Average Length of a Marriage UK: What the Figures Show
Part of: Divorce Specialists
Search for the average length of a marriage, UK-wide, and you get handed one number. For the latest year that number is 13.0 years, it is not a UK figure, and it does not mean what most people take it to mean. ONS puts 13.0 years as the median duration of marriages ending in divorce for opposite-sex couples in England and Wales in 2025, the longest since its series began in 1963 (ONS, Divorces and dissolutions in England and Wales: 2024 and 2025, released 23 September 2026). It counts only the marriages that ended in a divorce order. Marriages still going do not appear in it at all. If the figure has you thinking about your own, our divorce specialists assist and advise at every stage.
This guide covers England and Wales, because that is where the UK’s most-quoted marriage length figure actually comes from, and because the Act behind every rule below applies across both. It explains which average the number is, what it counts, and why the years behind you change what a court weighs when money is at stake.
Key takeaways
- The headline figure is 13.0 years. That was the median duration of marriage at divorce for opposite-sex couples in England and Wales in 2025, the longest since the series began in 1963 (ONS, released 23 September 2026).
- It has been climbing for forty years. The shortest median in the whole series was 8.9 years, in 1985. Marriages that end in divorce are lasting longer, not less long.
- It is a median, not a mean. ONS takes the mid-point because the durations are not spread symmetrically, so an average worked out the usual way would mislead.
- It counts only marriages that ended in divorce. It leaves out every marriage still running, and every marriage that ended when somebody died.
- There is no single average marriage length UK-wide. The ONS bulletin covers England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland publish their own.
- Length sits on the statutory checklist. A court deciding money on divorce must have regard to “the duration of the marriage” (Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, s.25(2)(d)).
- Nobody can apply in the first year. You cannot apply for a divorce order until a year has run from the date of the marriage (MCA 1973, s.3(1)).
What is the average length of a marriage? UK figures, and what they actually count
Ask for the average UK marriage length and this is the number you get. ONS reports it in its divorce bulletin. For 2025 it gives 13.0 years for opposite-sex couples. For male same-sex couples it gives 7.5 years, and for female same-sex couples 6.6 years. Each figure runs from the wedding to the order that ends the marriage, and 2025 is the most recent year ONS has published.
So the figure answers a narrower question than the one people ask. It tells you how long marriages lasted among the couples who divorced that year. It cannot tell you how long a marriage lasts on average, because the marriages that never end in divorce never enter the data at all.
| Figure | What it describes | 2025 value |
|---|---|---|
| Median, opposite-sex marriages | The mid-point. Half of these marriages were shorter, half were longer | 13.0 years |
| Median, male same-sex marriages | The same mid-point for male couples who divorced | 7.5 years |
| Median, female same-sex marriages | The same mid-point for female couples who divorced | 6.6 years |
| Median, same-sex civil partnerships | Dissolution rather than divorce, and the longest medians of any partnership type in 2025 | 13.7 years for male couples, 13.6 for female |
| Lowest median recorded | The shortest median duration anywhere in the series, which starts in 1963 | 8.9 years, in 1985 |
Read the first row against the last one. The mid-point today is 13.0 years. In 1985 it was 8.9. The number people quote to prove that marriages are falling apart faster is in fact the highest it has been in a series that runs back to 1963. How many couples divorce in a year is a different question again, and our guide to the UK divorce rate takes that one.
Median, mean or most common: which marriage length figure are you looking at?
ONS quotes the median, and it says why. Its definitions explain that the median is used “rather than the mean, because the data on the duration of legal partnerships at dissolution are not symmetrically distributed”, and that the median therefore gives a more accurate reflection of the average duration. That distinction matters more than it sounds, because the three averages pull in different directions.
The mean adds every duration up and divides by the number of divorces, so a cluster of very long marriages drags it upwards. The median ignores the extremes and takes the middle case. The mode simply asks which length came up most often. Ask how long does the average marriage last and you are really asking which of those three you want.
