It’s now easier for people to end unhappy marriages. But divorce remains too costly and penalises those with less assets argues the International Longevity Centre, the leading think tank on our changing demographics.

News headlines often report a spike in divorce inquiries in January as the holiday season can add financial, social and emotional strains on relationships. However, while more people, especially older married couples, are deciding to divorce it remains a challenging and expensive process, with long-term impacts on people’s finances. 

• The latest ILC analysis shows between 2001 and 2021, the proportion of people over 50 who were divorced or separated increased by 54%

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) there were 113,505 divorces granted in England and Wales in 2021, a 9.6% increase on 2020 – and that amongst opposite-sex couples, women are more likely to petition for divorce (63.1%) compared to men (36.9%). However, the financial consequences of divorce are more likely to make women think twice about starting divorce proceedings. 

Divorce a costly business – in 2018 Aviva estimated this to be an average of £14,500 per couple and today the legal costs of a contested divorce can be as much as £30,000. But there are also significant implications for people’s longer-term income, due to complex regulations around access to pension assets on divorce. Often, men hold greater pension wealth which can lead to divorced women facing a major loss of retirement income.

With growing numbers of people over 50 getting divorced, and a cost-of-living crisis impacting people’s ability to save, there is a danger that older women who divorce risk facing financial hardship without anticipated shared retirement income. 

Most people pay a fee for relationship counselling which means that the actual and/or perceived cost of services can be a significant barrier to access for those on low incomes, and especially those in debt. And more people are getting divorced without receiving any legal or financial advice. This is likely to result in people with fewer assets being further disadvantaged longer-term, as they may not reach fair financial agreements. 

David Sinclair, ILC’s Chief Executive said:

“Public policy must adapt to our modern lives. There’s now far less social pressure to stay in relationships that no longer work for us or to get married in the first place but these shifts in attitudes aren’t reflected by our legal, tax or pensions systems.

It’s not surprising that as we live for longer, we may not want to stay in the same relationship forever. It should be much easier for people to access low or no-cost advice and support around relationship breakdown and divorce on the high street. We also must stop penalising people who divorce. Breaking up is hard but feeling financially trapped in an unhappy marriage is harder still.”  

Ends

Media contacts

ILC – Press@ilcuk.org.uk or +44 (0) 7736 124 096. Spokespeople are available on request.

Notes

In July, the ILC, the UK’s leading authority on demographic change, embarked on a programme of work to develop a new Longevity White Paper, identifying the changes we need to make to grasp the opportunities of population ageing, and longer lives.

The report One hundred not out: A route map for long lives sets out the challenges facing ageing communities across the UK and includes a mix of next-step solutions, bolder ideas, and international examples that we believe could work to tackle them. The report is broken down into 11 chapters, each of which relates to a certain challenge our increasing life span will pose for government, industries, our society and individuals.

The ideas and solutions included in each chapter are far from an exhaustive list. If anything, we want to build upon them. We aim for these to be a conversation starter and to encourage further debate, investment and action. While we hope there are some ideas that there is a general agreement with, we also hope that there are some that provoke debate.

You can download the full report here as well as a shorter ‘In brief’ document which is not meant as a traditional executive summary but is intended to give a flavour of a few of the ideas in the full document.

Sources

ONS, November 2022 Divorces in England and Wales 2021

Aviva, January 2018  Family Finances Report – Winter 2018 The hidden cost of divorce and separation

British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy Relationship counselling (bacp.co.uk)