Bury St Edmunds Court Processing times & Request your local MP

[kb1983]

Hello members,

Hope you are doing well.

I applied for divorce last year in June 2021, unfortunately, at that time the online portal was down, so my divorce application reached Bury st Edmunds court.

I applied for the deemed service with evidence that my partner has received the divorce notice and is not responding to the court willingly. I don’t know about the whereabouts of my partner so I can’t go for the process server, etc.

When I talk to the court’s chat service all they say is there is a huge backlog from the last year, they are still responding to the last year's correspondences, etc. They answer the call after 55 mins and just say that they have a huge backlog.

I’m really upset that my divorce has not even reached the first stage of Decree Nisi so far. One of my friends applied for divorce in April 2022 and has got the nisi to be pronounced by end of this month!!

I’m not sure what the court is doing with my application, there is no real update for me.

I have written to my local MP via TheyWorkForYou: www.theyworkforyou.com/ So, I'd request that if you are also waiting for the Bury St Edmunds court to respond/process your case, please write about this to your local MP so that more people report this, MPs can raise it with Ministry of Justice and other proper channels.

is there any advice or suggestions for me? Or is there a formal way to complain to the court where they actually respond?

Regards

I had to resort to involving my MP.
my divorce was pending since Sept 2019 at Bury, only just given the Nisi so I wish you luck!

Hi @Mylifehasimploded , thanks for your msg.

That is very sad to hear that it took so long for you to get Nisi, family court especially Bury St Edmunds is working very slow. I have read my negative reviews for them regarding late processing times on google reviews after experiencing the delay by myself.

Do you mind sharing the timeline related to asking for help from your local MP and the MP getting back to you versus a response from the court?

Also, do you know whether the offline divorce case can be converted to an online case by the court on request? Based on my info, it can only be done by asking the court to cancel the current divorce and requesting a new divorce petition. There is no intermediate step to transfer from offline to online!!!

Thanks

I asked my MP to intervene mid April this year, and they replied a month later with the news my nisi had been granted. The court sent everything to my old address, despite numerous letters giving them my new address, they still haven’t changed it.
timeline:
applied online Sept 2019, tried to serve him March 2020, covid hit, court agreed he could be served via email, then when he was, they changed their minds 🤷‍♀️ I’d applied online, so my solicitor had to take over for me. Then the solicitor got me to sign the wrong form, then Bury lost everything…..then finally my MP became involved and everything suddenly was found 🤷‍♀️
im not sure whether you can convert to online, mine was the other way.

I had a similar problem and with Bury St Ed. You can't get back to online unless you declare you wish to cancel your application (12 weeks and apply again and pay court fee again) which will add delay. I started online but then one day they decided to move me to paper version and I can't go back to online. Was told that even if I cancelled there is no guarantee my new application wouldn't not be moved to paper again and that would be £595 wasted. The divorce process is so inhuman