A divorce is a legal process used by married people to terminate their marriage. In England and Wales, divorce is allowed under the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020 on the ground that the marriage has irretrievably broken down without having to prove fault or separation.

You can apply for a divorce online in the UK in one of two ways. You can apply yourself on the UK government portal or hire an online divorce service to handle the administration for you. If you are applying on your own, you will need both you and your former spouse’s full names and addresses, your original marriage certificate, and proof of any name changes if you’ve changed your name since separating from your partner.

For applying for divorce online, you will need both you and your former spouse’s full names and addresses, your original marriage certificate or a certified copy of it, and proof of any name changes if you’ve changed your name since separating from your partner.

The court fee for applying for a divorce online in England or Wales is £593. Financial assistance may be available to cover this fee if you are on benefits or a low income, subject to your savings.

The costs for us to manage your divorce from start to finish, including dealing with all the paperwork and the courts, is £299 for an individual application and £599 for a couples application. You can find out more about the two services here.

This differs from company to company, but at Easy Online Divorce, we provide a complete service handling your divorce application from start to finish, ensuring that your application is error-free when submitted to the court and dealing with all court queries as we take you through the divorce process.

This is exactly the same service you would expect from a traditional high street solicitor; however, our service is much quicker (typically, our service is twice as fast) and much more cost-effective (expect to save at least £750 each).

All you need to do is fill in our simple 5-minute questionnaire and provide a copy of your marriage certificate.

Please be aware that not all online divorce services offer the same service. Some only prepare paper applications which is a much slower process than fully online, and some only draft the application leaving you to deal with the courts.

If you are unsure, it’s best to call before purchasing to understand the service on offer fully. You can contact us on 0204 586 6114 or book a free consultation here.

Most online divorces in England and Wales take a minimum of 7 months to be concluded and finalised, including the 20-week reflection period, 5 weeks for the approval of a conditional order, and a further 6 weeks before applying for a final order.

First, the bad news, divorce lawyers in the UK can charge anywhere from £125 to £400 per hour for their services. In London, the hourly rate can be even higher.

Now the good news, most separating couples don’t need expensive solicitors. If you and your ex are in agreement or you at least want to reach an agreement, you don’t need to pay a solicitor by the hour, and you can use a fixed-price service.

Easy Online Divorce provides the same high-quality service as a traditional high-street solicitor but twice as fast and for less than half the cost. We will manage your divorce from start to finish, including dealing with all the paperwork and the courts, for £249 for an individual application and £489 for a couples application. You can find out more about the two services here.

You can use our fast and easy online divorce service if you can answer yes to the following questions:

• Do you or your spouse live in England or Wales?
• Have you been married for more than 12 months?
• Do you and your spouse agree to divorce?

For most couples, there’s no need to hire expensive solicitors. Using an online divorce service is often the best option if you’re worried about mounting legal fees.

Solicitors are great, and we have some wonderful solicitors and paralegals working at Easy Online Divorce, but we have them working on the legal stuff, and we leave the customer service and administration to customer care professionals who are, let’s face it, generally better at dealing with people. Not only does this mean that we provide an outstanding legal service with top-notch customer service, but our service is at a lower cost for you because we don’t charge you solicitor rates for dealing with phone calls and sending emails like traditional solicitors do.

Yes. Online divorce is a legally binding way to end a marriage.

The main difference between online and traditional divorce is that the process happens virtually through electronic communication instead of having a family law solicitor do it for you.

No, the fee we charge is fixed, and we have no hidden costs.

There is a mandatory court fee of £593 to divorce in England or Wales. This doesn’t mean you have to attend court – it’s to pay for the court’s staff to process your divorce.

If you earn a low income, or receive benefits, you can apply for help with fees.

The only other cost you may incur is to get a replacement marriage certificate if you don’t have one.

With the couples managed service, we actively engage your spouse, involving them in the divorce process. This can speed up the divorce because your spouse can anticipate the arrival of the divorce papers and ask us if they have any questions on how to respond.

Separating couples also find that this service helps reduce tension and the risk of conflict because we act as an intermediary in dealing with their divorce questions.

The service is also particularly beneficial for couples seeking clean breaks or financial consent orders. Our impartiality helps build trust, which is essential for couples to make a fast and smooth financial agreement.

It’s very rare for a divorce application in the UK to be rejected. This typically only occurs if you’ve provided false or incorrect information on your application, or failed to provide the correct supporting documents.

You can pay for your legal fees in divorce by being solely responsible for them, splitting the cost with your ex, or getting your spouse to pay for them. You will need to pay our fee and the court fee at the start of your service. You can pay using a Visa, Mastercard, American Express credit or debit card. We also take PayPal payments. PayPal will also offer you instalment options if you are eligible at our checkout.

