Unfortunately, no matter how much you want one, there’s no such thing as quick divorce in England and Wales.
You can achieve a ‘quicker’ divorce but that depends on the cooperation, attitude and responsiveness of you and your former partner and also on the complexity of your divorce case.
The usual time frame for a divorce where both people agreed on everything takes around six months to complete. This starts from when the divorce petition is issued to getting the Decree Absolute.
But even if you and your partner comply, agree and respond to everything quickly, delays at your local Divorce Centre or at Court can still make the whole divorce process take longer.
There are certain parts of the divorce process that cannot be skipped. They are:
- Issuing the Divorce Petition
- Completing the Acknowledgement of Service Form (This must be done by the person responding to the Divorce Petition. If they don’t complete the Acknowledgement of Service, you will need to prove that they have received the sealed divorce petition and not responded. This can be done in a few different ways. If you cannot prove it, you might need to get a Process Server to serve the divorce petition on them personally and use that as proof of service. This will definitely delay the divorce.)
- Making the application for the Decree Nisi
- The pronouncement of Decree Nisi
- Making the application for Decree Absolute. You can only do this six weeks and one day after the pronouncement of Decree Nisi. (There are some extraordinary circumstances where we can apply for this time limit to be waived, but these are very rare)
- Issuing the Decree Absolute.