2.4 million separated families in Great Britain are raising around 3.8 million children, and demand on the family courts keeps rising as more parents turn to formal proceedings to settle arrangements. New private law children's cases reached 42,172 in the year to March 2026, up from 39,182 the year before and the highest annual total in five years. This article gathers the latest verified figures on custody arrangements, court delays, mediation, legal aid and looked after children across the UK.
Report Highlights
- In the year to March 2023, Great Britain had 2.4 million separated families raising 3.8 million children.
- New private law children's cases hit 42,172 in the year to March 2026, up from 39,182.
- In 2025, private law children's cases averaged 37 weeks, about four weeks faster than 2024.
- Private law cases take 18 weeks in Wales against 70 weeks in London.
- In 2025, both parents were unrepresented in 47% of private family law cases.
- In 2025, abuse of a family member featured in 87% of family court cases examined.
- More than 5,300 children are in private law proceedings running beyond 52 weeks.
- In 2024/25, legal aid mediation starts jumped 37% to 9,841, a 12-year high.
How Many Families Are Affected by Separation
Separation reaches a large share of UK households with children, and the way parents organise support afterwards varies widely. The figures below set out the scale of the separated population and how lone parent households break down.
Scale of separated families
These counts cover Great Britain and the UK, and they track how the shape of lone parent families has shifted over the past decade.
- In the year to March 2023, Great Britain had an estimated 2.4 million separated families raising about 3.8 million children.
- 59% of separated families have a child maintenance arrangement in place, formal or informal, leaving 41% with none.
- The statutory maintenance service is the sole organiser of payments for 16% of separated families, just over a quarter of the 59% who have any arrangement.
- About 1 in 4 UK families with dependent children is headed by a single parent.
- The UK had 3.2 million lone parent families in 2024, up from 3.0 million in 2014, a rise of 7%.
- Lone fathers headed 530,000 households in 2024, 16.7% of all lone parent families, up from 13.1% in 2014, leaving mothers heading 83.3%.
Family Court Demand and Case Volumes
Family court workload has climbed again after a dip in the years following the pandemic, with private law applications leading the increase. The figures below cover total case starts, the latest quarterly movement and how many parents arrive without a lawyer.
Overall court activity
These counts cover every case type started in the family courts of England and Wales, so divorce and domestic abuse sit alongside children's matters.
- In 2025, 270,474 new cases were started across the family courts of England and Wales, up 3% on 2024.
- 64,336 cases were issued in the final quarter of 2025, up 4% year on year, with private family law cases alone up 13%.
- Divorce applications fell to 109,184 in 2025, down 1% on 2024, the only main category to decline.
- Applications for domestic abuse injunctions rose 5% in 2025 to 36,376.
Self-representation in court
Narrower legal aid eligibility has left more parents arguing their own case, which lengthens hearings and adds to judicial workload.
- In 2025, both parties appeared without a lawyer, as litigants in person, in 47% of private family law cases.
Private Law Children's Cases
Private law covers disputes between parents over where a child lives and how much time they spend with each parent. Referral volumes and open caseloads are the clearest measure of the pressure on the system.
Case volumes
Annual and monthly referral counts show demand returning to levels last recorded before the pandemic.
- 42,172 new private law children's cases were opened in the year to March 2026, up from 39,182 the previous year, a rise of 7.6% and the highest total in five years.
- In March 2026 alone, 5,691 new children's cases involving 8,710 children were opened, the busiest month since March 2021.
- Daily demand reached 259 children's cases per working day in March 2026, up from 230 in March 2025, an increase of 13%.
- Private law cases outnumber public law cases by 2.5 to 1, at 42,172 against 16,975 in the year to March 2026.
Open caseloads
Open caseload counts capture the backlog carried at each month end rather than new referrals.
- 29,313 children's cases involving 46,501 children were open at the end of March 2026, up 6.5% on March 2025.
- Open private law cases rose 9.2% in the year to March 2026, nearly four times the 2.4% rise in open public law cases.
- 17,639 private law cases involving 26,538 children were open at the end of May 2026, an average of 1.5 children per case.
How Long Custody Cases Take
Case duration is the measure parents feel most directly, and it varies sharply by region and case type. The figures below cover private law disputes, care proceedings and the cases that run far beyond the norm.
- In 2025, private law children's cases took an average of 37 weeks to conclude, about four weeks faster than 2024.
- Private law cases average 18 weeks in Wales against 70 weeks in London, a gap of 52 weeks.
- More than 5,300 children are in private law proceedings running beyond 52 weeks, and 1,753 of those cases have passed 100 weeks.
- Private law cases were disposed of in an average of 35 weeks between January and March 2026, against a 37-week average across 2025.
- In 2025, care and supervision proceedings averaged 37.5 weeks, the shortest since 2020 but still 11.5 weeks beyond the statutory 26-week limit.
- In 2025, 38% of care proceedings concluded inside the statutory 26-week timeframe, leaving 62% over the limit.
Public Law and Children in Care Proceedings
Public law cases are brought by local authorities rather than parents, and they cover care and supervision orders. Volumes have eased from their 2018 peak but started rising again in the most recent year.
- 16,975 new public law children's cases were opened in the year to March 2026, up 4.7% on the previous year.
- 19,846 children were named in new care applications in the year to March 2026, a rise of 5.4%.
- Courts made 8,087 care orders from 12,433 applications in 2025, a grant rate of 65%.
- 27,689 individual children were in public law proceedings in 2025, up 3% on 2024 but down from a peak of nearly 32,000 in 2018.
- 357 children were subject to deprivation of liberty applications between April and June 2025, up 12% on the previous quarter and nearly 20% on the same quarter in 2024.