We provide a 14-day cooling-off policy in line with the Consumer Contracts Regulations. If you change your mind within this period, we’ll refund your full amount, less a £35 administration fee for banking charges incurred in processing your refund. However, once we’ve prepared your divorce application within this period, refunds are not issued.

You can find all of our terms and conditions here.

The biggest risk to using an online divorce service is picking the wrong ones and trusting a company that can’t or won’t provide you with the best service and charges you more than you expect.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has begun investigating firms offering legal services, including online divorces. We fully support the CMA’s investigation, as it aligns with our commitment to providing transparent, secure, and fair online divorce services.

Our best advice is to do your homework before you put your trust in an online service provider. Read their reviews on third-party websites such as Trust Pilot (we are ranked #1 in the UK) and call them to get a feel for them (our number is 0204 586 6114).

Make sure that their prices shown online are the same prices they quote over the phone and that they disclose all fees, including court fees (unless you’re exempt due to a low income, you will have to pay the £593 court fee).

You can learn more about our transparent pricing and commitment to your security and privacy here.

You will save hundreds and often thousands of pounds. Easy Online Divorce is cheaper and faster because the central aim of our business is for our clients to divorce. Our prices are fixed, and we have no hidden charges. It isn’t in our interest to delay your divorce in any way.

In contrast, solicitors charge by the hour and make significant money from conflict between divorcing couples.

Now we are not suggesting that traditional solicitor firms are bad people. But what we are saying is that solicitors are not incentivised to process your divorce quickly – the opposite is true. In fact, a top solicitor said to me once, “It isn’t in our interest to resolve everything in one email.”

Fortunately, most people only go through divorce once. The downside to this is that you don’t know what to expect. If this is you, think back to when you bought a house. Remember how stressful the solicitors made your house purchase? That is what you want to avoid with your divorce.

We have lovely solicitors and paralegals working at Easy Online Divorce, but we have them working on the legal stuff, and we leave the customer service to our customer care team. This means you get a faster, less stressful service. Even better, it costs you less because we don’t charge you solicitor rates for answering emails and phone calls.

Expect to save at least £750 each on the cost of your divorce.

It takes less than 5 minutes to complete the online questionnaire we use to prepare your divorce application. And you don’t need to take time off work or organise childcare to visit solicitors. You can do everything from the comfort of your home.

We automatically update you as we progress your divorce, saving you from wasting precious hours on the phone with solicitors or the courts.

All you will need to do as your divorce progresses is sign the odd document digitally, which takes seconds.

No, not at all. If one of you lives in England, then the English courts have jurisdiction, and you can use our service. We have clients with spouses all over the world.

Easy Online Divorce is the trading name of Easy Online Divorce Ltd, registered in England and Wales under Company Number 12864461.

Our Registered Office is 85 Great Portland Street, London, England, W1W 7LT.

Our trading address is in beautiful Cornwall: Easy Online Divorce, Mor Workspace, Treloggan Lane, Newquay, TR7 2FP.

Our VAT Registration Number is GB 399 1615 53 (all our prices are inclusive of VAT)

James Brien founded Easy Online Divorce to reduce divorce’s financial and emotional impact on families by helping couples spend less on their legal fees and reducing conflict between them.

You can find out more about James on LinkedIn and his books on Amazon.

Yes, it would be very unusual to attend court for a divorce. You would only find yourself having to attend court if you couldn’t agree on your financial arrangement and you or your spouse took the matter to court for a judge to agree.

You can find out more about financial agreements here.

Yes, you can divorce in England or Wales if you were married abroad, as long as England or Wales is you or your spouse’s permanent home.

Services like Easy Online Divorce guide you through the divorce process, completing your application correctly to avoid delays and penalties and answering any questions you may have. We don’t provide legal advice, but having dealt with thousands of divorces, we understand how to take couples through the divorce process in the quickest and least stressful way possible.

Rather than learning legal jargon or worrying about missing court emails and correspondence, you can leave it to us to deal with so you can get on with better and more enjoyable things in your life.

Divorce has far-reaching implications, so before applying for a divorce, it’s worth understanding your financial rights and obligations, considering the impact on your children and where they will live, and having a think about the potential emotional impact.

Here is a must-read to understand all about financial agreements known as consent orders.

If you are worried about the emotional impact of divorce and how to deal with it, you might find the Mindful Divorce book helpful, which you can order here from Amazon.

It is always best to notify your spouse of your intention to divorce so that they can anticipate the paperwork and respond to the court. To get a divorce, you must know your spouse’s address. If you don’t, you can find out about our tracing service and other solutions here.

