A High Court hearing has been told that dozens of divorce applications submitted a day before the law allows were wrongly approved due to a computer error.
A hearing was told that 79 divorces were approved incorrectly after an online system failed to detect that they were submitted exactly a year after marriage when the law only allows divorces from a year and a day.
Lawyers for the Lord Chancellor are asking the court to rule that the divorce orders are “voidable, as opposed to void”, meaning they would still stand, claiming that voiding the orders would have “significant legal and practical consequences”. Family lawyer Nick Gova, partner and head of family law at Spector Constant & Williams said:
“Is there one rule for the court and another for the lawyers? Not too recently where a junior solicitor erroneously applied for a final order on divorce, the courts refused to overturn the final order. In that case, Sir Andrew McFarlane stated: ‘There is a strong public policy interest in respecting the certainty and finality that flows from a final divorce order and maintaining the status quo that it has established’.
We now have a situation where there is an error of the court and its systems, rather than ‘human error’. Surely, consistency must prevail. There remain significant legal and practical considerations which stem from any decision. Not least, the toll on those believing they were divorced.”
