Conditional & final orders

divorce paperwork with a 'sign here' sticker attached to it

How a divorce works is that it ends in two stages, not one, and the gap between them is where people get confused about whether they're actually divorced yet.

The conditional order is the court saying you're entitled to a divorce. The final order is the divorce. Between them sits a wait of at least 43 days.

If you were divorced before April 2022, or you're reading old paperwork, these had different names. A conditional order was a decree nisi. A final order was a decree absolute. They are the same things, but they were renamed in April 2022.

Need help? Our divorce support page lists numbers to call and organisations you can reach out to.

What a conditional order actually does

A conditional order does very little when it comes to getting divorced, but that’s kind of the point of it.

It's the court's confirmation that it's satisfied you're entitled to a divorce - that the application is properly made, the court has jurisdiction, and nothing is wrong with the paperwork. A judge checks, and the order is pronounced.

You are still married after a conditional order. You cannot remarry. Your financial rights and obligations to each other are unchanged. If one of you died the day after, the other would still be your widow or widower.

What it does do is start the clock on the final stage, and open the door to having a financial order approved - which is the part that actually matters for most people.

Applying for it

You can apply once 20 weeks have passed since the court issued your divorce application. Not 20 weeks since you submitted it, it’s since it was issued.

The form is a D84, and if you're using the online service it's built into the process. You confirm that what you said in your divorce application is still true.

The court then reviews it, and this can take several weeks. It's an administrative queue rather than a legal waiting period, which is why the same stage takes different lengths of time for different people in the same month.

What a final order does

This is the main one. When the final order is made, the marriage is over. You are divorced, you can remarry, and the legal relationship between you ends.

It's also the document you'll be asked to produce for the rest of your life - by a registrar if you remarry, by a lender, by the passport office. It's worth putting somewhere you'll find it. Discover what to do if you can’t find your divorce records here.

The 43 days

You must wait at least 43 days - 6 weeks and 1 day - after the date of the conditional order before you can apply for the final order.

The extra day really does count. Six weeks to the day is too early, and an application made a day short will be rejected.

Once you do apply, the final order itself is usually quick; days rather than weeks. The waiting was the 43 days, the processing afterwards is administrative.

Find out more about how long a divorce takes here.

Sort the money side out first

If you want a legally binding financial arrangement, you must apply for it before you apply for the final order.

This is the single most consequential sentence on this page. Ending the marriage before the finances are settled can cost you rights that only exist while you're married - pension entitlements chief among them, but also how assets pass if one of you dies before it's resolved.

Applying for the final order is the one step in this process where being efficient can genuinely cost you money. It's also the step that feels most like progress, which is exactly why people rush it.

The deadline they don’t mention

You're expected to apply for the final order within 12 months of the conditional order.

You can still apply after that, but you'll have to give reasons for the delay, and a judge will consider whether to allow it. "We were sorting out the finances" is a perfectly ordinary reason - but it does mean an extra step, an explanation, and a wait while somebody reads it.

If you're deliberately holding off while a financial settlement grinds on, know that the 12-month mark is coming and it's better to be ahead of it than to explain yourself afterwards.

Your ex can finish it without you

On a sole application, if the applicant doesn't apply for the final order within 12 months, the respondent can apply themselves after a further three months.

So if you started the divorce and then stopped, the person you divorced can complete it, on their timetable, at a moment that might suit their finances rather than yours. Fifteen months of inaction hands them the decision.

Joint applications

If you applied jointly, you finish jointly. After one of you applies for the final order, the other has 14 days to complete their side.

If they don't, the first applicant is offered the option of switching to a sole application instead. It's a sensible fallback, but it adds time, so it's worth a text message rather than an assumption.

There's no such thing as a divorce certificate

People ask for one constantly, registrars included, and it doesn't exist in England and Wales.

The document is the final order, or the decree absolute if your divorce was before April 2022. That's what anyone asking for a divorce certificate actually wants. If you've lost it, you can get a copy.

Old names and new names

  • Decree nisi is now a conditional order.

  • Decree absolute is now a final order.

  • Petition is now an application. Petitioner is now the applicant.

The old terms still turn up everywhere - in solicitors' letters, on older paperwork, and in most of what you'll find written about divorce online, because much of it predates 2022. They mean the same things.

If you're in Scotland or Northern Ireland

Different systems and different terminology - Scotland doesn't use conditional and final orders at all. Everything on this page is England and Wales.

Last reviewed: September 2026. This page explains the process in England and Wales — it isn't legal advice about your situation. Timing decisions around the final order can affect your finances, and that's worth taking advice on.

Sources: