Judge dismisses 28 identical ‘DIY’ divorce petitions

Website filed applications on behalf of petitioners giving the same reasons for each marriage to end

A FAMILY court judge has rejected 28 “DIY divorce” applications after couples using an unregulated website gave identical reasons for wanting to split up.

Mr Justice Moor dismissed the petitions after deciding it was “quite impossible” for each of the respondents to have behaved in exactly the same way.

Each petitioner had used the same wording to claim that their partner had become “moody without justification“and would ignore them “on about two days every week”.

“Different spouses behave in different ways. It is quite impossible for each of 28 respondents to have behaved in exactly the same way as the other 27,” Mr Justice Moor said.

“It follows that I have no alternative but to dismiss all twenty-eight of these divorce petitions.”

The judge said the couples had used a Truro-based website called idivorces to file the online applications on their behalf. Recent years have seen a steady rise in “DIY divorces” handled by online websites after a digital system designed to speed up the process was rolled out in May 2018.

Marriage laws will also be relaxed next year to allow “no fault” divorces after a wait of just six months.

Mr Justice Moor said the 28 cases had been referred by Deputy District Judge Mchardy, the judge in day-to-day charge of the divorce unit at Bury St Edmunds.

Each of the 28 petitions filed by idivorces gave exactly the same example of unreasonable behaviour as the grounds for splitting up.

“For about a year prior to the separation the respondent would become moody without justification and argumentative towards the petitioner. He/ she would behave in this way on at least a couple of days every week, which would cause a lot of tension within the home thereby making the petitioner’s life very uncomfortable,” the petitions said.

Matthew Eastham, a director at idivorces, admitted to the court that each couple had been sent a standard template before “asking them if there was anything in there that was wrong”.

In these cases the petitioners had not made any changes to the wording, he explained.

Speaking to the website Legal Futures, Mr Eastham described having to prove fault as “so old hat”, adding that idivorces would not be changing its processes as a result of the ruling.

“We were trying to push things more towards no fault, but the law is the law and the grounds were just too similar,” he said.

The full judgment would be published online “to ensure that nobody else decides to do exactly the same as has happened in this particular case”, he said.

Mr Eastham said the judge had been “fantastic and very understanding”.