Office for National Statistics hasn’t published age-specific divorce data since 2019, so there’s no current official figure on whether “grey divorce” is actually rising as a proportion of all divorces. What we do have is later-life-specific survey data: L&G found the average income drop for over-50 divorcees was £7,753 a year, around 23% expected a lower retirement income as a result, and only 8% had consulted a financial adviser about the split. 11% used property sale or equity release specifically to fund the cost of the divorce itself.
The timing matters. A divorce at 35 leaves decades to rebuild a pension or savings position. At 58 it leaves considerably less runway, which is exactly why pension division becomes more consequential, not less, later in life.
The actual cost of getting divorced
There’s no single official figure for what a UK divorce costs, because it varies enormously depending on how contested it is.
Court fees are set nationally: the divorce application fee is currently £612, rising to £628 from July 2026. Beyond that, costs depend on how much needs resolving. The Legal Services Board surveyed over 1,500 law firms in 2024 and found the average price for a lowest-complexity divorce was around £882. Complex, contested cases involving disputed assets can run into many thousands of pounds, and the same research found prices for complex scenarios had risen by over £5,000 since 2020.
A widely-quoted figure of roughly £14,500 per couple in total divorce costs traces back to a single Aviva survey from 2018 and hasn’t been updated since. It’s worth treating as dated rather than as a current benchmark.
What actually reduces cost, according to the Nuffield Foundation’s research, is how the couple resolves things. Only around 1 in 10 divorces go to court to settle finances. 40% of people used a lawyer for advice without going to court, mediation-based settlements typically run around £2,000-£3,000, and more than 1 in 10 people sought no professional advice at all.
Housing is rarely a clean split
Splitting a home isn’t just about who keeps the keys. Academic research published in the journal Population Studies, using long-run UK household panel data, found that separated individuals are nearly twice as likely to move house as married individuals, and that the destinations differ by gender: separated men more often move into homeownership again, while separated women more often move into social housing, with the effect persisting over the long term.
The Nuffield Foundation’s study found that 46% of homeowner divorcees transferred ownership of the family home between themselves, rather than selling it outright, often to keep stability for children living there.
If housing and a shared financial life are part of what you’re currently navigating as a couple, whether that’s working through the split or simply understanding your joint position beforehand, our guide to managing joint accounts covers how to structure shared finances in a way that keeps both partners’ individual positions visible.
Prenups exist, but coverage is inconsistent
Estimates of how many UK couples have a prenuptial agreement vary widely depending on the survey, from around 10% to 21% of married couples. The most methodologically transparent of these, a Marriage Foundation survey of over 2,000 ever-married adults published in 2021, found that around 1 in 5 weddings since 2000 started with a prenup, up from roughly 2% forty years earlier.
It’s worth knowing that prenups and postnups aren’t automatically legally binding in England and Wales. There’s no statute making them enforceable, and courts retain discretion. The leading case, Radmacher v Granatino, decided by the UK Supreme Court in 2010, established that a fairly negotiated prenup should carry significant weight and generally be upheld unless it would be unfair to do so. It remains the standard UK courts apply.
How long a divorce actually takes
Since April 2022, England and Wales have operated a no-fault divorce system, with a legal minimum of 20 weeks from application to conditional order. In practice it takes longer. The most recent Ministry of Justice data, covering October to December 2025, shows a median of 28 weeks to conditional order and 38 weeks to final order, with joint applications resolving somewhat faster than sole applications. Where financial settlements are contested, the process typically extends well beyond the divorce itself being finalised.
What this means if you’re navigating it
A few practical takeaways from the data:
Pensions need to be on the table from the start. Given how rarely pensions are addressed in divorce settlements, and how large the resulting gap can be, this is the single highest-leverage thing to get right. If you’re going through a divorce, ask specifically whether pension sharing has been considered, don’t assume it’s automatically part of the conversation.
Get a clear picture of individual finances before things get difficult. The data on financial secrecy suggests many couples already operate with incomplete visibility into each other’s money. Whatever your circumstances, understanding your own individual financial position, separate from the household total, puts you in a stronger position whatever happens.
Later-life divorce needs its own financial plan, not a generic one. With less time to rebuild savings, over-50s divorcing need to weigh pension division and retirement income specifically, not just the immediate cost of separating.
Professional advice tends to reduce both cost and risk. The data shows most divorces resolve without going to court, but a meaningful minority of people go through the process with no advice at all. Given how much can be lost through an overlooked pension or an unclear settlement, the cost of advice is usually small relative to what’s at stake.
The bottom line
Divorce reshapes a household’s finances more than most people expect going in, and it doesn’t reshape them evenly. Pensions get overlooked more often than they should. Women’s income tends to fall further than men’s. Later-life divorces carry retirement risk that’s easy to underestimate in the moment.
None of this makes it something to fear financially. It makes it something to go into with clear eyes about where the money actually goes, and what’s worth protecting deliberately rather than leaving to chance.
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