Thousands of divorce deals threatened by glitch in online form

THOUSANDS of divorcees may have paid too much to their former spouses because of a glitch in an online form.

Divorcing couples have to fill in the form to declare how much they are worth. This is used by a judge to settle their assets.

But the section that is meant to establish their net worth has not been taking full account of liabilities entered, such as mortgages and debts.

This could make their overall wealth appear larger than it is, which may affect how much money, or which properties, the judge decides should be handed over by one partner to the other.

Amazingly, the glitch had not been noticed for nearly two years. Those affected may have to renegotiate their divorces.

The software, called Form E, has been miscalculating assets since April last year.

There were no details yesterday of how many of the estimated 180,000 divorces in England and Wales in that time may have been hit.

The form is usually completed on paper and the figures thoroughly checked by lawyers.

Many law firms also use their own software rather than the Ministry of Justice form. But the flaw may have affected those who cannot afford to pay lawyers, and use the MoJ online version to put in their declaration.

Nicola Matheson-Durrant, of a family law consultancy in Berkshire, who spotted the error, told the Guardian that ‘not a single solicitor, barrister or judge in the whole of the UK had noticed’.

A spokesman for Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service said: ‘We are urgently investigating this issue. Officials are taking steps to identify rapidly cases where this regrettable error may have had an impact.’

But Sam Hall, of JMW Solicitors, said last night that he would be ‘amazed’ if the glitch resulted in large numbers of divorce settlements needing to be revisited.

‘Any specialist solicitor worth his or her salt would make their own detailed calculations of how much individual spouses are worth on divorce and simply not rely on a generic form and a formula made available on the ministry’s website,’ he said. ‘This form is merely one part of the administrative process involved in determining the size of any settlement and is certainly not the sole indicator.

‘It is also generally completed several months before the financial aspects of a divorce are finalised and, therefore, might not accurately reflect the state of someone’s assets when a couple finally parts.

‘I would be very surprised if the kind of checks and balances which should be routine in these matters failed to pick up discrepancies.’

In 2011, the Church of England admitted that a million weddings solemnised since 1980 were technically invalid, because it had failed to change its laws to take into account the new working of a modern-language prayer book introduced that year.

There were fears that separated couples would try to escape paying maintenance by claiming they had never really been married.

The Church revised its statutes to close the loophole and judges treated all the church weddings involved as proper marriages.