DIVORCES between couples married for 20 years are now the most common, figures reveal.
Older couples are breaking up more than any other straight group, often after the children have left home.
They made up more than a quarter of all , with the itch no longer being most common at seven years.
Last year, out of 102,879 heterosexual divorces in England and Wales, 26 per cent were between couples married for 20 years or more, the Office for National Statistics revealed.
Former Strictly Come Dancing host and broadcaster parted in May after 22 years of marriage, although they remain close friends.
Newsreader , winner of the show’s first series in 2004, said last week she and husband were separating after 21 years.
The figures also show that 23 per cent of couples — 24,052 in all — split up after between five and nine years.
That range has seen the largest proportion of since records on duration began in 1963.
The average length of an opposite-sex relationship ending in divorce has gone from 10.7 years in 2000 to 13 last year, the longest since records began.
Jeremy Todd, of Coram Family Lives, a free helpline for families in crisis, told The Sunday Times: “Parents stay together for the sake of the children.
“Often empty-nest syndrome is the big reveal that there’s nothing really that’s keeping the couple together once their shared parenting has gone.
“Obviously, if all you’re left with is the tumbleweed of all the issues that remain unresolved, it’s unlikely that over time that’s going to sustain you.”
