in Great Britain, lawyers divorced a couple due to a computer error

The lawyers claimed that one of the employees “pressed the wrong button”.

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In Great Britain, the lawyers of a leading firm mistakenly divorced a couple – Mr. and Mrs. Williams, who were married for 21 years.

The court refused to cancel the divorce decree, writes Guardian.

The “forced” divorce of the Williams couple took place in 2023, when the lawyers of the London firm Vardags made a mistake when filling out the documents on the online portal.

The couple previously applied for experts to work out the financial arrangements for the divorce, but Mr. and Mrs. Williams did not give any indication of the final dissolution of the marriage.

Lawyers mistakenly opened the spouse’s electronic file in the system. Everything worked quickly and in 21 minutes the couple was officially divorced.

This is because the UK has a paperless divorce process: legal representatives process divorce applications through a special online service.

The lawyers realized they were wrong only 2 days later and immediately applied to the Supreme Court to overturn the decision. The lawyers claimed that one of the Vardags employees “pressed the wrong button”. However, the judge rejected the lawyers’ request.

“There is a strong public interest in respecting the certainty and finality resulting from a final divorce decree and maintaining the status quo it establishes“, Judge Andrew McFarlane said.

The legal company does not approve of the “stubbornness of the judge”. The lawyers added that “in effect, the court ruled that the computer decides whether you are divorced.”

“The state should not divorce people on the basis of a clerical error. The person divorcing must have the intention to dissolve the marriage, because the principle of intention is at the heart of the fairness of our legal system.”– emphasized the lawyers.

Other specialists may also make mistakes. So, in the Czech Republic, doctors confused female patients and conducted by mistake surgery on a pregnant woman who came for a routine check-up.