First couples get chance to apply for divorce online
COUPLES are applying for divorces online in a trial designed to make the process simpler and cheaper.
The scheme, at a divorce court in Nottingham, has had ‘really positive’ initial results, according to officials.
But court managers said that four in ten people have had their application forms rejected because they could not fill them in correctly without the help of a lawyer. They then had to visit the East Midlands Divorce Centre to be guided through the on-screen form.
The trial was launched earlier this year as part of a £1billion court modernisation plan, Her Majesty’s Court and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) said.
A HMCTS report said: ‘Whilst it is a small scale pilot it has allowed us to build confidence in the design of the system before we add features to it to make it a fully online experience and extend the pilot to a wider audience.’
Couples going through divorce currently have to fill in paper forms and file them to courts, slowing down the process. Last year the most senior family judge, President of the Family Division Sir James Munby, said that when divorce is digital ‘we will at last have escaped from a court system still in too large part moored in the world of the late Mr Charles Dickens’.
But Harry Benson, of the Marriage Foundation think-tank, said: ‘Divorce should be taken seriously, and there is definitely a risk that divorces conducted online could trivialise the process.’