Only one of them is actually published. The 2024 and 2025 bulletin gives medians. It gives no mean, and no most-common length. So if a page or a news story hands you a single figure without saying which average it is, somebody has worked it out from the underlying tables, or has lifted it from an older release. That is worth knowing before you quote an average marriage length, UK-wide or otherwise, back at anyone.
Which marriages does the average length figure leave out?
Three groups are missing, and together they are the majority. Marriages that are still going never appear, because nothing has ended. Marriages ended by death do not appear either, because that is not a divorce. Couples who separated but never applied stay out of it too, since the statistics count orders the court has actually made.
ONS does publish a second series that comes at it from the other side. It follows everyone who married in a given year and asks how many had divorced by a given anniversary. Of the couples who married in 2015, 16.3% had divorced by their tenth wedding anniversary. Of those who married in 2005, 20.7% had. Of those who married in 1995, 24.7% had. That is the same story the medians tell, read from the other end: fewer marriages are ending early than in the 1990s, and in every one of those groups the large majority were still married at ten years.
There is also no one figure covering the whole country, however you phrase the question. The ONS bulletin covers England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own courts and their own statistics, and GOV.UK sends you down a different route if you want to divorce in either (GOV.UK: check you can get a divorce). A marriage length quoted as a UK average is usually an England and Wales number wearing the wrong label. Within England and Wales there is no split to worry about: the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 extends to both, so the rules below read the same on either side of the border.
Why does the length of your marriage change what you would receive?
Because Parliament put it on the list. A court deciding how to divide money and property on divorce must have regard to all the circumstances of the case. It gives first consideration to the welfare of any child of the family under eighteen. It must then have particular regard to a set list of matters, and one of them is “the age of each party to the marriage and the duration of the marriage” (MCA 1973, s.25(2)(d)).
The statute then stops. It gives no threshold, no table and no point at which a marriage becomes a long one. Duration sits beside the other matters on the same list. Those include each person’s income and earning capacity, their needs and obligations, the standard of living before the breakdown, and the contributions each of them made to the family, including looking after the home.
Does a short marriage length mean a smaller share?
Not on its own. The same assets can be divided very differently in a marriage 5 years long and in one that ran twenty-five, because the list is weighed as a whole. A brief marriage with no children raises different questions, particularly where both people came in with their own money and leave with their own careers. A long one where somebody’s earnings stopped for two decades raises others.
Our guide to short childless marriage divorce settlements covers the first situation. Our financial settlement after divorce guide covers how a court applies the whole list. Conduct sits on that list too, but only where it is “such that it would in the opinion of the court be inequitable to disregard it” (MCA 1973, s.25(2)(g)), and our page on the section 25 conduct argument deals with that.
One more thing the statistics cannot show you. Courts do not always simply count from the wedding day. What the two of you did before the wedding, and what happened after you separated, can both change the picture a court looks at. That turns on your own facts, not on the national figures.
Average length of a marriage, UK figures: how does yours compare?
Comparing yourself to a median is a poor use of five minutes. Working out what you actually know about your own years is a better one. Pick the side that fits, then tick what is already true.
There is no score. Anything you cannot tick yet is worth raising before you discuss money.
The calls a checklist can’t make for you
- When your marriage started and ended in a court’s eyes, if you lived together first or carried on sharing a home afterwards.
- How much weight the years actually carry in your case, set against needs, earning capacity and what each of you contributed.
- Whether a shorter marriage really does point to each of you walking away with what you came in with, or whether needs change that.
Those turn on your own facts, not on a national figure. The cost of getting them wrong is not a fee. It is agreeing a split that assumed your years together counted for less, or for more, than a court would say, and putting your name to it before anybody checked.
Book a free initial consultation
One of our specialists will give you initial advice on your situation.
Is there a minimum marriage length before you can divorce?
Yes, and it is one year. The Act is blunt about it: an application for a divorce order “may not be made before the expiration of the period of one year from the date of the marriage” (MCA 1973, s.3(1)). GOV.UK says the same thing in plainer words, and adds that you can apply for separation or annulment during that first year instead (GOV.UK: get a divorce). Once the year has run, the fee to apply for a divorce is £628.
Past that point the calendar stops mattering. A divorce after 2 years of marriage follows exactly the same route as a divorce after two years and ten months, or after twenty years.
