Question about divorce and child arrangements in England

[KataraJean]

Hi,

I am not looking for legal advice, but I am trying to answer a question and I cannot find any information which ties the things up online. I am hoping one of the helpful legal bods on here can explain. The question is:

Do you have to have a child arrangements order/agreement in place before you can divorce in England, or is the divorce handled separately from proceedings about the children?

I can find stuff about divorce and about child arrangements, but not how they relate to each other.

Thanks in advance!

No.

You used to have to file a Statement of Arrangements for the children with your Petition, and the Court could list a hearing if not satisfied, but that power was almost never used (certainly since I started practice in 1994) and the power (and requirement for Statement of Arrangements) were done away with a few years ago.

Thank you! That is what has been puzzling me about the difference between English and Scottish law.
So in practice, if there are differences between the parties over the arrangements for the children, they are dealt with separately from the divorce; hence the divorce decree only depends on meeting the legal grounds for divorce?

Exactly so.

Correct.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions - I was going round in circles trying to work out why/how they were different. The English version seems more sensible.