How to find your divorce record
Nobody keeps their final order somewhere sensible. It goes in the drawer with the boiler manual, or into a box that moved house twice, or it was never posted on because the solicitor had it and the solicitor has since retired. Then eight years later you need it - for a remarriage, a mortgage, changing your name after divorce - and it is nowhere.
The record still exists. Courts don't throw these away. Getting hold of a copy is a form, a fee and a wait, and how big each of those is depends on one thing: whether you can name the court that dealt with your divorce.
Need help? Our divorce support page lists numbers to call and organisations you can reach out to.
The short version
If you know the court: apply to that court directly for a copy. It's the cheapest and quickest route.
If you don't know the court: apply to the Bury St Edmunds Divorce Unit, which searches the central index. It costs £89 for each ten-year period you want searched, and takes around 45 days from when they receive your payment.
Either way you'll need names, and ideally a date. Everything below is the detail.
First, work out what you're actually looking for
Three different documents get called "the divorce papers", and people ask for the wrong one all the time.
The final order - called the decree absolute before April 2022 - is the document that ends the marriage. This is almost certainly the one you need. It's what a registrar wants before they'll marry you again, and what a lender or solicitor asks for as proof.
The conditional order - the decree nisi before April 2022 - is the interim stage. It doesn't prove you're divorced, because at that point you weren't yet.
Your divorce date is the date on the final order. If all you need is the date rather than the certificate itself, you still have to find the record to get it - there's no separate lookup.
There is no such thing as a "divorce certificate" in England and Wales, though plenty of people ask for one. If someone asks you for a divorce certificate, they mean the final order.
Find out more about getting a copy or your final order or decree absolute.
Route one: you know which court
Apply to that court for a copy. You'll need:
Both full names as they were at the time of the divorce
The case number, if you have it - anything with the court's letterhead on it will usually have it
The approximate date of the final order
If you have the case number, this is straightforward. If you know the court but not the case number, they can still search their own records - the fee on form D440 for that is £61 for each ten-year period, against £14 when you can quote a case number. That £47 difference is worth twenty minutes going through the box in the loft.
The fee for the copy itself is subject to change - confirm the current figure with the court, as court fees change.
Route two: you have no idea which court
This is most people, and it's fine. Since divorce administration was centralised, the Bury St Edmunds Divorce Unit holds a central index and will search it for you.
What it costs: £89 for each ten-year period searched.
How long it takes: usually around 45 days from the date they receive your payment. Not 45 working days, but don't plan a wedding around the fast end of it either.
How to apply: online, or by post using form D440, which is free to download from GOV.UK. Send it to:
Bury St Edmunds Divorce Unit 2nd Floor, Triton House St Andrews Street North Bury St Edmunds IP33 1TR
You can also email bse.decreeabsolute@justice.gov.uk.
How to pay: debit or credit card - you ask them to ring you for the card details rather than writing them on the form - or a cheque or postal order made payable to HM Courts & Tribunals Service.
Check what to do if you don’t know which court your divorce went through.
What to put on the form
The more of this you can supply, the better your chances of a hit first time:
Your full name and your ex-spouse's full name, spelled exactly as they were at the time
The date and place of the marriage
The date you separated
When and where the divorce petition or application was filed, if you know
The case number, if you have it
The date of the conditional order or decree nisi, and which court made it
When it was made final
If you don't give a date, the search covers the last ten years. If you do give a date but no case number, it covers five years either side of it. So a rough date is much better than none - and if your best guess sits near the edge of a decade, give the date rather than letting them default.
The thing that goes wrong most often
Spelling. The search is run against the names you supply, and a search that misses because of one wrong letter is still a search you paid for. Check the spelling of your ex's middle names. Check whether you were registered under a maiden name or a married name at the time. Check whether anyone's name has an accent, a hyphen or a second surname that got dropped somewhere along the way.
If a search comes back empty and you're confident the divorce happened, the usual causes are a name spelled differently on the paperwork than you remember, or a date that's further out than you thought - people routinely misremember the gap between separating and the divorce being finalised, and it's usually longer.
If your divorce was in Scotland
Different legal system, different records. Scottish divorces have been entered in a statutory Register of Divorces since 1 May 1984, held by National Records of Scotland. You can order an official extract from NRS, and the index is searchable at the ScotlandsPeople Centre and at local family history centres.
An extract gives you both parties' names and addresses, the sheriff court, the court reference, the date of the decree, and the date and place of the marriage.
Divorces before May 1984, where the couple married in Scotland, were recorded in the Register of Corrected Entries instead - also held by NRS.
If your divorce was in Northern Ireland
Also a separate system. The Matrimonial Office at the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service handles copies of documents from divorce and civil partnership dissolution proceedings. Start there.
Looking for someone else's divorce record
Usually this is family history rather than admin, and it's a different job with different sources. Historic English and Welsh divorce case files sit with The National Archives, and the further back you go the more likely it is that the useful trail runs through newspaper archives rather than court records.
If you need a living person's record for a legal reason - an estate, a pension claim, a question about whether a marriage was valid - that's a conversation with a solicitor rather than a form you fill in yourself.
What you'll need it ford
Worth knowing which of these applies, because it changes how much time you've got:
Remarrying. The registrar will want to see the original final order, not a photocopy. Start this early; 45 days plus a wedding timetable is tighter than it sounds.
A mortgage or a remortgage. Lenders ask for proof the marriage ended, particularly where there's a financial order attached.
Changing your name back on a passport. You can use the final order as evidence.
Probate and pensions. Whether someone was divorced at the point of death changes who inherits and who a pension pays out to.
Last reviewed: September 2026. Court fees change - check the current figure on GOV.UK before you send anything.