Lawyer Screw Up Leads To Couple’s Divorce. Judge Refuses To Fix It.

// This sounds more like the plot to a rom-com than actual real life. The kind with a legal plot twist forcing lawyers everywhere scoff and say, “That’s not how that works.”

And yet. Here we are.

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Solicitors at the London Vardags firm accidentally got a divorce for their client, known only as Mrs. Williams in coverage. How, exactly, did that happen you might be wondering. Well, it involves an online portal, a tricky drop down menu, and a sprinkle of carelessness. From The Guardian:

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Sir Andrew McFarlane, the president of the family division, explained lawyers had intended to apply for a divorce for another client “but inadvertently opened the electronic case file in ‘Williams v Williams’ and proceeded to apply for a final order in that case”.

He said solicitors at Vardags, who were representing the wife, used the online portal “without the instruction or authority of their client”. He said the online system operated with “its now customary speed” and granted the order divorcing the Williamses within 21 minutes.

Now surely you’re guessing that when the error was realized (two days later, for the record) it could be corrected. But the judge rejected that application:

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But McFarlane rejected the application and said: “There is a strong public policy interest in respecting the certainty and finality that flows from a final divorce order and maintaining the status quo that it has established.”

He added that it was necessary to correct the impression that the online divorce portal would “deliver a final order of divorce where one was not wanted simply by ‘the click of a wrong button’”.

“Like many similar online processes, an operator may only get to the final screen where the final click of the mouse is made after travelling through a series of earlier screens,” he said.

There’s certainly a public interest involved, but I’m not sure it cuts the way the judge thinks it does.

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Attorney Ayesha Vardags — the leader of the firm behind the error — slammed the judge saying it was a “bad decision.” The mistake should not be controlling Vardags noted, “The state should not be divorcing people on the basis of a clerical error. There has to be intention on the part of the person divorcing, because the principle of intention underpins the justice of our legal system.”

She continued, “When a mistake is brought to a court’s attention, and everyone accepts that a mistake has been made, it obviously has to be undone … That means that, for now, our law says that you can be divorced by an error made on an online system. And that’s just not right, not sensible, not justice.”

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].

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Courts, Divorce, Family Law