Same-sex divorce and civil partnership dissolution

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The process of divorcing as a same sex couple is identical to getting divorced as a heterosexual couple. Same application, same £628, same twenty-week wait, same conditional order and final order, same statutory framework for dividing money.

There is no separate same-sex divorce and there hasn't been since the law was reformed in 2022.

There are however, a few things that are a bit different when it comes to getting divorced as a same-sex couple - we’ve detailed them below.

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

First, the terminology

If you're married, you get a divorce.

If you're in a civil partnership, you get a dissolution. Different word, same process, same forms, same timescales, same waiting periods.

The stages are identical too: a conditional order, then a final order at least 43 days later. Before April 2022 these were a decree nisi and decree absolute.

When children are involved in a same-sex divorce

Legal parenthood is not the same thing as parental responsibility, and for married same-sex couples the two can come apart in ways they rarely do for anyone else.

A child can only ever have two legal parents. Parental responsibility is separate and more than two people can hold it, and someone can have it without being a legal parent, or be a legal parent without holding it.

Whether both of you are legal parents depends on how your child was conceived and what your legal status was at the time:

  • Female couples, conception at a UK licensed clinic, married or in a civil partnership at the time. The non-birth mother is automatically the second legal parent, provided the HFEA conditions were met. Straightforward.

  • Female couples, conception at a UK licensed clinic, not married or in a civil partnership. Second parenthood depends on the consent paperwork completed at the clinic at the time. If it was done properly, you're covered. If it wasn't, you may not be.

  • Conception outside a licensed clinic - at home, with a known donor. This is where it gets complicated, and the rules turn on whether the birth mother was married or in a civil partnership at the time of conception. Where she wasn't, the biological father may be the second legal parent rather than her partner.

  • Male couples via surrogacy. Legal parenthood comes from a parental order, applied for after the birth. Without one, you don't have it.

Why this matters during a same-sex divorce: legal parenthood determines who has to be involved, who can apply for what, and what happens about maintenance. If you are not sure whether you are your child's legal parent - and a great many people in this position aren't - that is the first thing to establish, before anything else.

If you don't have legal parenthood, parental responsibility can often still be obtained, by agreement with the other parent or by applying to the court. It isn't the same status, but it gives you the rights and duties of a parent in practice. Get advice early on this rather than late; it's much easier to sort out before positions harden.

Pensions & same-sex divorce

Until 2017, many pension schemes limited survivor benefits for a same-sex spouse or civil partner to service accrued after December 2005 - when civil partnerships began. The effect was brutal. In the case that ended it, one man's husband stood to receive around £1,000 a year instead of roughly £45,700, purely because the earlier decades of service didn't count.

The Supreme Court struck that limitation down in Walker v Innospec. Schemes must now provide survivor benefits to same-sex spouses and civil partners on the same basis as anyone else, with retrospective effect.

Why it matters to you now: if you're dividing pensions, the value of a scheme built up largely before 2005 depends on that ruling having been correctly applied. Not every scheme audited its position thoroughly. If a pension in your settlement has significant pre-2005 service, it's worth asking the scheme directly, in writing, how it treats survivor benefits for same-sex spouses , and getting the answer before anyone agrees a figure.

How long your relationship has lasted

Civil partnerships only became available in December 2005. Same-sex marriage arrived in England and Wales in March 2014, Scotland at the end of 2014, and Northern Ireland in 2020.

So a couple together since 1998 might have been legally married for eleven years and together for twenty-seven.

The length of the marriage is one of the factors a court weighs when dividing money, and it matters, as short marriages are often treated quite differently from long ones. But the principle in the case law is that where a period of living together moved seamlessly into the marriage, the court can treat the relationship as having lasted the whole time rather than starting at the wedding.

What the court looks for is mutual commitment: shared finances, a shared life, permanence - the markers of a marriage in all but name.

For same-sex couples, that principle does a lot of work, because many couples were living as married before they were legally recognised as married.

Practical consequence: if you were together long before you could legally formalise it, make sure you have evidence of this. A joint mortgage from 2001, joint accounts, a will naming each other. This will help establish when your relationship began.

If you converted a civil partnership into a marriage

Many couples did, after 2014. On conversion, the marriage is generally treated as having existed since the date the civil partnership was formed, so you don't lose those years.

Worth confirming with a solicitor if it matters to your case, because it directly affects how long your marriage is understood to have lasted.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Scotland has its own divorce and dissolution procedure, which differs from England and Wales in several respects. Northern Ireland did not adopt the 2022 reform and same-sex marriage only became available there in 2020, so both the process and the relationship-length question work differently.

What to do

  • If you have children, establish whether you are both legal parents before anything else

  • If a pension has significant pre-2005 service, write to the scheme about survivor benefits

  • If you were together well before you could marry or register, gather the evidence of when the relationship really started

  • Everything else follows the ordinary process

Last reviewed: September 2026. This page covers same-sex divorce and civil partnership dissolution in England and Wales. It isn't legal advice about your situation — and the questions around legal parenthood in particular turn entirely on individual circumstances, so take advice from a family solicitor who knows yours.

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