Good Divorce Week 2025: Believe it or not, there is a better way

10 November 2025 marks the beginning of Good Divorce Week in England and Wales, an annual awareness initiative led by Resolution, a community of Family law professionals committed to a constructive, non-confrontational approach to family breakdown. 

Divorce and separation are never easy. Combined with an overworked and under resourced family court system, clients are often left feeling frustrated and helpless as they face prolonged delays in reaching a resolution. Over 4,000 children were involved in public and private law cases open for longer than 100 weeks in December 2024. 

As practitioners, how can we help to support clients to resolve matters constructively and with as little conflict as possible? At the heart of Good Divorce Week is Resolution’s Code of Practice, which serves as a practical guide for how we should aspire to work with our peers, colleagues and clients alike. Resolution’s Code encourages practitioners to:

• Avoid inflammatory language
• Support and encourage families to put the best interests of children first
• Act with honesty, integrity and objectivity
• Help clients consider the long-term emotional and financial impact of their decisions
• Promote communication and collaboration wherever possible
• Use experience and knowledge to guide clients through the options available to them

The ‘good’ in Good Divorce Week does not seek to ignore the trauma and sadness often associated with the process, but rather emphasises that practitioners should be encouraging responsible, informed and future-focussed decisions during one of life’s most difficult transitions. 

A central objective of the campaign is to elevate the interests of children in all discussions about separation, including helping parents understand the emotional impact of conflict on children, encouraging age-appropriate communication and promoting parenting plans that provide clear structure and stability. As a basic starting point, children should be shielded from adult disputes and protected from parental point-scoring. 

Good Divorce Week also advocates for early access to good quality legal advice so that individuals understand their rights, responsibilities and options from the outset. This tends to de-escalate tensions and reduce misunderstandings to allow separating couples to focus on negotiating the terms of a long-standing agreement.

A recurring theme of Good Divorce Week is the promotion of out of court dispute resolution mechanisms – mediation, arbitration, collaborative practice, lawyer-led negotiation and out of court private evaluations (where clients have far greater control of the process and the judge, appointed by agreement between the parties, will have had sufficient time to read into the case) – as viable and often preferable alternatives to contested litigation. These processes can be faster, more cost-effective and less adversarial, with the added benefit of privacy and flexibility for clients. Court-based resolution may be essential for safeguarding or entrenched disputes, but the spiralling costs, uncertainty and acrimony that go hand in hand with court proceedings should make it a last resort.  

Good Divorce Week invites both professionals and the public to reframe separation and divorce as a process to be managed thoughtfully and humanely; one that prioritises dignity, protects children and fosters lasting, workable solutions. As practitioners, we should try to remember this for the remaining 51 weeks of the year.