The 'Splitting the Bill' report: what it gets right, and the option it leaves out
Last week, the divorce service amicable published Splitting the Bill, a piece of research surveying 2,000 UK adults who have separated in the last decade. The headlines are eye-catching: the average individual now spends £6,500 on legal fees during a separation; one in twenty spends £20,000 or more; nearly half lose savings; over a third take on new debt. London divorcees average more than £10,000 each.If you are anywhere near a separation right now, those numbers will have stopped you in your tracks. They should. But the report — for all its useful data — quietly leaves out the option that most often answers the very problem it describes. So here is a measured response, from people who do this work every day.
What the report gets right
A great deal, in fairness.The cost of a contested, solicitor-led divorce really can spiral, particularly where conflict drives the timeline. The shift to no-fault divorce in 2022 and the digitisation of the government divorce portal really have made separation less adversarial and more accessible. Pension sharing really is one of the most overlooked parts of a financial settlement, and the report's finding that only 12% of couples agreed a pension division during their split should worry anyone reading this. The "singles tax", two homes where there used to be one, really does hit harder than people expect. And the emotional, career and family costs of a drawn-out, hostile process really do dwarf the legal bill. Most importantly, the report is right that there is a better way than throwing the matter to opposing solicitors and waiting for the meter to run.
The option the report leaves out
Read Splitting the Bill carefully and you will notice a curious gap. The report draws a binary between "solicitor-led divorce" on one side and Amicable 's own negotiation service on the other, with DIY divorce as a sort of also-ran. Family mediation: the established, regulated, non-court route that thousands of couples use every year, is barely mentioned. That is not an accident. It is a marketing choice. And it matters, because mediation is, for most couples, the option most likely to deliver the outcomes the report says people want: lower cost, faster resolution, less conflict, better co-parenting, and a settlement that actually holds.Family mediation is not a new product. It is a long-established process in which a trained, neutral mediator helps a separating couple work through finances, property, and arrangements for the children, in a structured series of meetings. It sits at the heart of the Non-Court Dispute Resolution (NCDR) framework that the courts now actively expect couples to consider before issuing proceedings, and it is the route the Family Mediation Voucher Scheme is designed to support, currently offering up to £500 of government funding towards mediation costs for cases involving children. Mediation is what "amicable" used to mean before it became a brand name.
Why regulation matters when you are vulnerable
Here is the part of the conversation that does not show up in the report at all. When a separating couple choose a mediator registered with the Family Mediation Council (FMC), they get something they cannot take for granted elsewhere: a regulated, supervised professional with mandatory training, ongoing CPD, a Professional Practice Consultant, a formal complaints process, and critically a duty to screen for domestic abuse and power imbalance before any joint meeting takes place.
The wider unregulated tier of "divorce coaches," "separation consultants" and online negotiation services is growing fast. Some of those services are excellent. Some are not. None of them are bound by the FMC framework, and the line between "legal information" and "legal advice" is one that gets crossed regularly when nobody is watching. For couples in genuinely amicable, balanced situations with no children and no complex assets, the risk of an unregulated route may be modest. For everyone else, and that is most people, the protections that come with regulated mediation are the difference between an agreement that lasts and one that quietly falls apart two years later when a pension comes into payment, an undisclosed asset surfaces, or a parenting arrangement stops working.
What mediation actually costs
The numbers in Splitting the Bill are an opportunity for the mediation profession to be clearer about its own. A typical family mediation case in England and Wales involves an initial Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting (MIAM) followed by a small number of joint sessions. Most cases settle in three to five meetings. Hourly rates vary by region and provider, but total costs for the mediation itself are typically in the £500–£2,500 range per couple before factoring in the up-to-£500 voucher available through the government scheme for qualifying cases involving children. Or Legal Aid. Couples then take their agreement to a solicitor to be drafted into a consent order, which the court approves. Even with that legal step factored in, the total cost is usually a fraction of a contested solicitor-led process, and often less than a fixed-fee online negotiation product — with the regulatory protections built in. In other words: the saving is real, but it is a saving on top of safeguards, not instead of them.
When mediation is the right choice
Mediation works best when both people are willing to sit at the same table, even if that table is virtual and want to resolve matters constructively. It is not the right route in every case. Where there is ongoing domestic abuse, severe power imbalance, or one party simply refuses to engage, court remains necessary and exists precisely for those situations. A good mediator will tell you that at the MIAM stage and help you find the right path, including making the necessary referrals. But for the very large group of couples that Splitting the Bill describes, the two thirds who say their separation was broadly amicable, who want to protect the children, who want to keep costs down, and who want to move forward without years of litigation — mediation is the option the report should have spent most of its pages on.
The bottom line
Amicable have done the sector a favour by putting the cost of divorce back in the headlines. They have done their own commercial proposition a bigger favour by leaving mediation out of the answer. Both can be true. If you are at the start of a separation and trying to work out what to do, the honest summary is this: a contested solicitor-led divorce should usually be the last resort, not the first instinct. A regulated family mediator should usually be the first conversation, not the last. And the difference between an unregulated negotiation product and an FMC-registered mediator is a question worth asking before you sign up to either.
Thinking about mediation?
Book a no-obligation call with one of our FMC-registered mediators to talk through your situation in confidence. We will tell you honestly whether mediation is the right route for you and if it is not, we will help you find the one that is.