Divorce on-line form E error

[cdtaylornats]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35128010

I know a lot of people here are divorced or divorcing. If you or your lawyers used online form E I suggest you read the above link, you may be headed back to court.

It obviously is a significant problem with the software.

But I think Nicola may be overstating it.

The reason why (as she thinks) "not a single solicitor, barrister or judge in the whole of the UK had noticed this error" might actually be because lawyers do their own calculation of the assets, they look at the separate entries in Form E for assets and debts, and they don't rely on the software calculation to reach a total.

i would be very surprised if a single divorce settlement were actually affected by this.

I think it's more likely to have been a problem for litigants in person. Nowhere I've worked has used the court forms provided by HMCS. I don't know any solicitor's firm that doesn't use its own software.

When a consent order is submitted to the court, AFAIK the judge doesn't look at that part of Form E - they look at the Form D81, where the parties have to put their figures down in summary.

Even with litigants in person - if one person says "you have £200k so I should have half of that", surely the second person would just say "but I haven't got £200k because you haven't deducted my credit card debts and the car loan".

Perhaps it would be a problem if the person who filled out the Form E went ahead on the basis that the automatic calculation of their own assets was correct, and didn't bother to cross check at all. But I wonder how often that actually happens.

I assure you every solicitor has noticed, the difference being we have been creative and sorted it ourselves. Any lawyer that doesn't check a Form E at least 3 times before filing needs a pretty swift kick