The UK Divorce Capitals
Late last month, a list of the top ten divorce hotspots in the UK was published by the Ministry of Justice, giving us all a nice (but kind of worrying) insight into the workings of the country, particularly in which places seem to be absolute no-go areas for couples!
The list only looked at areas outside of Greater London, simply because Greater London is such a massive and densely populated zone. So, if you are worried that the area in which you live is particularly prevalent in splitting up couples, or are simply morbidly curious about which places look like marriage graveyards, read on for the top five divorce hotspots…
The Top Five
Coming in at number one (not a race you’d want to win, but in first place nonetheless) is Birmingham – the Birmingham Civil Justice Centre and Family Courts, to be specific. Believe it or not, but in the year of 2012 alone, 2799 couples filed for divorce in Brum, making it the UK’s divorce capital, outside of London at least.
Getting the silver medal is Weston-Super-Mare County Court, with a whopping 2437 divorces in 2012, though there is a caveat – we’ll come to that in a bit. Sadly, it seems as though living in a seaside city is not all sand and smiles.
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The Capital of the East Midlands nabbed third – Leicester County Court saw 1831 divorces last year. In fourth place was Romford County Court, seeing 1783, whilst the City of Three Spires rounded out the five: Coventry Combined Court Centre ran through 1776 divorces.
If you are currently in a happy relationship in one of these five areas, we would first like to congratulate you, before advising that you get out of there sharpish! Sure, it may just be superstitious, but these cities are certainly worse for marriage!
Why These Cities?
Well, the reason for Birmingham’s seeming domination of the list is actually fairly simple – outside of the capital, Brum is the largest city in the entirety of the United Kingdom. This means that its first place finish was rather predictable, and was of no great surprise to anyone.
But what of Weston-Super-Mare? How could this rather small, quaint, coastal resort town, with a population of less than 80,000, possibly have had so many divorces in one year, to the point where it was the main rivals to the biggest city in the country? The answer is an odd one – it was revealed that Divorce-Online (an online divorce company) is based in Weston-Super-Mare.
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Apparently, neither solicitors specialising in family law cases nor the beautiful coastal surroundings were to blame – less than 200 of the divorces that were conducted by the courts there did not come from Divorce-Online, which means that a staggering 92% of the divorces came through the company: clearly, someone’s business is booming.
So, citizens of Weston-Super-Mare, rejoice! It turns out that your little town isn’t so home-wrecking after all!