Children need stronger families, not just better courts

Every working day, 255 new children’s cases arrive at England’s family courts – yet another huge year-on-year increase. In February 2026 alone, 5,103 children entered a system already buckling under the weight of broken adult relationships. The courts are not coping.

Last week, the President of the Family Division announced £82 million to roll out the ‘Child Focused Model’ across 32 court centres – the biggest change to family court proceedings in 30 years! The model puts the child’s welfare at the centre of hearings from the outset, rather than leaving it to the end. Rightly, no one wants children caught up in a system that makes things worse for them.

But £82 million over three years works out at roughly £850,000 per court per year. It is enough to reorganise hearings, but not enough to stem the rising tide. And it does not even ask the question that matters: why are so many families falling apart?

The answer is not hidden. The Centre for Social Justice’s “I Do?” report, published in February, showed that marriages in England and Wales have fallen from over 400,000 in 1973 to 224,402 in 2023 – the lowest figure since records began, outside the Covid years. Only 2% of men now marry by the age of 25, compared with 62% in 1970.

This matters for children directly. Marriage Foundation research shows that 93% of couples who are still together when their child turns 15 are married. Cohabiting couples make up just 19% of parents, yet account for half of all family breakdown. A married couple who married before the birth of their first child has a 76% chance of staying together; a cohabiting couple has a 31% chance.

There is a flood pouring through the family courts. The Marriage Foundation has estimated the annual cost of family breakdown to the taxpayer at £51 billion – and that figure is from 2018. The Government’s £82 million amounts to 0.16% of a single year’s bill. While it may be a more humane way of processing the wreckage, it is not a strategy for preventing it.

We live in a culture that treats adult relationships as disposable and then acts surprised when children pay the price. Two hundred and fifty-five cases today. Two hundred and fifty-seven more tomorrow. Coalition for Marriage exists because someone has to say what the evidence keeps saying and the Government keeps ignoring: marriage is the strongest foundation for family life, and children do best when it is upheld, supported, and expected. The children in those cases a day deserve more than a redesigned courtroom.

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