It has been mentioned before that divorce rates tend to go down during a recession.
So we probably shouldn’t be surprised that when people start to feel ‘economically more robust’ they may consider it time to terminate a relationship that isn’t going so well.
The Office of National Statistics tells us that there were 118,140 divorces in England and Wales in 2012 and that was up 0.5% over the previous year.
So a reasonable expectation is that as the economy improves we will see more divorces taking place.
A trend towards divorce at an older age is also noticeable with 15,729 people aged over 60 getting divorced last year.
15,210 men got divorced because of the unreasonable behaviour of their wives. 41,248 women got divorced because of the unreasonable behaviour of their husbands.
Either this means men are more tolerant of their spouse’s unreasonable behaviour or, as I suspect, men tend to behave more unreasonably than women!
In reality these statistics tell us little other than the woman is usually the petitioner; one spouse has to fulfill this role.
Regardless of the reason, one of the financial assets that often needs to be included in the divorce settlement is the accumulated pension funds of either spouse.
A copy of our booklet A Guide to Your Pension Sharing Order on Divorce is available from our website without charge.
The Informed Choice Pensions & Divorce Guide 2013-14
