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Edit: At time of edit, in 2018, court fees have risen again to £550

The cost of getting a divorce is, along with the cost of heating your home, running your car and running everyday appliances, on the rise with the courts administrative fees having risen from £385 to £410 in July of this year. Fortunately, though, this isn’t necessarily bad news – in fact, it could even save you money!

In order to ensure that all members of the public are afforded access to its services HMCTS can waive or reduce their fees under certain circumstances. If someone is in receipt of certain benefits, has a low annual income or their monthly income is less than a set amount then they can either avoid paying the court’s fees entirely or should, at the very least, be entitled to a significant reduction in these fees when filing for a divorce.

Whilst individuals that are entitled to have the court fees waived completely will, of course, be unaffected by this increase, there is good news for those individuals that are entitled to a discount. Whilst the court’s fees were previously payable in two instalments of £340 (when filing a Divorce Petition) and £45 (when applying for a Decree Absolute), all fees (£410 following the increase) are now payable at the first stage. This is relevant as any application for a reduction in the court fees must be filed whenever a payment is due. In other words, an individual that was entitled to have the fees reduced would have previously been required to file two separate sets of paperwork - both when filing for a divorce and when applying for their decree absolute – as evidence of their financial circumstances so as to allow the courts to grant them a discount.

As the discount to which the individual was entitled was reliant on the amount of disposable income that was available to them each month and the fee payable to the court at the relevant time, it was extremely unlikely that they would be entitled to any reduction in the second £45 fee even if they had received a significant discount on the initial £340 fee. For example, an individual with a disposable income of £400 every month would be entitled to a discount of £165 initially, but would receive no discount on the second fee as their disposable income would need to be below £179.99 in order for them to be eligible (an individual’s disposable income would need to be less than £50 per month in order for the courts to waive the second fee in its entirety).

Now, with the fees payable in their entirety, however, the same individual would need to pay £165 only, meaning that they would save £245, compared with just £175 originally. In fact, even if the court fees had remained at £385, they would still enjoy a discount of £220, compared with £180 when two separate fees were payable. Ultimately, anyone with a disposable monthly income of less than £929 is now entitled to a reduction in the court’s fees when applying for a divorce, so the recent increase in these fees might just work in your favour.

Click here for more information on court’s fees and to see whether you may be entitled to have these waived or reduced.