'Bury your marriage' divorce centre staffed with 'legal advisers'

HM Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) is to employ 'legal advisers' to double-check divorce petitions at the new Bury St Edmunds Divorce Centre, a recent question and answer session has disclosed.

Her Honour Judge Lynn Roberts and HMCTS project leader John Miller were panel members, along with His Honour Judge Martin O'Dwyer, head of the Financial Remedies Unit. Chair of London Region Resolution Margaret Heathcote presided over the session, 'How will the new Bury St Edmunds Divorce Centre (BSE) affect family law practice in the South East?', held at Charles Russell Speechlys.

HHJ Roberts recognised that the creation of the BSE hub had created a certain amount of anxiety among practitioners. She also mentioned that the divorce hub had been termed, 'Bury your marriage' by some.

Family law solicitor and arbitrator, Tony Roe, who made a series of freedom of information requests (FoI) of HMCTS, and whose research broke the news that BSE would be the single divorce centre for the London and the South East, said: 'For the first time HMCTS has begun to engage in a face-to-face dialogue with family law solicitors generally. This is to be welcomed. The scale of the task should not be underestimated. HMCTS says that the new hub at [BSE] will eventually deal with just over 40 per cent of work in England and Wales and accepts that this will be ambitious.'

The court service expects the new divorce hub to issue 40,000 divorce petitions per year with only cases that require a hearing to be transferred to the parties' preferred court. Its aim is for all work to be processed on the day of receipt or within 48 hours at the latest.

'HMCTS hopes for economies of scale, not to mention a better service,' said Roe. 'Indeed, [HMCTS] said that there was a backlog of 600 petitions in Brighton and Guildford going back three months and it was decided to transfer the work of those courts to [BSE] now. Transfer of work from London was planned for June but is not likely to occur until July.'

HMCTS advised that 40 per cent of divorce petitions are returned to solicitors' firms for correction owing to errors in drafting or procedure, including a failure to enclose issue fees, lack of signature or missing/incorrect details. HMCTS added that it planned to pay 'legal advisers' to check and double check all petitions.

Legal advisers will work at the centre and will be responsible for deciding if petitions should be listed for pronouncement or for giving directions on the way forward if they consider that pronouncement is not appropriate at that time. District judges will then give directions in contested cases and consider consented financial remedy applications.

Roe added: 'What is clear is that the new legal advisers, who will adopt some of the functions previously carried out by district judges, must not form a judgment on the facts relied on within petitions.

'HMCTS assures us that family law solicitors will not be turned away from any family court if they have an urgent petition or application. It says that the solicitor submitting the need for urgency will be trusted. Let's hope that this happens, especially where there is little or no counter service available.'

Administrative hurdles

Family law practitioners remain sceptical of the BSE divorce centre. Earlier this year, the largest body of family lawyers, Resolution, met with HMCTS to discuss the issue believing that that centralisation of divorce centres for London and the South East had created yet another administrative hurdle for family justice.

Following the meeting, chair of Resolution Jo Edwards said it was now important that HMCTS continued to listen to its members, so that they understood how the new centres were operating on the ground, and how they can mitigate any negative impact.

The Law Society is running a series of three seminars on the centralisation of divorce courts in London, Birmingham, and Manchester this summer.

John van der Luit-Drummond is deputy editor for Solicitors Journal
john.vanderluit@solicitorsjournal.co.uk | @JvdLD