Couple Accidentally Divorced When Lawyer 'Clicks Wrong Button' In Online Portal
A couple found themselves unintentionally divorced due to an alleged mishap by solicitors at a prominent law firm in London.
The erroneous divorce application was initiated when attorneys at Vardags, a law firm who calls themselves the "best divorce lawyers," allegedly "clicked the wrong button" on an online platform, resulting in the submission of a final divorce order for a couple identified as Mr. and Mrs. Williams.
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The reported mishap occurred when the legal team, aiming to finalize a divorce for a different client, "inadvertently opened the electronic case file in 'Williams v Williams,' " as stated by British judge and president of the family division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, according to The Guardian. Consequently, the divorce was reportedly officially concluded just 21 minutes later.
Despite the couple's ongoing efforts to settle financial matters following their separation in 2023 after two decades of marriage, their divorce was abruptly finalized within a mere 21 minutes due to the reported unforeseen error.
Two days after the incident, the solicitors reportedly recognized their error and promptly sought to reverse the divorce by appealing to the high court. However, Judge McFarlane declined their plea, citing the importance of "maintaining the status quo that it has established."
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"There is a strong public policy interest in respecting the certainty and finality that flows from a final divorce order," McFarlane stated, to The Guardian. "... Like many similar online processes, an operator may only get to the final screen where the final click of the mouse is made after traveling through a series of earlier screens."
The judge emphasized his concern about the potential consequences of the online divorce portal system, highlighting that it could lead to the issuance of a final divorce order inadvertently, merely due to "the click of a wrong button."
Ayesha Vardag, the head of Vardags and a leading divorce lawyer in the U.K., reportedly criticized the judge's decision, labeling it as a "bad decision" regarding the solicitors' effort to rectify the mistake.
"The state should not be divorcing people on the basis of a clerical error," she said. "There has to be intention on the part of the person divorcing, because the principle of intention underpins the justice of our legal system. 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."
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"We've heard from the court staff that this happens a fair bit with the new online system. And it should just have been fixed as usual," Vardag also said in the statement. "But here the husband inexplicably took issue and the judge decided, effectively, 'the computer says no, you're divorced'. "
"It's the kind of decision that I believe would be overturned in a higher court, but where the upshot is in reality that a wife who wanted a divorce has got one, why would that be worth doing in this case?" she proceeded.
"That means that, for now, our law says that you can be divorced by an error made on an online system," she continued. "And that's just not right, not sensible, not justice."
