They happen all the time. In the past few weeks, the wife of actor Robin Williams has filed for one, John Cleese has been in the middle of one and even an 80-year-old Irish woman has been granted one. Yet despite its prevalence, divorce can be one of the most traumatic experiences a family goes through.

Enter the "divorce coach". Jackie Walker, an Edinburgh-based divorcee, life coach and practitioner in neuro-linguistic programming who describes herself as Scotland's first divorce coach, is launching a mutual support group in June for people who are going through or have been through divorce.

The group is an innovation being offered alongside her core business, one-to-one sessions available to those who can afford them. Meanwhile, next Thursday, an American divorce coach, Christina McGhee, a family mediator with a social work masters degree from Tulane University in New Orleans, is visiting Scotland to host a group for parents who are separating or thinking about separating, to help them to think about how their children might be feeling and minimise conflict.

She has been invited by Relationships Scotland, which was formed on April 1 in a merger between Relate (formerly Couple Counselling Scotland) and Family Mediation Scotland, and acts as a one-stop-shop providing advice and support to those experiencing problems in their relationships. Divorce, it seems, has entered the age of the guru.

Why this should be happening now is partly by accident, partly by design. The Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006 introduced a number of changes, including the official grounds for seeking divorce, in order to end the blame culture. This reflects a recognition across the political spectrum of the importance of removing acrimony from divorce. Relationships Scotland would like to see sheriffs, courts and lawyers encourage and recommend that couples seeking divorce go through mediation, particularly for the good of the children.

The Act also reduced separation periods for divorce with consent to one year (from two previously) and without consent to two years (from five). This caused an upward blip in the divorce statistics for 2006: there were 13,000 divorces that year, up 19%, though that number is expected to level out again once the effect of the new legislation on pre-existing cases has worked its way through the system. The divorce rate will then probably return to its previous level, between 10,000 and 11,000 a year, or, to put it another way, around one-third of the number of marriages, which have been roughly 30,000 a year for the past decade.

All this, however, masks the true extent of relationship and family break-up, as it does not show how many co-habiting couples split up. Roughly half of all children in Scotland are born to unmarried parents; during one quarter last year, the figure went above 50% for the first time. How many family break-ups there are involving unmarried parents is not known, though it is thought by Relationships Scotland to be "at least as many" as with married parents, but could be significantly more. In other words, there are thousands of people at any one time experiencing the pain of a break-up.

Typical responses are fear, guilt and sadness. Coaches and counsellors agree this can go on for years. "The words I nearly always hear are, I can't go on living like this anymore'," says Walker. That could be referring to living in an unhappy relationship or it could be said by someone who has divorced but is struggling to move on.

Walker, who used to work for the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants organising events, dinners and training, changed career after her own divorce. She used a coach at the time and decided that she had what it took to be one herself, so did training with the Coaching Academy. She is not a counsellor and does not have any counselling qualifications.

"I'm taking my own experiences and showing how I got through it," she says. As a coach, her work is very much focused on the individual, who she says can expect to gain confidence and clarity, though she does sometimes work with couples.

She has a "six-step process" that she created, based on the steps she went through. And she warns that those seeking endless pity will be disappointed: she insists people take responsibility for their own happiness instead of dwelling on past wrongs. She says of her own marriage: "I was the obstacle to my own happiness. I had to take responsibility and my clients all take responsibility."

The new Edinburgh Support Divorce Meetup will be free; she also provides a free "surgery" - you e-mail a question, she replies in a webcast - and some free materials on her website. When it comes to one-to-one sessions, however, Walker insists those wishing to sign up have weekly hour-long sessions for a minimum of three months; they can also call at other times in "emergencies" and she provides e-mail back-up. The cost? A cool £1500.

People going through divorces are not known for having lots of ready cash. But there are other high-quality services out there. Relationships Scotland is concerned with the effect that relationship breakdown will have on the whole family. The organisation, which has decades of experience, is dedicated to providing family and relationships support as "a right, not a privilege", and can provide counselling to couples, individuals or families going through a troubled patch, a break-up and coping with the aftermath of a split. Sessions can be booked as and when they are needed. Some are free, some cost (a one-hour phone counselling session costs £45). Relationships Scotland says that 90% of people they see "feel they understand their problem better and feel more able to deal with it" afterwards.

What is clear is that, while divorce may never be easy, it is becoming less like warfare. Robin Williams once quipped: "Ah, yes, divorce from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet." Scotland's new generation of coaches and counsellors hope that caricature can soon be consigned to the past.