Nearly 80 former couples thought they were divorced – thanks to a Family Court blunder they were wrong

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A judge has given nearly 80 separated couples a chance to rethink their breakups thanks to a bizarre administrative blunder that saw their divorces wrongly approved.

The 79 former pairs had made a mistake in their divorce applications two years ago that wasn’t picked up by the courts when the break-ups were approved some months later. The mistakes were only later noticed by officials in April 2024.

The separated couples have now been handed a deadline by Family Court president Sir Andrew McFarlane to challenge their separations before they are finally ruled lawful next month – and if not the court will rule they were in fact lawfully separated in 2022.

“Some have written to the [minister] expressing their concern and distress at the position they find themselves to be in,” Sir Andrew said, adding it was unknown what financial and property arrangements had been made as a result of these faulty declarations.

“It is also not known whether children have been born whose status might be affected by the decisions of this court, or whether other rights relating to inheritance or immigration might also be impacted.”

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Couples can only apply for a divorce order a year after the date of their marriage. These 79 accidentally applied on their anniversary date, not the day after their anniversary, as is the law – and an error in the online application portal failed to pick up the fault.

The divorce portal is meant to prevent a mistake like this happening but a system error allowed people to make the faulty submissions from 6 April 2022 until it was discovered in November 2022.

In his judgement Sir Andrew said the government tried to track down the 79 former couples, and succeeded in notifying “most of the 158 people involved”.

At least 11 of the people affected have remarried, others said that they want to remarry, and in 17 cases final financial orders resulting from their divorce have been made by the court.

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Despite the error with the portal being noticed in November 2022, investigations were not carried out into how many couples may have been allowed to submit faulty applications.

Sir Andrew criticised officials for not finding out the scale of the problem earlier, adding if the courts and tribunal service “had conducted a proper investigation in November 2022 when the problem was first drawn to their attention, it is likely that none, or almost none, of the 79 cases would have had final [divorce] orders made”.

In his judgement, Sir Andrew concluded that the 79 final orders of divorce are “voidable and not void”, meaning that the couples are divorced but they could try and argue that the divorce was unlawful.

“None have contacted the [minister] or the court to suggest they are in any way opposed to the making of the declaration sought,” he said.

They have until the end of January to file any challenge to the final divorce orders that have already been made.