No rule runs the other way, either. Nothing in the Act ends a marriage because a certain number of years have gone by. A court makes a divorce order only where one or both of you apply for one (MCA 1973, s.1(1)). So the idea of an automatic divorce after seven years apart has no home in the current law. The old law did have a five-year separation ground, and Parliament replaced that whole scheme when the no-fault rules came in on 6 April 2022.
Past the first year, the timetable runs on waiting periods rather than on marriage length. Neither of you can confirm to the court that you want the application to continue until twenty weeks have passed from the start of proceedings, and a conditional order cannot be made final until a further six weeks have passed (MCA 1973, s.1(5) and s.1(4)(b)). Those two periods together cannot be stretched beyond twenty-six weeks (s.1(7)), though a court can shorten them in a particular case.
Frequently asked questions
Is 13 years the average length of all marriages?
No, and that is the trap in the number. It is the median duration of the marriages that ended in divorce in England and Wales in 2025. It leaves out every marriage still running, and every marriage that ended when somebody died. Treat it as a figure for all marriages and you go badly wrong, because the group it describes exists only because those marriages ended in a divorce order.
Is there one average marriage length UK-wide?
No. The ONS bulletin covers England and Wales only. Scotland and Northern Ireland keep their own divorce statistics and publish them separately. The law differs as well, and GOV.UK sends you to a different process if you want a divorce in Scotland or in Northern Ireland. So a headline quoting a UK average is usually quoting an England and Wales number.
Does the marriage length figure use the mean or the median?
The median. ONS says it uses the median “rather than the mean, because the data on the duration of legal partnerships at dissolution are not symmetrically distributed”, and that the median therefore gives a more accurate reflection of the average duration. A handful of very long marriages ending late in life would drag a mean upwards, so the two numbers are not interchangeable.
Why is the average length of a same-sex marriage shorter?
Largely because the data is younger. England and Wales have only recorded same-sex marriage since March 2014, so the series cannot yet hold many long marriages. In 2025 the median duration at divorce was 7.5 years for male couples and 6.6 years for female couples, and the figure for female couples was the highest recorded since the first same-sex divorces in 2015. Same-sex civil partnerships, which have existed for longer, show far longer medians at dissolution.
Is there an automatic divorce after 7 years, UK-wide?
No. A marriage in England and Wales ends only when a court makes a divorce order, and it makes one only where you or your husband or wife apply for it (MCA 1973, s.1(1)). No period of living apart ends a marriage by itself. The confusion may come from the old law, which allowed a divorce based on five years of separation, and that whole scheme was replaced when the no-fault rules started on 6 April 2022.
Can you apply for a divorce after 1 year of marriage?
Yes, once the first year has actually run. Section 3(1) bars an application before a year has passed from the date of the marriage, and GOV.UK confirms you can apply for separation or annulment during that first year instead. People then ask about divorce after 1 year: what am I entitled to? A court answers that from the statutory list rather than from the calendar, so a short marriage does not automatically mean a small settlement where needs say otherwise.
At what point does a court treat a marriage as a long one?
The Act sets no number. It tells the court to have regard to the age of each party and to the duration of the marriage, then leaves the weight to the judge on the facts (MCA 1973, s.25(2)(d)). That is why two couples married for the same number of years can end up in very different places. What the years contained matters as much as how many there were.
Wondering what your years together count for? Get advice before you agree anything
An average length of a marriage, UK-wide or otherwise, tells you nothing about your own case. The years behind you cut both ways. Before anyone signs, it is worth knowing which of your facts a court would weigh and which it would pass over. Book a free initial consultation and one of our specialists will give you initial advice on where you stand.
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General information about the law in England and Wales, not advice on your circumstances.
Expert Tip
A national median decides nothing about your case, so do not let it set your expectations before anybody has looked at the facts. Write down the wedding date, the date you stopped living as a couple, and anything significant before or between those dates. Bring that to the first conversation instead. It will get you far more useful advice than any national figure can.
Garry Steedman, Family Law Consultant (Divorce, Children & TOLATA)
