Divorces and Dissolutions - Background Information

Please note: the Scottish Government (SG) is now the only publisher of new statistics of Divorces and Dissolutions of Civil Partnerships for Scotland. National Records of Scotland (NRS) no longer publishes any new figures for Divorces or Dissolutions. As explained on our 'home page' for 'Divorces and Dissolutions' such statistics are available from the SG website. The pages within this section provide, purely for the record, information which is specifically about the statistics of Divorces and Dissolutions that were published by NRS.

SG Justice Analytical Services became the main publisher of statistics on Divorces and Dissolutions in Scotland, with effect from the figures for April 2009 onwards, following consultation with the ScotStat Population and Migration Statistics Committee ('PAMS'). This was discussed at the PAMS meeting held on 9 December 2009 - information available in paper PAMS(09) 24, and the minutes of the meeting, which are available via on the Population and Migration section of the NRS website. Therefore, NRS published far fewer statistics on Divorces and Dissolutions for 2009 onwards than for previous years. More detailed statistics on Divorces and Dissolutions for the 2009-10 financial year onwards, and background information about such figures, were only available from the SG website.

SG became the only publisher of statistics on Divorces and Dissolutions in Scotland, with effect from the figures for the 2012 calendar year and the 2012-13 financial year, following consultation with PAMS at its meeting held on 3 October 2012 - information available in paper PAMS(12) 13, and the minutes of the meeting, which are available on the Population and Migration section of the NRS website. Therefore, the last statistics for Divorces and Dissolutions that were published by NRS are for the 2011 calendar year (NRS published its 'preliminary' figures for 2011 in March 2012, and its 'final' figures for 2011 in August 2012).

Note that there could be slight differences between the figures for some years that were published by SG and by NRS, for reasons given in a note on the Coverage of the Divorce Statistics, which is available below.

Divorces  

The following documents and pages provide information which is specifically about NRS's statistics of Divorces:

• Divorces - the coverage of the statistics 
  (Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format) (PDF 19 Kb)
• Revision of the historical series
• Unreliability of ‘ground for divorce’ statistics
• The correction of the provisional figure for the total number of divorces in 2008

 
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Dissolutions of Civil Partnerships

Dissolutions of civil partnerships are counted on the basis of the date on which each decree was granted. 

The first dissolution of a civil partnership in Scotland was granted in April 2007.

Please note: because the data on Divorces and Dissolutions of Civil Partnerships are provided by the Scottish Courts Service (rather than by Registrars), much of the material on topics which are covered in the General section on Vital Events documentation does not apply in the case of statistics of Divorces and Dissolutions.  

Enquiries

Please contact our Statistics Customer Services if you need any further information.

Statistics Customer Services telephone: (0131) 314 4299
E-mail: statisticscustomerservices@nrscotland.gov.uk

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