Court Procedure

For the court procedure for a divorce in England and Wales, in addition to the application for divorce there are other documents you or your solicitor need to prepare. None of these are of great significance for the divorce itself though.

The divorce is a two-stage process. The Family Court will first grant a conditional divorce order and later make that order final. The court process starts when the Family Court gets the application and other documents and the fee of £593. It will then allocate a number to the case, open a file and send the application to your spouse by email, unless your solicitor asked the court to return the papers to them to send them to your spouse or to their solicitor direct.

Alternatively, you can now apply for a divorce jointly.

Sending the Papers to the Other Spouse

When your spouse receives the divorce papers, they have to fill in a form (the “acknowledgement of service form”) confirming that they have received the papers.  This may have done so online.  The court will send a copy to you or your solicitor. If your spouse does not return the form, it may eventually be necessary to arrange for another set of the documents to be served personally, unless you can prove in some other way that they have received the application and accompanying documents from the court. This may for example be done by a “process server” (often a private detective) giving it to your spouse personally. There are special rules for service abroad. If your spouse lives abroad and is unlikely to complete the acknowledgement of service form voluntarily, you must get legal advice.

There are now only very limited grounds on which someone could dispute a divorce, for example if you already divorced abroad or were never legally married. You might also be able to dispute a divorce application if the English courts do not have jurisdiction. You cannot dispute a divorce simply because you do not want to get divorced and give the marriage another try.

Most applications can now be made online, and solicitors must make applications online.

Conditional Divorce Order

You need to wait for 20 weeks from the date the application was processed by the court before you can take the next step. If your spouse has formally acknowledged that they received the divorce papers and does not dispute the application, you can then sign a statement in support, confirming that everything in the divorce petition is true, whether anything in the meantime has changed and so on. If you made the application online, you can do this online too. With that statement, you can apply for the conditional divorce order.

The court will only then look at your divorce papers and if it agrees that you are entitled to a divorce, the court will set a date for the conditional order to be made, mostly a few weeks later . This is only the first divorce order and you remain married until the final order.

If you applied for the divorce together, you can either apply for the conditional order together; or if one spouse no longer wants to go ahead with the joint application, the other spouse can continue with it on their own.

Final Order of Divorce

You can apply for the final order six weeks and a day after the date of the date of the conditional order.

Although the two waiting times (20 weeks and six weeks) add up to six months, in addition there is the time for the court to process the application for the conditional order, which can take several weeks. So a realistic time frame is perhaps nine months. During that time you can of course try to reach a settlement about financial issues or arrangements for your children with your spouse.

There is no legal requirement to have a lawyer and either or both parties can represent themselves. However, the procedure is complicated and it is best to make informed decisions. It is not difficult to get something wrong, which may on the face of it look easy, but will lead to unforeseen circumstances later on in your particular case. It is also easy to get a document wrong, which will then mean a delay of probably several weeks.


For advice on your specific circumstances contact Andrea Woelke who works as a consultant solicitor at Josiah-Lake Gardiner Solicitors: ring Andrea on 020 3633 0338 (+44 20 3633 0338 from abroad) or him (stating your full name, the full name of the other person in your case and your telephone number on which we can call you).

Please note that Josiah-Lake Gardiner Solicitors do not have a contract to take on cases on legal aid. To check if you may be able to get legal aid please go to this government website and contact a solicitor who has a legal aid contract.

14 February 2024 by Andrea Woelke