One-stop shop for online divorce ‘would end blame game’

COUPLES should be able to divorce online in a “one-stop shop”, the president of the Supreme Court has said as she argued that blame should be taken out of the process as it is “unjust” and “discriminatory”.

Baroness Hale of Richmond said that the current system is misleading and added “needlessly to the anger, pain, grief and guilt” – therefore increasing the warring between couples and having an adverse effect on their children.

After the decree nisi is granted, there then would be arrangements for property, finance and children that are long and drawn out and involve different applications with different paperwork before different judges. She used a speech in front of family lawyers to call for a “one-stop shop in family cases – where instead of having to navigate possibly five different processes a separating party could file one form telling one story and asking for whichever relief they wanted at the time – and preferably available online”.

Several areas have already started trials of online divorce petitions in order to reduce workload on the courts, but Lady Hale’s suggestion would simplify the whole process. She also called for an end to a ‘fault’ system in divorce.

Currently, if a couple want to divorce without waiting two years, then they must accuse their husband or wife of being at fault, often using adultery.

Lady Hale said: “The contents of the petition can trigger or exacerbate family conflict entirely unnecessarily. Respondents are encouraged by their lawyers to ‘suck it up’ even though the allegations are unfair.

“There is no evidence at all that having to give a reason for the breakdown makes people think twice. The decision to divorce is not taken lightly, but this is not because of need to give prove one of the five facts.”

Lady Hale pointed out that in Scotland, where couples only have to wait a year before claiming that their marriage has irretrievably broken down, only 6 per cent of divorces cited adultery or behaviour compared with 56 per cent in England.

Lady Hale, who has a background in family law, has long been a supporter of ‘no fault’ divorce and was behind a Law Commission report calling for a change in 1990. But for the first time since taking up her post, Lady Hale has set out in detail why she believes Parliament needs to change the law to ensure that families are supported.

She argued that that the current system is “confusing and misleading” because having to use one of five reasons to explain why a couple have split means that the “fact used as the peg on which to hang the divorce petition may not bear any relationship to the real reason why the marriage broke down”.

The system is “unjust” because it suggests one person is to blame and there is “little or nothing to stop the more blameworthy one relying on the conduct of the less blameworthy one”, she told the 30th conference of Resolution, which represents around 6,500 family law firms.

It provokes “unnecessary hostility and bitterness”, she said, because it is arbitrary and does not allow the accused to put their side of the story and therefore “adds needlessly to the anger, pain, grief and guilt felt by many when their marriage breaks down, especially the one who was not expecting it”.

‘A separating party could file one form telling one story, asking for whichever relief they wanted’