Divorce Records UK: England and Wales from 1858 to Today

Divorce records for England and Wales fall into two groups. Historic divorce case files from 1858 onwards are kept at The National Archives (TNA) in Kew in series J 77, with indexes in J 78; the files from 1858 to 1916 can be viewed online on Ancestry, and later files can be found by name in TNA’s free Discovery catalogue. For a divorce granted in the last few decades, the official proof is the decree absolute (called a final order since April 2022), and a copy is ordered from HM Courts and Tribunals Service through GOV.UK.

Divorce in England and Wales: the key dates

Where you look depends on when the marriage ended. The main turning points are:

Before 1858: church courts could separate a couple or annul a marriage; a full divorce needed a private Act of Parliament.
11 January 1858: the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 took effect and a civil Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes took over (from 1873, the Supreme Court).
1858 to 1923: a husband could divorce for adultery alone; a wife had to prove adultery plus an aggravating fault.
1923: a new Matrimonial Causes Act made adultery by either spouse a ground on its own.
1937: the grounds were widened to include desertion, cruelty and incurable insanity.
1 January 1971: the Divorce Reform Act 1969 came into force and irretrievable breakdown became the basis of divorce.
6 April 2022: the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020 introduced no-fault divorce and renamed the decree nisi a conditional order and the decree absolute a final order.

Before 1858: separations and Acts of Parliament

Church courts could grant a divorce a mensa et thoro, which was a legal separation on grounds of adultery or life-threatening cruelty. The couple lived apart but neither could remarry while the other was alive. The same courts could also declare a marriage null, for example because it was never lawful in the first place. Appeals went to the archbishops’ courts of Canterbury and York, then to the High Court of Delegates (to 1834) and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (1834 to 1858).

A full divorce needed a private Act of Parliament. TNA’s research guide says around 320 such Acts were passed between 1700 and 1857, and only four were granted to women. The records are held by the Parliamentary Archives, not at Kew. Couples who could not divorce sometimes signed a private deed of separation, and some of these were enrolled on the Close Rolls (C 54), which are at TNA.

Divorce case files 1858 to 1972 at The National Archives

The civil divorce court created a file for each petition, whether or not a divorce was granted. These files are TNA series J 77, and the index books are J 78. A file may contain the petition and the response, the marriage certificate, birth certificates of children, a record of the court process and, roughly from 1870 to 1937, copies of the decrees. Files after 1938 may contain photographs.

What survives

1858 to 1927: almost every file survives.
1928 to 1937: about 80% survive. These are the suits filed in the Central Registry in London; the files of cases started in the new district registries were destroyed.
1938 to 1972: very few files survive, a small sample for each year.
After 1972: files have not been transferred to TNA.

The J 78 index books cover 1858 to 1945 and 1950 to 1958; no index books survive for 1946 to 1948, although brief details of petitions for those years are in receipt books in the same series. Entries are arranged by the first letter of the petitioner’s surname and give the year and the file number.

Free and paid ways to search

Discovery (free): TNA’s catalogue lists J 77 files by the names of the petitioner, respondent and any co-respondent, including unsuccessful petitions.
Ancestry (subscription): digitised J 77 files are available in a collection titled England & Wales, Civil Divorce Records, 1858-1918. TNA describes the online files as covering 1858 to 1916.
At Kew: files not online can be ordered and read in the reading rooms with a free reader’s ticket. See our guide to family history at The National Archives, Kew.

Step by step

Find the marriage first and confirm the full names from the certificate; see our guide to searching the GRO index and FreeBMD.
Search Discovery with the full name in quotation marks, for example “John Williams”, and limit the results to the reference J 77. Try the wife’s married surname, her maiden surname and any spelling variants.
For 1858 to 1916, also search the Ancestry collection, which shows the whole file.
Check the catalogue entry for the type of case: divorce, judicial separation or nullity.
Order a copy from TNA or view the file at Kew.
Look for newspaper reports of the hearing in the same months, and for a later remarriage in the GRO index.

A purely illustrative example: a 1905 file might give the date and place of the marriage, the children’s names and the couple’s addresses, which is often enough to find them in the census.

How to get a copy of a decree absolute or final order today

The proof of a modern divorce is the decree absolute or, for applications from 6 April 2022, the final order. How you apply for a copy depends on what you know.

