Separating couples are being urged to use mediation instead of ending up in courtroom battles after a list of England and Wales divorce hot spots was revealed.
The list shows that almost 3,000 couples filed for divorce at Birmingham Civil Justice Centre and Family Courts last year. This was followed by Weston-super-Mare County Court with almost 2,500 couples and Leicester County Court with over 1,800. These figures were the highest for any part of the country, outside of Greater London.
The statistics have been published as the Ministry of Justice takes steps to ensure that couples who do sadly make the decision to separate give consideration to using mediation – a quicker, simpler and more effective way of agreeing how they divide their assets or make arrangements for their children, which avoids the often divisive effect of the courtroom.
The MoJ has already announced that it expects to spend £25 million to support publicly-funded mediation this year and new laws are now being created to ensure that all separating couples must consider mediation to sort out the details of their divorce, before they decide to take their dispute to the Courts.
