Does adultery affect a divorce financial settlement?

Adultery stopped being a ground for divorce in England and Wales on 6 April 2022, when the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020 came into force. The only ground now is irretrievable breakdown, no reasons are given on the application, and it cannot be contested over who did what. This guide covers the narrow route by which conduct can still affect a financial settlement under section 25(2)(g) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, what happens to money spent on an affair, how a new relationship changes maintenance, and where Scotland differs.

Everything below is England and Wales law and process unless stated otherwise. Before you spend anything testing a conduct argument, run your figures through our settlement range estimator. It gives you the indicative range a court would work from on needs and sharing alone, with no conduct adjustment, and that baseline is the honest starting point for judging whether an argument about an affair could realistically improve on it.

Adultery and the no-fault divorce process since April 2022

The application itself gives you nothing to work with. Under the current process one or both spouses apply on the sole ground that the marriage has broken down irretrievably, and the statement of that fact is conclusive: there is no box for adultery, no naming of a co-respondent, and no defence. The minimum timeline is 26 weeks: a 20-week reflection period from application to conditional order, then a 6 weeks and 1 day wait before the final order (Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020, in force 6 April 2022). The application fee is £628 from 13 July 2026.

Ending the marriage and dividing the money are separate exercises. The financial side runs either by agreement, sealed by a consent order with a court fee of £62, or through a contested application on Form A with a fee of £321. Neither route asks why the marriage ended. Our guide to how long a divorce takes sets out the sequencing, and what am I entitled to in a divorce covers the section 25 factors that actually drive the division.

When conduct affects a financial settlement

Section 25(2)(g) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 requires the court to have regard to "the conduct of each of the parties, if that conduct is such that it would in the opinion of the court be inequitable to disregard it". That last clause is the whole story. In Wachtel v Wachtel in 1973 the Court of Appeal set the threshold as conduct that is obvious and gross, and the courts have held that line ever since. The modern approach, set out by Mr Justice Peel in Tsvetkov v Khayrova in 2023, asks whether the conduct is proved on the evidence and whether it produced an identifiable financial consequence.

Type of conduct	Usual effect on the settlement	Why
Adultery or an affair	None in almost all cases	Not conduct it would be inequitable to disregard; the court divides resources rather than apportioning blame
Reckless dissipation of assets	Possible add-back to the spender's share	Money that would otherwise be in the pot has been wantonly destroyed
Hiding assets or incomplete disclosure	Adverse inferences, costs orders, set-aside	Breach of the duty owed to the court, not merely to the other spouse
Serious physical harm	Can affect the outcome, usually through needs	Direct effect on a party's earning capacity and future requirements
Litigation misconduct	Costs orders	Financial remedy cases normally run on no order for costs, so this is a real sanction

Read down that table and the pattern is clear: the conduct that changes outcomes is conduct with a price tag attached. Non-disclosure is the most commonly successful category by a distance, and our guide to hidden assets in divorce covers the disclosure duty, adverse inferences and set-aside in detail.

Money spent on an affair and the divorce asset pot

This is where infidelity comes closest to touching the figures. Where a spouse has spent significant sums on a new relationship, the other spouse can argue for an add-back: the court treats the money as notionally still in existence and credits it to the spender's column, so it comes out of their share rather than reducing the pot for both. The Court of Appeal confirmed the principle in Vaughan v Vaughan in 2007.

The limit is just as important. In MAP v MFP in 2015 the court declined to add back very substantial sums a husband had spent, on the basis that it is not the court's function to moralise about how someone chooses to live. The successful arguments involve spending that is wanton or reckless and material relative to the total assets, evidenced by bank statements rather than asserted.

Imogen's situation shows the proportionality point. On a total pot of around £400,000, she could evidence roughly £35,000 her husband had moved out of the joint account over eighteen months, on hotels, a holiday and a car deposit. Adding that back to his column shifts about £17,500 in her direction on an equal division, which comfortably justified putting the transfers in a questionnaire with the statements attached. Had the pot been £3 million, the same £35,000 would not have been worth a contested argument, because the costs of running it would have exceeded the recovery. Our cost of divorce guide gives the cost bands to weigh that against.

A new partner, spousal maintenance and child maintenance

A new partner cannot be made a party to your case and cannot be ordered to pay you anything. They matter only through the needs arithmetic. If your spouse now lives with someone who contributes to the household, that reduces your spouse's assessed income need, which can cut a spousal maintenance claim they are making against you. The same logic runs in reverse if you are the one with a new partner. Remarriage goes further: a spousal maintenance order ends automatically on the recipient's remarriage, and remarrying before you have made a financial claim can bar the claim altogether, a trap covered in the remarriage trap and time limits.

Child maintenance sits entirely outside all of this. The Child Maintenance Service applies a formula to the paying parent's gross weekly income: the basic rate is 12% for one child, 16% for two children and 19% for three or more children, with reductions for shared care. Nothing in the calculation asks why the parents separated, and nothing in it responds to conduct by either parent. Our spousal maintenance guide and the CMS formula explained set out both calculations.

Adultery, divorce and financial provision in Scotland

Scotland was not part of the 2020 no-fault reform. Adultery and unreasonable behaviour remain grounds for divorce there, alongside separation of one year with consent or two years without, under the Divorce (Scotland) Act 1976 as amended. That difference is procedural rather than financial: section 11(7)(a) of the Family Law (Scotland) Act 1985 tells the court to leave conduct out of account unless it has adversely affected the financial resources. The much larger difference for anyone with a Scottish case is that matrimonial property in Scotland is defined more narrowly, broadly property acquired during the marriage, which affects the split far more than any conduct question. Northern Ireland also has its own regime. Take advice in the jurisdiction that applies to you.

The gap between what happened and what a divorce settlement can fix

The hardest part of this topic is not the law, it is the mismatch. Being told that the affair which ended your marriage is legally irrelevant can feel like the system endorsing it. It is worth separating the two things. The court is carrying out a resource allocation exercise for two households and any children, working out who needs what and what there is to go round. It is not adjudicating the marriage, and it has never been well suited to doing so.

That distinction matters practically as well as emotionally, because conduct arguments are expensive. Proving contested allegations means witness statements, disclosure and hearing time, and a party who pursues an allegation that does not clear the section 25(2)(g) bar risks a costs order for litigation conduct. Where the feelings are the live issue rather than the figures, counselling or a mediator who can hold the difficult conversation usually does more than a court application, and mediation is a cheaper route to the same financial outcome in most cases.

The realistic summary is this: adultery ended as a legal concept in the divorce process in England and Wales in April 2022, and it almost never changes a financial settlement, because the court divides resources by reference to needs and sharing rather than fault. The exception worth pursuing is financial: money genuinely dissipated on an affair, and a new partner's contribution to household costs, both of which can be evidenced and quantified. To see how the numbers are actually built once conduct is set aside, read our financial settlements hub, and if you want a family law specialist to assess whether your facts clear the conduct threshold before you spend anything on the argument, get in touch. This article is information, not legal advice, and conduct cases turn heavily on their specific facts.