With divorce becoming not only more and more accepted, but more and more common in the UK, it’s worth looking at the divorce statistics for England and Wales to see just how prevalent divorce is in the UK.

Incredibly the rates of divorce declined in 2006 when compared to the total of the married population. The divorce rate is now at its lowest in the UK since 1984, which is very surprising.

I wouldn’t start rejoicing just yet though as one in five people who divorced in 2006 had already been divorced in the past. The rate of recurring divorcees has doubled in the past twenty five years.

69% of divorces were at the request of the wife, with the most common reason of course being the ‘easy way out’ clause of unreasonable behaviour.

The divorce rate is now 1 in 3, with a total of 132,562 divorced in 2006 within England and Wales.

It’s good news for some people though as 3,831 law firms now deal with divorce in the UK. That’s a lot of money taken from couples for no reason. If only they could work this out between them.

I personally paid over £3,000 for my divorce. I know my ex-wife’s legal fees were around the £2,000 mark. If everyone who got divorced in the UK in 2006 had a similar fee to pay their solicitors then a total of £662,810,000 was paid out by couples to solicitors in 2006 just to get divorced.

That’s an awful statistic. £662.8 Million pounds was paid to solicitors for divorces in 2006.

Clive Bellmore