Looked After Children in England
The looked after population is the end point for the most serious cases, and its size relative to the child population has started to edge down. The figures below cover the total in care, the legal basis for it and how children leave the system.
- 81,770 children were looked after in England on 31 March 2025, including 6,540 unaccompanied asylum seeking children.
- That equates to 67 looked after children per 10,000 of the child population, down from 69 a year earlier.
- In 2025, 75% of looked after children were subject to a care order and 19% were accommodated under voluntary section 20 arrangements.
- 34,450 children ceased to be looked after in the year to March 2025, of whom 3,040 were adopted, a share of 9%.
Domestic Abuse in Custody Proceedings
Allegations of abuse feature in a large share of contested children's cases, which shapes how contact is arranged and supervised. The figures below cover what hearings recorded in 2025 and what courts ordered afterwards.
- In 2025, physical, psychological or sexual abuse of a family or household member featured in 87% of the family court cases examined.
- Abuse claims were raised in 73% of the hearings observed in 2025.
- Courts allowed unsupervised overnight contact with a parent accused of abuse in more than 50% of the cases reviewed.
Parental Alienation
Reported rates of alienating behaviour depend heavily on how the question is asked, so the wording behind each figure matters. Both measures below come from the same sample of separated parents.
- In a survey of more than 1,000 separated UK parents, 39.2% said the other parent had tried to turn their child against them when asked directly.
- 59.1% of the same parents reported alienating behaviour when asked about specific examples instead, a gap of 20 percentage points.
Family Mediation as an Alternative to Court
Rule changes have pushed more separating parents towards mediation before they can bring a case, and take-up has risen accordingly. The figures below cover volumes, resolution rates and the shrinking supply of legal aid mediators.
- In 2024/25, legal aid mediation starts rose 37% to 9,841, the highest level in 12 years.
- Legal aid assessment meetings reached 12,837 in 2024/25, still only 42% of the 30,665 recorded in 2012/13 before legal aid was restricted.
- 69% of families who mediate resolve matters without a contested hearing, or go no further than a consent order.
- 74% of people who attend an initial mediation assessment meeting go on to mediate.
- The number of mediators offering legal aid fell 50% between 2018 and 2025, down to around 238.
- The family mediation voucher scheme issued 13,675 vouchers in 2024/25 at a total cost of £6.15 million, about £450 per voucher.
- Child inclusive mediation takes place in only 16% of cases involving children aged 10 and over.
- Around 1 in 3 potential mediation cases cannot proceed because the second parent declines to attend the initial assessment.
Child Maintenance Arrangements
Maintenance is the financial half of most custody arrangements, and the statutory service now handles a growing share of it. The figures below cover the amounts arranged, the split between payment routes and how much goes uncollected.
- In the 12 months to March 2025, the statutory service arranged £1.5 billion in child maintenance, up from £1.4 billion the year before.
- 57% of statutory arrangements used Direct Pay in March 2025, accounting for £1.1 billion of the annual total.
- 41% of arrangements used Collect and Pay, and 69% of paying parents on that route paid something towards maintenance in the year to March 2025.
- Of the £376.1 million arranged through Collect and Pay in the year to March 2025, £266.9 million was paid and £109.1 million went unpaid, a collection rate of 71%.
- 7% of all maintenance due since 2012, worth £713.1 million, remains uncollected, down from 17% unpaid in March 2015.
- In the quarter to September 2024, about 678,000 paying parents were on statutory arrangements covering roughly 1,025,000 children, an average of 1.5 children each.
2026 Outlook
Current growth rates point to further pressure on private law caseloads through the rest of 2026, with mediation the main counterweight. The projections below extend the latest published trends rather than official forecasts.
- Private law children's cases reached 42,172 in the year to March 2026, with financial year to date volumes already 9.3% ahead of the same point in 2025.
- At the current 7.6% annual growth rate, private law referrals would approach 45,000 by the end of the 2026/27 financial year.
- Open cases involved 46,501 children in March 2026, and sustained growth of 6.5% a year would push that past 49,500 by March 2027.
- Daily demand reached 253 children's cases per working day in May 2026, against 235 in May 2025, a rise of 7.7%.
- Legal aid mediation starts rose 37% in 2024/25 and are expected to keep climbing in 2026 as procedure rule changes push more cases towards non-court resolution.
Sources
- Ministry of Justice - Family Court Statistics Quarterly, January to March 2025, October to December 2025 releases
- Cafcass - Annual Data Summaries and monthly data, 2025-2026
- Office for National Statistics - Families and Households in the UK, 2025
- Gov.uk - Separated Families Statistics, April 2014 to March 2023
- Nuffield Family Justice Observatory - Trends in the Family Justice System in England and Wales in 2025
- The Law Society - Family Court Cases Rise as Legal Aid Sinks, March 2026
- Department for Work and Pensions - Child Maintenance Service Statistics, data to December 2025
- UK Parliament Written Questions - Child Maintenance Service Statistics, July 2025
- Family Mediation Council - The State of Family Mediation 2025
- Ministry of Justice - Legal Aid Statistics Quarterly, October to December 2025
- Ministry of Justice Justice Data - Legal Aid Mediation Data
- Domestic Abuse Commissioner - Family Court Watchdog Review, October 2025 (via The Guardian)
- University of West London - Examining the Prevalence and Impact of Parental Alienating Behaviours in the UK, 2025
- Department for Education - Children Looked After in England Including Adoptions, Year Ending 31 March 2025
- Local Government Lawyer - Family Court Statistics Quarterly commentary, 2026
- Today's Family Lawyer - Cafcass Demand Up 7% Over the Last 12 Months, 2026