The main part of the act, dealing with divorce, was not proceeded with after pilot schemes found that it did not work well.

[1] Part III of the act concerns provision of legal aid for mediation in family law and divorce.

The political commentator Anne McElvoy welcomed the abandonment of the Act's divorce sections seeing the extensive waiting periods and required mediation as an intrusive compromise between a proper "no fault" divorce system and the needs of "family fundamentalists".

[3] Following the decision by the UK Supreme Court in Owens v Owens, in February 2019 Justice Secretary David Gauke said that he would introduce legislation enacting no-fault divorce in the next session of Parliament.

This legislation in the United Kingdom, or its constituent jurisdictions, article is a stub.