Adam Lennon, head of family modernisation and improvement at HM Courts & Tribunals Service, told a Westminster Legal Policy Forum that enabling people to apply for a divorce online could eliminate up to 13,000 hours of time spent by court staff checking divorce petitions.<\/p>\n
Lennon spent years in the courts service issuing divorce petitions. He returned an estimated 4 out of every 10 petitions to the applicant because of an error.\u00a0‘In many cases, applicants and their legal representatives were not able to accurately copy word-for-word the place of marriage from the marriage certificate.\u201d<\/p>\n
HMCTS\u00a0piloted\u00a0a scheme last year enabling people to apply for a divorce online, print off the form and send it to court. The service has been extended so that people can submit a form, send relevant documents and make payments.<\/p>\n
The number of rejected applications fell from 40% of all paper applications received to 7% for digital applications.<\/p>\n
HMCTS is also considering adopting a similar approach for the process for caring for vulnerable children.<\/p>\n
President of the Family Division Sir James Munby said online divorce had been a ‘triumphant success’ but there were still five ‘burning issues’ requiring statutory reform: no-fault divorce; cohabitants’ property rights; ancillary relief; alleged perpetrators of domestic abuse being able to cross-examine alleged victims; and transparency, to review.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If you are looking for family advice then please call 0161 624 6811 to speak to our Family Department.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Adam Lennon, head of family modernisation and improvement at HM Courts & Tribunals Service, told a Westminster Legal Policy Forum that enabling people to apply for a divorce online could eliminate up to 13,000 hours of time spent by court staff checking divorce petitions. Lennon spent years in the courts service issuing divorce petitions. He…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[218],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-law","category-218","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrigleyclaydon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrigleyclaydon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrigleyclaydon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrigleyclaydon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrigleyclaydon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrigleyclaydon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrigleyclaydon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrigleyclaydon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrigleyclaydon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}