How long does a divorce take in the UK?

The 26 week statutory minimum in England and Wales

Two fixed periods sit inside every divorce in England and Wales, and no agreement between spouses removes them. Section 1 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 says a party may not confirm they want the application to continue until 20 weeks have passed from the start of proceedings, and that a divorce order is in the first instance a conditional order, not to be made final until 6 weeks have passed from it.

Together that is 26 weeks. The Lord Chancellor can lengthen or shorten either period by order but may not set periods totalling more than 26 weeks, so the figure is both today’s wait and the statutory ceiling. Section 1(8) lets the court dealing with a particular case shorten either period.

Section 3 then bars an application for a divorce order until a year has passed from the date of the marriage. Separation and annulment are available inside that first year; divorce is not.

The measured times, 27 weeks to conditional order and 39 to final order

The statute sets the floor, not the outcome. The Ministry of Justice family court statistics for January to March 2026 record what cases in that quarter actually took.

Measure	Application to conditional order	Application to final order
Median, all cases	27 weeks	39 weeks
Mean, all cases	39 weeks	67 weeks
Mean, sole applications	37 weeks	58 weeks
Mean, joint applications	30 weeks	48 weeks

The averages pull apart because cases still finishing under the pre-2022 law inflate the mean, which is why the Ministry of Justice calls the median the better indicator of current proceedings. Both means fell year on year, by 3 weeks to conditional order and 7 to final order. The quarter carried 28,632 applications, down 5% on the same quarter of 2025, and 27,320 final orders, up 24%.

Sole and joint applications, a 10 week gap

Of those applications, 20,673 were sole and 7,959 joint, 72% and 28% of the total. The gap between the two means was 7 weeks to conditional order and 10 weeks to final order.

Both routes carry the same 20 week and 6 week waits, so the gap is not statutory. It sits in the steps a sole application adds, being service on the other spouse, the acknowledgement, and the chasing when neither arrives.

Stage by stage, application to final order

gov.uk sets the application fee at £628 and states it is not refunded once the notice of issue is sent. The stages that follow carry a 14 day acknowledgement window and the 20 week wait, which runs from the court issuing the application rather than from the day it was filed.

Stage	What has to happen	What it adds to the clock
Application	Sole or joint, £628 fee	No published time between filing and issue
Acknowledgement of service	On a sole application the other spouse responds	14 days
The waiting period	Confirmation the application should continue	20 weeks from the start of proceedings
Conditional order	The court reviews the application	Several weeks, no figure published
The second wait	Runs from the conditional order	43 days
Final order	Ends the marriage	Applied for within 12 months of the conditional order

The second wait is where gov.uk is more precise than the Act. The Act says 6 weeks; the guidance on applying for the conditional order puts it at 43 days, being 6 weeks and 1 day.

Court fees at each stage in England and Wales

The rest of the family court fees sit in the EX50 schedule, and each attaches to a step that also costs time.

Step	Fee
Divorce or civil partnership application	£628
Amending the application	£61
Filing an answer to dispute the divorce	£240
Application for judicial separation	£426
Bailiff service of a document	£47
Financial order by consent	£62
Financial order other than by consent	£321

What pushes a divorce past 26 weeks

Four things account for most of the distance between the 26 week floor and the 39 week median.

• Service. On a sole application nothing moves until the other spouse returns the acknowledgement within 14 days. Where they do not, bailiff service at £47 is the next step.
• A dispute. A spouse needs a genuine legal reason, and gov.uk states that not wanting a divorce, or wanting to delay it, is not one. Filing an answer costs £240 and takes the case off the administrative track.
• The court’s own review. gov.uk says it may take several weeks and publishes no number for it.
• The finances. The money order comes before the final order, and has no published processing time either.

The financial order and the 12 month final order deadline

Ending the marriage settles nothing about money. gov.uk states that a legally binding arrangement over money and property must be applied for before the final order, and where the terms are already agreed the document recording them is a consent order.

The Ministry of Justice counted 12,646 financial remedy applications in the quarter, 73% uncontested and 27% contested, and publishes no timeliness figure for any of them, so the money stage has no measured length.

