By Tony O’Reilly-
Proposed reforms giving separating cohabiting couples greater rights over homes, pensions, property and other assets could generate around 10,000 additional applications to the Financial Remedies Court (FRC) each year, according to a senior family judge who has warned that the impact on the court system may be significantly greater than the government has estimated.
His Honour Judge Edward Hess,(pictured) deputy national lead judge of the Financial Remedies Court, said the introduction of financial remedies for separating cohabitants would “inevitably lead to a substantial increase” in the FRC’s caseload. His assessment raises fresh questions about whether the courts have the financial and administrative resources needed to implement the government’s proposed overhaul of financial arrangements for couples who live together without marrying.
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The warning comes as the government’s consultation, A Fairer End to Relationships, approaches its closing date on Friday. The consultation considers reforms that would allow certain cohabiting partners to seek financial orders when their relationships end. Under the proposals, courts could have powers relating to assets including the family home, pensions, property and other financial resources.
The proposals are intended to address concerns that existing legal protections can leave some separating cohabitants, particularly those who have taken on caring or domestic responsibilities during a relationship, in financially vulnerable positions. Supporters argue that the law should better reflect the reality of modern family life, in which millions of couples live together and raise children without marrying.
But the potential scale of the reforms has prompted concern about the consequences for the family justice system. Critics have also attacked the proposals as creating a form of “state-forced marriage”, arguing that extending financial consequences associated with marriage to unmarried couples could undermine the distinction between choosing to marry and choosing to cohabit.
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Writing in the Financial Remedies Journal, Hess argues that the reforms could substantially expand the population eligible to seek financial remedies. He points to Office for National Statistics figures for 2026 showing approximately 13 million married couples and 3.5 million cohabiting couples in the UK.
If the proposed changes made the separating cohabiting population eligible to bring claims broadly on a similar basis to separating married couples, the potential pool of couples able to seek financial remedies would rise from around 13 million to approximately 16.5 million.
That would represent an increase of about 27 per cent in the population potentially capable of generating financial remedy cases. Hess uses the existing workload of the FRC to estimate what that could mean in practice. At present, the divorcing population produces around 35,000 to 40,000 consented case applications and approximately 13,000 contested applications within the FRC each year.
Applying those figures proportionately to separating non-married couples, Hess estimates that cohabitation reform could generate between 9,400 and 10,800 additional consented applications annually, together with approximately 3,500 contested applications.
The implications are therefore potentially much larger than the government’s own assessment. The government’s impact assessment for the proposed reforms estimates an increase of approximately 4,500 to 5,000 applications. Hess describes that figure as a “significant underestimate”.
The difference is important because even cases in which couples ultimately agree their financial arrangements can place demands on the court system. Consent applications still require processing, judicial consideration and court resources, while contested cases can involve substantially greater demands on judges, court staff and hearing time.
Hess’s figures suggest that the additional workload could amount to more than 12,000 applications a year when both consented and contested cases are taken into account. That is not simply a question of the number of cases appearing on a court database. It could translate into a significant increase in the number of sitting days required by the FRC and consequently in the cost of delivering the reforms.
The judge acknowledges that there could be benefits that are not easily measured in financial terms. Greater protection for vulnerable separating partners could have social, welfare and justice benefits, particularly where one partner has made sacrifices during a relationship and is left without adequate financial resources when the relationship ends. However, Hess argues that such potential benefits should not obscure the practical cost of expanding the jurisdiction of the family courts.
“There may be some obvious non-monetised social, welfare and justice benefits resulting from these reforms,” he states, while warning that the changes would nevertheless come “at a considerable cost” in terms of the sitting-day requirements of the Financial Remedies Court.
His intervention puts the question of resources at the centre of the debate. If Parliament ultimately adopts the reforms, the issue will not simply be whether the new legal rights are desirable, but whether the justice system can deliver them effectively.
A substantial increase in applications could create pressure at a time when family courts are already dealing with complex and resource-intensive financial disputes. Financial remedy cases can require detailed examination of property, income, pensions, investments and other assets, with disputes sometimes continuing through multiple hearings.
Any additional demand would therefore need to be assessed not only in terms of the number of new cases but also their complexity, the time judges would need to spend determining them and the administrative support required to process them.
Hess is calling for a more comprehensive assessment before ministers decide whether and how to proceed. He says a “more thorough, more robust and properly objective analysis” of the likely cost should be undertaken so that the reforms can be considered with a clear understanding of their financial consequences.
His warning does not amount to an outright rejection of the proposed changes. Instead, he recognises that the reforms may deliver wider benefits that could make them attractive as a matter of public policy. His argument is that those benefits must be weighed against the resources required to put the new rights into effect.
“The reforms may well have wider benefits which make them objectively attractive,” Hess says, but adds that “turning a blind eye to the consequential costs cannot be right or sensible”.
The government now faces a decision over whether the proposed expansion of financial remedies for cohabiting couples should proceed and, if so, how the additional pressure on the courts should be funded and managed.
The reforms could represent a significant change in their legal position of millions of people living outside marriage when a relationship ends. The proposals could represent an equally significant expansion of its responsibilities for the justice system.
The consultation closes on Friday, leaving ministers to consider competing arguments over fairness, autonomy, family protection and the cost of reform. Hess’s intervention adds a further dimension to that debate: whatever the social case for extending financial remedies to cohabitants, the government may need to prepare for a much larger increase in court activity than its current impact assessment anticipates.
If the judge’s calculations are correct, the consequences could run into thousands of additional cases every year, with a corresponding demand for judicial time, court administration and public resources. The question now is whether those costs have been fully accounted for before the government decides to reshape the financial rights of separating couples across England and Wales.
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