Divorce survey discovers the ’11-year itch’

Monday, August 02, 2010 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Personal, Protecting your wealth | Tags: statistics, tax planning, survey, data, divorce, solicitors, pre-nuptials, pre-nups, matrimonial, family law

Grant Thornton’s annual Matrimonial Survey (now in its seventh year) is out and shows that people seeking divorce in 2009/10 have been all out of love – with men guilty of hiding the money. Here are some of the bulletpoints…

* Divorce is not so much a seven-year itch but an 11-year itch, with 70% of divorces occurring between 11-20 years of marriage.
* One in four UK marriages (25%) break down due to couples growing apart and falling out of love (up from 6% in 2009); 27% stated marriages broke down due to extra-marital affairs and 18% stated the cause was due to unreasonable behaviour.
* 13% of solicitors surveyed said that more husbands had petitioned for divorce than wives – up from 9% in 2008 and 2007.
* 83% of respondents believed that it was the husband who concealed assets in divorce proceedings, compared with only 2% of wives.
* Who gets the house, pension and family business? 94% of solicitors said that the main residence remains with the party with whom the children reside; 60% responded that the pension remains with the husband, while 44% responded that the family business remains with the husband.
* Pre-nups are on the rise for the fourth year running, with 63% of solicitors doing more work in this area. But there are still issues surrounding whether pre-nups are legally binding.
* Love across international borders is leading to more cases with an international element, as well as moves to allow EU couples to choose which national law applies to their divorce – the UK has not signed up to this, however, although 60% of respondents thought it would be beneficial to do so.

The survey canvassed the opinions of 90 of the UK’s leading family lawyers based on their client work in 2009. For the full report, you can download the Matrimonial Survey 2010.

For tax planning advice on this issue, contact us to see how we can help.

You might also like:
* Reasons for divorce vs state of the economy (infographic)
* The seven year itch (or 3.5 for Katie Price)
* Spies, divorce lies and Swiss bank accounts