Remember, we offer a free 15-minute consultation to understand your situation and signpost you in the right direction. You can book a call with us here or call us on 0204 586 6112.

A divorce is a multi-step process that can be grouped into three main stages. The three mains stages are:

1. Applying for divorce and the acknowledgement of service.
2. Applying for the conditional order – a document from the court permitting you to divorce (previously known as the decree nisi) and;
3. Applying for the final order – the legal document that ends your marriage (previously known as the decree absolute).

For a detailed step-by-step walkthrough of the process, you can read our guide for an individual application here and our guide to the couple’s application here.

In April 2022, the UK introduced “no-fault” divorces, allowing couples to divorce without having to blame the other party or prove that they had been separated from each other for a period of time.

Before this, you had to blame your spouse for the breakdown of your marriage by providing examples of their unreasonable behaviours or adultery or prove you had been separated for two years (if you both agreed to divorce) or five years if your ex didn’t agree to a divorce.

As you can imagine, this was a stressful process, and the courts constantly challenged the reasons, often causing delays.

Now with a no-fault divorce, you simply need to sign a statement that your marriage has irretrievably broken down, which makes the process more straightforward and kinder to the participants.

A ‘no-fault’ divorce is a type of divorce where neither spouse has to prove the other did something wrong to cause the marriage to end. Since April 2022, all divorces in England and Wales have been no-fault.

To divorce under the no-fault rules, you only need to sign a statement that your marriage has irretrievably broken down, making the process much more straightforward.

Yes, you can still apply for a divorce if your spouse disagrees, but the process might be more complicated and lengthy. Since the introduction of the no-fault divorce in April 2022, your ex no longer has any legal basis to defend against or stop the divorce except for one technicality.

The technicality is about jurisdiction. If your ex can prove that the English courts don’t have justification, they could stop the divorce in England and Wales. However, if you or your spouse live full-time in England or Wales and consider it your home, you can divorce in the English courts.

But just because your ex can’t legally stop the divorce doesn’t mean they can’t make it difficult. Once the court has reviewed an application for divorce, they will issue the divorce petition to your spouse and an acknowledgement of service form to return. Your ex must respond to the acknowledgement of service for the divorce to proceed.

There are a few ways to deal with this; however, all of them will delay your divorce significantly, so it is always best to speak to your ex and try to reach an agreement about getting a divorce.

Once a final order or decree absolute has been issued, the divorce is final and cannot be reversed, but you can remarry the same person.

A divorce ends a legally valid marriage, whereas an annulment declares that the marriage was never legally valid or it was legally valid, but because of a specific reason, it is ‘voidable’.
A marriage was never legally valid in the following situations:

• You are closely related to the person you married.
• One or both of you were under 18 (or under 16 if the marriage occurred before 27 February 2023).
• One of you was already married or in a civil partnership.

A marriage is ‘voidable’ if:

• You haven’t had sexual intercourse with the person you married since the wedding (this doesn’t apply for same-sex couples).
• You did not properly consent to the marriage; for example, you were forced into it.
• The other person had an STD (sexually transmitted disease) when you married.
• Your spouse was pregnant by someone else when you got married
• One spouse is in the process of transitioning to a different gender

Note that your marriage legally exists until you annul it using one of the above reasons.

No. It is common misunderstanding that divorce deals with the split of marital assets, such as houses, but this is not the case. The divorce process only deals with your marriage, not your finances.

The only way you can make your financial agreements legally binding and protect your finances in the future is by getting a consent order.

Take a look at our financial service packages for more details on financial orders.

A consent order is a legal document that confirms your agreement on financial settlements, such as property, pensions, and assets. It’s important to prevent future financial claims.

A “clean break” clause in your consent order will also protect you from future financial claims from your ex-spouse.

Go here for a comprehensive guide to consent orders. This is a must-read for anyone going through a divorce.

A clean break order is a type of court order that prevents either party from making financial claims against the other in the future, once their divorce or dissolution has been finalised.

Read our guide here to find out all about clean break orders, and if you need one… spoiler alert: You do!

Your rights depend on various factors, including your financial contributions to the marriage, your future earning capacity, and the best interests of any children. Legal advice is recommended for these matters.

Property division is decided either by mutual agreement between the spouses or by the court if an agreement can’t be reached. It’s usually divided fairly but not necessarily equally.

For a comprehensive guide to working out a fair financial settlement, go here.

You can apply to the court to decide on financial matters, but it’s usually recommended to try mediation first.

If you can’t agree on childcare arrangements, you may need to go to court and have a judge decide based on the child’s best interests. This process can be very stressful for parents and the children, so the courts always prefer that parents agree on arrangements between themselves unless it puts the children at risk.