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ISSUES: Marriage
Chapter 2: Divorce
Digital divorce – how soon?
T
oday’s
Times
ran a piece, “Online
divorces to spare couples time
and trouble” reporting that
couples will be able to divorce online
this year under plans that could open
the way for the abolition of fault-based
grounds for ending marriage.
The piece states that ministers are
preparing a pilot project to allow
divorce proceedings to be issued
digitally for the first time, in a move
to save time, paperwork and stress
for thousands of people. More than
110,000 divorce proceedings were
begun in 2015. It goes on to say that the
plan, backed by England’s most senior
family judge, Sir James Munby, will be
tested before being introduced across
England and Wales in June.
So, paperless centralised online divorce
will be available within six months in
England and Wales then? Not so fast.
The summary of reforms in last
September’s Ministry of Justice (MoJ)
consultation
paper,
‘Transforming
our justice system’ said that work
had already begun by then to allow
divorce applications to be made
and managed online. It expressed
the aim of removing some of the
bureaucracy from often stressful and
lengthy proceedings and simplifying
cumbersome administrative processes.
The Court Service has now indeed
begun to look at how it can build and
roll out an online system and a small
pilot is expected to commence shortly.
However, HM Courts & Tribunals
Service is not publicly committing to
any date for when a full online system
will be available to the general public.
Our enquiries have revealed that
research has been carried out with
“end users”, divorcing spouses, about
how any problems with the present
procedure can be best tackled. This
includes working with a specialist
accessibility centre to help ensure the
service is compliant and accessible for
users who need additional features to
allow them to access the service, such
as using screen readers.
Family law solicitor and arbitrator, Tony
Roe, who made a series of Freedom of
Information requests of the MoJ, and
whose research broke the news that
Bury St Edmunds (BSE) would be the
single divorce centre for London and
the South East, has spoken to HMCTS
in the light of
The Times
’ story.
Roe said:
“It would be wrong to think that a
complete digitalised divorce process
will happen any time soon. At best
only the petition may be available
to complete online by the end of the
summer, possibly. The Government’s
‘agile methodology’ approach to
projects apparently means that new
processes are built bit by bit, starting
with the petition in this case. It seems
that family modernisation is leading
the way being one of a small number
of similar digital projects involving, for
example, probate and tribunals.
It has been decided that there should
be a pilot site and an announcement
on this will be made very shortly.
However, any such pilot will require
minor rule changes via a Practice
Direction (PD). As yet (3 January), no
such PD has been published.
Excitement
and
expectation
is
growing in the family law community
but we need to be patient and await
the modernisation programme which
seems likely to occur step by step,
starting with a likely pilot, a PD and
only then the first digital petition.’
3 January 2017
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The
above
information
is
reprinted with kind permission
from LexisNexis. Please visit
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