From last year all divorce petitions in England and Wales were to be submitted to the court using the court service online portal.
No fault divorce is to be introduced from 6 April 2022 and you can read more about that process here.
There is however to be a hiatus in the ability of members of the public to start an online divorce. The portal has a notice stating that the divorce service will close at 4:00 PM on 31 March 2022 and the reason being given is that it is to enable applications submitted before the new divorce law to be issued in time. The notice says that applicants should consider waiting until the replacement service launches on 6 April 2022. Urgent applications that have to be made after 31 March 2022 can either be made on paper or email to the divorce centre in Bury St Edmunds, the email address for urgent applications being onlineDFRjurisdiction@justice.gov.uk.
Many clients are choosing to wait until 6 April 2022 to start the process in a more amicable way, under the new no-fault procedure. However, it is a worrying development that there is to be a gap in clients being able to submit divorce petitions online, and it will remain to be seen whether the divorce centre is able to cope if there are a large number of urgent applications submitted in that gap week.
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