Divorce is a very personal process.

Yet whilst the circumstances of each marriage break up are individual to the spouses involved, the law which governs the administrative way in which they part is, by its very nature, uniform.

The Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020 heralded the introduction of ‘no-fault’ divorce, meaning that people wanting an immediate end to their marriages no longer had to blame their partner’s conduct (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2020/11/contents).

However, in theory it also made the divorce process longer than before because it included a 20-week ‘cooling-off’ period once an application was submitted.

Figures published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) show that it now takes 70 weeks on average from an initial application to a final order being made (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/family-court-statistics-quarterly-october-to-december-2024/family-court-statistics-quarterly-october-to-december-2024#main-points).

That duration is not just due to the time taken to obtain the requisite orders which legally bring a marriage to a close.

It is a fact that although the tension once generated by alleging spousal misbehaviour has been removed from the process, tension often still remains in discussions about how to divide assets.

The MoJ data underlines that issue.

In the last five years, the number of uncontested financial remedy applications has fallen by close to two per cent but those proceedings which are disputed rose by just over 46 per cent.

There are those men and women who want to air arguments in court about how cash, property, pensions and other possessions or assets should be split.

However, more and more people realise that doing so means a lengthy and likely costly process, the final terms of which may not be favourable, given the discretion afforded to family judges about how they apply the relevant law to the facts set before them.

Another complication for some people is the opening up of cases heard in family courts to the media.

From the end of January this year, the transparency project was rolled out to every family court and included financial remedy proceedings (https://www.judiciary.uk/guidance-and-resources/financial-remedies-transparency-pilot-notice/).

The desire to resolve matters quickly (whilst still having an opportunity to raise their arguments) and without featuring on the news pages means that a greater proportion of couples now pursue what is known as Non-Court Dispute Resolution (NCDR).

One form of NCDR is a private Financial Dispute Resolution hearing(FDR), which enables separating spouses to benefit from having independent input to assist in negotiating the division of assets. It is increasingly common for such a process to be agreed outside the issue of financial proceedings.

During such sessions, both parties make submissions to the evaluator (normally, a barrister or retired family judge) who then gives their opinion as to what the possible outcome should be. Quite often that advice unlocks the parties resolving the case.

Despite private FDR hearings having immense merits and proving to be far more popular, not everyone is exactly in favour.

One recent media report suggested that the practice was effectively creating a “two-tier” system, whereby wealthier couples could resolve their disputes about finances privately, leaving those with fewer assets to either take their place in the queue for courts or opt for another NCDR method, like mediation (https://www.thetimes.com/article/5d22a308-0d49-42cf-afb1-d1f0c2117e01?shareToken=6f57d47df08b44512b61d4f1d249276f).

I wish, however, to disagree.

In my experience and that of my colleagues, a private FDR is not necessarily the sole preserve of the very rich. It is instead increasingly becoming the norm in cases involving much more modest combined wealth.

As one might expect, there are the costs of the evaluator to pay for. With the process being ever increasingly popular, evaluator costs have become extremely competitive, both in London and regionally, with parties agreeing to share the costs being the norm.

Taken as a one-off event, it might seem relatively expensive but when weighed against the costs, uncertainty and potential delays associated with court proceedings, a private FDR is believed by a growing number of people to offer a better, quicker route to resolution and chance to start the next phase of their lives constructively.