Divorces set to be mostly online by 2022

♦ Divorce cases and child custody battles will be dealt with virtually within four years, the head of the High Court’s Family Division has predicted.

Cases will be heard without anyone, including the judge, setting foot in a courtroom. Sir James Munby, who is due to retire in July, said: “We will at last have escaped from a court system still in too large part moored in the world of Dickens,” he said in a speech to an audience of family lawyers.

The proposals are part of plans to modernise the courts which are due to be implemented by March 2022. It will begin in other areas of law first.