UK High Court Upholds Accidental Divorce

Ben Boman, LawFuel contributing editor

The finality of divorce was made crystal clear by the UK High Court in a recent decision involving high profile divorce lawyers Vardags who were refused an application to annul a final divorce decree made via an online divorce tool.

The application resulted from an error made when the law firm used an online divorce portal.

The Vardags staffer used the file of the wrong couple, and failed to notice the mistake as they used the online system and accidentally applied for the order.

The filing was made at 5.14pm on October 3 last year, and the divorce was approved through the online system just 21 minutes later, at 5.35pm.

Sir Andrew McFarlane, the president of the Family Division, underscored the importance of maintaining the validity of final orders that have been issued without procedural irregularities.

The Judge said it is “in the public interest that a final order of divorce should be unimpeachable when granted by a court with competent jurisdiction and after compliance with the correct procedural requirements.

“A final order made without procedural irregularity should stand for all the world.”

ayesha vardag lawfuel — Image:TheTelegraph

Vardags, headed by high-profile divorce lawyer Ayesha Vardag, the ‘femme fatale divorce lawyer‘, accidentally applied for a divorce on behalf of the wrong couple due to mistakenly opening the wrong client file.

Sir Andrew McFarlane pointed out that if the wife sought recourse for the error, her avenue would be a negligence suit against her solicitors, not an attempt to invalidate the divorce order itself.

He said that the error had been made early in the process, by selecting the wrong couple’s file, but the process had then proceeded with the names of the couple clearly displayed on several screens of the online portal.

“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.

Vardag Embarrassment

The publicity for Vardags, who regard themselves as the top divorce lawyers in London and who have handled a range of high profile divorces, is significant.

Ayesha Vardag has represented celebrities, royalty and others in major, headline-making divorce cases with huge success.

A rags-to-riches story of financial and professional success, she built a major divorce practice after graduating from Queens’ College at the University of Cambridge, where she initially studied English Literature before switching to Law.

She has been widely publicised for her superstar legal success in publications from The Times to LawFuel’s (most fearsome female advocates in the UK) list.

From The Sun:

The 55-year-old, who splits her time between London and Florence, represents celebrities, footballers and even royalty in cases that often run into the hundreds of millions of pounds.

Ayesha tells us family law, which deals with “love, sex, children, homes and our future” is the most compelling field – but it’s also high stakes.

She says: “I work at the coal face of people’s lives, which can make the difference between them having a depressing, miserable and poor existence or having a positive future that everyone deserves.”

But the error also demonstrates the increasing risk of using online tools to achieve legal outcomes that can lead to the sort of problems faced in this case.