The final order carries its own deadline. It must be applied for within 12 months of the conditional order, and after that the applicant has to explain the delay. If a sole applicant never applies, the other spouse can, but waits an extra 3 months on top of the standard 43 days. The financial side, not the divorce itself, is the part that most often needs a solicitor.

Divorce in Scotland, no waiting period and no conditional order

Scotland runs on different statute, different vocabulary and no clock. Section 1 of the Divorce (Scotland) Act 1976 gives two grounds, irretrievable breakdown and an interim gender recognition certificate. Breakdown is established by adultery, behaviour such that the pursuer cannot reasonably be expected to live with the defender, 1 year of non-cohabitation with consent, or 2 years without it. Those periods were cut from 2 and 5 years in 2006, when desertion was repealed as a ground.

There is no bar on raising an action in the first year of marriage, no waiting period between raising it and the grant of decree, and no conditional order at all. The court grants a decree and issues an extract. The parties are pursuer and defender, the money is financial provision rather than a financial remedy, and the action runs in the sheriff court or the Court of Session.

The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service runs two procedures. Simplified procedure is open only where the ground is 1 or 2 years of separation or an interim certificate, there are no children of the marriage under 16, no financial matters to sort out and no other proceedings running. Everything else goes by ordinary procedure.

Court and step, from 1 April 2026	Fee
Sheriff court, simplified application	£156
Sheriff court, initial writ in an ordinary action	£191
Sheriff court, affidavits in an undefended ordinary action	£82
Sheriff officer service in a simplified divorce	£15 plus the officer’s own fee
Court of Session, simplified application	£162
Court of Session, writ originating any other family action	£213

The £156 and £191 come from the sheriff court fees order and each covers the extract decree. The affidavit and service charges are separate, from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service fee list, and the £162 and £213 from the Court of Session order.

What does not exist is a Scottish duration figure. No public body publishes an average time from raising an action to decree, and the 2023-24 civil justice statistics are paused, so there is nothing to set beside the 39 weeks measured in England and Wales. 7,488 divorces were granted in 2022-23, 60% of them simplified. A firm on the Glasgow list, regulated by the Law Society of Scotland rather than the Solicitors Regulation Authority, can estimate only from its own caseload.

Divorce in Northern Ireland, a 2 year bar and 44 weeks to a decree

Northern Ireland never adopted no-fault divorce. Article 3 of the Matrimonial Causes (Northern Ireland) Order 1978 still requires proof of one of five facts behind irretrievable breakdown, being adultery, behaviour such that the petitioner cannot reasonably be expected to live with the respondent, desertion for at least 2 years, 2 years of separation with consent, or 5 years without it. Desertion survives here, having been abolished in Scotland and in England and Wales.

Article 5 bars any petition until 2 years have passed from the date of the marriage, twice the England and Wales bar. Firms on the Belfast list, regulated by the Law Society of Northern Ireland, petition under this Order rather than the 1973 Act, so the marriage date decides whether a case can start.

The decree nisi and decree absolute survive too. Article 3(6) says the absolute is not to be granted before 6 weeks from the nisi unless the court fixes a shorter period, and nidirect puts the practical rule at 6 weeks and 1 day, with the respondent able to apply only 3 months after that, and only with the court’s permission.

Step, from 1 April 2026	County Court	High Court
Sealing the petition	£326	£326
Filing an answer or reply	£163	£163
Personal application, matrimonial interview	£81	£81
Setting the petition down for trial	£407	£488
Application for ancillary relief	£407	£488
Certificate of decree absolute	£123	£123

The fees order carries scheduled rises for April 2027 and April 2028. The timings come from NICTS judicial statistics for 2025, which put the average from issue to decree at 44 weeks in the County Court, down from 47 in 2024, and 59 weeks in the High Court, down from 61. The County Court granted 1,242 decrees, the High Court 827 from 2,326 petitions received, and 2 years of separation with consent was the most common reason at 39% of High Court petitions.