Divorce law in England and Wales is about to undergo its biggest change in half a century. From April 2022 a new process of ‘no-fault’ divorce will be introduced, allowing a spouse, or spouses acting jointly, to secure a divorce within a period of around six months without needing to demonstrate that anyone was at fault for the irretrievable breakdown of their marriage.

In many respects, the reformed system represents a positive change. However, there may be a risk that a new streamlined process, when coupled with a move to associated online financial remedy applications, might lead to greater unfairness in the sharing of assets at divorce, particularly with regard to sharing of pensions.

The current system of pension sharing at divorce in England and Wales is already failing to deliver good outcomes in retirement to many divorced women.  But this problem could be about to get worse, for reasons explained in this paper.