Couples who thought they’d divorced could still be married
SCORES of newly- divorced couples may still be married because of a series of blunders by officials.
Those affected were granted legal break-ups too quickly, a senior judge said yesterday.
In some cases, couples submitted divorce petitions before they had been married a year – the minimum period. In others, officials approved divorces before the applicants had spent enough time apart.
Individuals who have remarried are at risk of having committed bigamy – an offence punishable with seven years in prison.
The mistakes appear to have been made at the 11 divorce centres set up in England and Wales since 2015. All petitions for divorce – the documents which begin the legal process – must be submitted to one of the centres. They are staffed by legal advisers under the supervision of judges.
Sir James Munby, the most senior divorce judge, has ordered courts to apologise for the ‘devastating impact’ the errors will have on those who thought they had formally separated.
The news of the mishandling of divorces was issued in a technical briefing to the courts.
It contained no information on how many people will be affected – numbers could range from a
‘The situation is absurd’
handful to thousands. Sir James, who is president of the family division of the High Court, said: ‘Very recently a number of cases have been brought to my attention where decrees nisi and absolute have been granted notwithstanding that the petition had been issued within one year of the marriage.’
He said that in such cases the divorce would be null and void and that he had called in the Queen’s Proctor – a government lawyer employed to deal with family law cases – to tell the courts to strike divorces out.
Sir James said: ‘Judges will wish to be alert to the potentially devastating impact on litigants of being informed that there is a problem with their decree. Especially (and this is unlikely to be known to the court when the first communication is made) a litigant who believes they have been validly divorced has remarried or is due very shortly to remarry.
‘ Communications should accordingly be expressed in appropriately sympathetic and apologetic language.’
Andrew Newbury, of Hall Brown Family Law, said the problem in some cases might simply be that of men and women filing for divorce on the first anniversary of their marriage instead of waiting one more day as the rules require.
He added: ‘Under the current rules, the position would be very severe and divorces would become null and void.
‘Sir James is proposing a solution to fast track those cases which have perhaps inadvertently breached proper procedures. It is worth pointing out, though, that because of the sheer volume of workload being handled by family courts, resolution may not necessarily be as quick as either he or the couples involved would like.’
Margaret Heathcote of Resolution, a body which represents family law firms, said: ‘With the closure of many courts and fewer resources for the family justice system more broadly, it is inevitable that there will be an impact in one form or another.
‘The fact that the president has had to issue this guidance suggests there are basic mistakes being made that simply shouldn’t happen.’
Harry Benson, of the Marriage Foundation think-tank, said officials should be on top of the law because couples were unlikely to know what the legal process entailed. He added: ‘Whether there are tens or hundreds or thousands of couples who remain married despite thinking they are divorced, the situation is absurd.
‘Couples who haven’t waited the full two or five years can conclude things by switching to the sham of immediate fault-based divorce. But what about those who have remarried? Since they cannot enter polygamy, their new marriage is null and void.’
There were more than 100,000 divorces in England and Wales in 2016.