You know the case number: apply to the Divorce Service Centre if the number has 16 digits, or otherwise to the court that handled the divorce. Give your name and address and the case number. GOV.UK lists a small fixed fee for this; check the current amount before you apply.
You know the court but not the case number: give the approximate date. The court searches 5 years either side of it, or the last 10 years if you cannot give a date. A fee is charged for each 10-year period searched; GOV.UK and form D440 have not always shown the same amount, so check the current fee before you apply.
You do not know the court: apply online or on form D440 to the Bury St Edmunds Divorce Unit, which searches the central index of decrees absolute. A fee is charged for each 10-year period searched. You receive a certificate of search with a copy of the decree, usually within 45 days of payment, or a ‘no trace’ certificate.

For the central search you need the full names of both parties and the years to be searched; the date of the marriage and of the decree nisi or decree absolute speed it up. Spell the names exactly: the form warns that a misspelt name can lead to an unsuccessful search. For a divorce from before about 1937, the J 77 file at TNA is usually a better starting point, because it may already contain the decree.

Newspapers: reports of divorce cases

Newspapers reported divorce hearings, sometimes at length, often giving occupations, addresses, the grounds and the names of witnesses. TNA points to The Times archive for newsworthy divorce cases from 1785 to 1985; it is a subscription resource, and some public libraries offer access to it.

Local and regional papers are searchable on the British Newspaper Archive, which is also available through Findmypast. Search the surnames with words such as “divorce court” or “decree nisi” and the year of the petition. Our guide to the British Newspaper Archive for family history explains search techniques. Press reports do not always get names and dates right.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Scotland has its own law and records. Before 1830 divorces were handled by the Commissary Court of Edinburgh, from 1830 by the Court of Session, and from 1984 mainly by the sheriff courts. The case papers are held by National Records of Scotland (NRS), and records less than 100 years old are closed. A statutory Register of Divorces has been kept since 1 May 1984, and extracts from it can be ordered through ScotlandsPeople; for a copy of a recent divorce, GOV.UK points to the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service.

Northern Ireland also has a separate system. To find out whether a decree absolute was granted, you apply to the Matrimonial Office of the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service; the application form is on the Department of Justice website (justice-ni.gov.uk).

Why divorce matters in family history

Remarriage: a second marriage that seems impossible, because the first spouse was still alive, is often explained by a divorce. A divorced person should appear as such on a later marriage certificate rather than as a bachelor, spinster, widow or widower, although people did not always tell the truth.
Name changes: after a divorce a woman might return to her maiden name, use her married name or take a new partner’s name without marrying. Children could change their surname too.
Children: divorce files may name children and state who was to have custody. That can explain why a child appears with grandparents or with a different surname in the next census.
Probate: a divorce can explain a will that leaves out a spouse; see our guide to probate records in England and Wales.

One common pitfall: the GRO marriage index does not record divorces, so a marriage found in the index tells you nothing about how it ended. You need a divorce source to prove it.

Divorce, Polish ancestors and Polish citizenship files

For families with Polish roots, divorce records matter in two ways.

As a genealogical clue. A J 77 file, like a marriage certificate, can give a Polish-born spouse’s birthplace, father’s name, religion and date of marriage. Polish names may be spelled in several ways: search Discovery for the Polish spelling, the phonetic English spelling and any anglicised name the family later used (our guide to anglicised Polish surnames lists the common patterns). If a Polish-born man who settled here after 1945 had married in Poland before the war, check how that first marriage ended. Where the first marriage was in Poland, the next record to look for is the Polish marriage entry and any marginal note of divorce or annulment; our guide to divorce and annulment records in Poland explains where those are kept.

As proof in a Polish citizenship or civil registration file. The Polish consulate asks for a document confirming your marital status, which for a divorced applicant means the decree absolute or final order, apostilled and translated by a sworn translator (see UK documents for Polish citizenship). If a marriage has to be entered in the Polish civil register (transcription), the divorce may also need to be registered. According to the Polish consulate in London, divorce judgments from courts of EU states from 1 May 2004, and from courts of non-EU states from 1 July 2009, are recognised directly and only need registering at a Polish civil registry office (urząd stanu cywilnego). Older foreign divorces need a recognition case before a Polish district court (sąd okręgowy). Check how this applies to your decree with the consulate or a Polish lawyer; see also Polish citizenship for British citizens. This is general information, not legal advice.