Divorces in England and Wales are being held up by couples rowing about how to divide up their supermarket and airline loyalty points.

One of the country’s leading family law firms has reported that husbands and wives are even prepared to dispute ownership of Clubcard points and Air Miles in court.

Pannone said that continuing economic pressures had led to membership benefits of such schemes increasingly being regarded by spouses as joint marital assets.

Partner Ed Kitchen added that arguments over how to split loyalty points are often “deal-breakers”, causing friction between couples who have succeeded in splitting cash, property and pensions without much difficulty.

“Establishing a fair divorce settlement involves calculating what someone will lose out on as a result of not being married. Traditionally, that has meant considering things like pensions or health insurance. Now, though, people realise the value of points accrued through loyalty schemes.

“When you consider that it can cost several thousand pounds a year to pay for the family holidays and even discounted groceries that these schemes provide, it is perhaps no wonder that separating spouses are demanding either the points themselves or money in lieu of the points as part of divorce settlements which are intended to have a lasting value.

“People are sometimes so determined to claim their share that they’re even prepared to spend court time arguing over who owns the points, regardless of whether they were built up because he or she travelled or which one did the shopping and paid the bills.”

Recent statistics have suggested that there are more than 30 million Nectar or Tesco Clubcard members in the UK while more than 120 million people worldwide are thought to be part of frequent flyer programmes operated by leading airlines.

Mr Kitchen argued that the attention which such schemes had begun to generate in divorce proceedings illustrated the degree to which the recession had caused husbands and wives to consider how to maximise the proportion of marital assets with which they might start a newly single life.

“It wasn’t so long ago that trying to claim your spouse’s Air Miles was the stuff of Hollywood scripts, included to show the extremes of divorce for dramatic value.

“However, couples now understand that loyalty card points can be traded for or translated into things of real financial value and that makes them worth contesting.

“They believe that there’s a principle at stake and that someone who might have amassed points travelling the world for work or by spending time in supermarket queues should be entitled to hold onto them. Unfortunately, as those individuals who have fought their ownership all the way to court have found, principles do cost money.”