HM Courts and Tribunals Service

2. Mr O complains about HMCTS and an application his wife made for divorce, that was returned to him by her lawyer twice. Mr O says he never found out why this happened, and it caused a two-year delay for his divorce to be finalised. He does not believe the explanation HMCTS gave to him for the delay.

3. Mr O tells us the delay also meant he missed out buying land abroad. He also says he was due a foreign pension worth £16,000 if he could prove his divorce, but he was unable to do this as he did not have the relevant divorce document.

4. Mr O wants ‘reasonable compensation’ for waiting three years for the complaint to be resolved and ‘admittance of guilt’ by HMCTS.

5. The person wanting a divorce (known as the petitioner, Mr O’s ex-wife) must make a formal application to the court. Once received, HMCTS sends a copy of the application to the respondent (Mr O) with an acknowledgement of service (AOS). The respondent has 14 days to respond to say whether they agree to the divorce of whether they want to dispute it.

6. If the respondent agrees to the application (or fails to return the AOS within the 14 days’ timeframe), the petitioner may apply for a conditional order or decree nisi (this is an order that confirms that they are entitled to divorce). But, they cannot do this until 20 weeks after the divorce application was originally issued.

7. The court will review the application for a conditional order (according to HMCTS’s website this usually takes several weeks). If a judge agrees to the application, HMCTS will send both parties a certificate which sets out the time and date the conditional order will be granted. After the order has been granted, the parties must wait at least 43 days before they can apply to finalise the divorce and end the marriage.

8. Mr O tells us HMCTS sent an incorrect AOS for a decree nisi as the grounds for divorce were different to what his ex-wife filed for. Mr O explains he was sent an AOS relating to grounds for divorce under behaviour, but he was under the impression his ex-wife had put the divorce through as two years separation by consent.

9. Mr O says he was aware something was wrong on 15 July 2020 when he got paperwork from his ex-wife’s lawyer. He says the application form was sent again around three months later and then another time, but he was not sure when this was.

10. Mr O complained to HMCTS on 1 October 2021. He was told it needed to get his file first and there would be a wait because his divorce application was still being processed at the time. Mr O is sure the delays were all caused by HMCTS. He says he had to wait two years for a complaint response from HMCTS and he did not accept that what it said was true.

11. Mr O says he was not able to access his foreign pension as he did not have the necessary document to prove he was divorced. He says he contacted someone at HMCTS but they did not reply to him or the Solicitors Regulation Association (SRA) about his complaint.

12. HMCTS replied to Mr O’s complaint on 14 February 2022 and apologised for the delay saying complaints were taking longer than usual to reply to.

13. HMCTS explained it could not change a judge’s decision not to grant the decree nisi. It explained Mr O had submitted different grounds to divorce in the AOS to the ones submitted by the petitioner (Mr O’s ex-wife) and this meant the divorce proceedings could not go ahead. HMCTS said it was waiting for a new AOS from Mr O and his ex-wife so the divorce could go ahead.

14. HMCTS sent another response on 30 September and explained it had caused delays and errors in his divorce proceedings. It repeated what it said in its last response and said Mr O’s wife had sent an application of divorce under two years separation by consent. This was written on page ten of the divorce petition which was issued on 13 June 2020. The response went on to say it had found failings in its process when a member of the court staff sent Mr O an AOS on grounds of behaviour and not two years separation by consent, what his ex-wife had filed for.

15. And, HMCTS said an assistant justice clerk had typed a refusal notice for the divorce proceedings on 27 January 2022. This was because Mr O had not provided agreement for divorce under two years separation by consent. HMCTS noted that Mr O’s ex-wife had been granted deemed service of the divorce petition. This meant that Mr O’s ex-wife was satisfied that he had been served (given) the AOS, so went ahead with the application for divorce. On the same day HMCTS provided Mr O with an AOS for completion as per the instructions of the assistant justice clerk. HMCTS said it could not comment on any decisions made by the assistant justice clerk as this was not an administrative function.

16. HMCTS’s response went on to say that on 17 February the case was listed for decree nisi and this was heard on 22 February. The decree absolute (officially ending a marriage) was eventually pronounced on 6 April.

17. HMCTS acknowledged its administrative error with the AOS and stated this was a reason why Mr O’s case was delayed. It said the service he was given had fallen short of what it would expect and offered an ex-gratia (good grace) payment of £250.

18. HMCTS sent its final response to Mr O on 21 November and said its last response covered all of his complaint concerns. It responded to his request for travel costs to court and refused to pay these because there was no need for him to go to court.

21. Before we decide if we should do a detailed investigation of a complaint, we look at whether there are signs the event(s) complained about had a negative effect which the organisation has not put right. Having done so we have found HMCTS has already done enough to put right the impact of these events.

22. We have seen that HMCTS sent the wrong AOS to Mr O and this meant that the grounds for divorce were different to the one that his ex-wife put forward. HMCTS has accepted this was an error and it is evidence of a failing. Our role has been to look at the impact of this error.

23. We must begin by saying we have seen nothing to suggest the error led to a two-year delay in the divorce proceedings. It is important to note that even if there had been no error, Mrs O would still have been required to wait at least 20 weeks before applying to progress the divorce. Then there would have been a period of several weeks before a judge was likely to have considered the conditional order application.

24. We should also point out that this 20 week time limit is a minimum requirement. Mrs O would have been under no obligation to progress matters simply because this time limit had passed.

25. It is not clear to us why Mrs O seemed to delay in applying for the conditional order (it seems likely that if she had done so sooner, HMCTS’s error would have been found sooner).

26. Having looked carefully at the evidence, our decision is that the time taken to finalise the divorce was more to do with the legal requirements of a divorce petition (and Mrs O’s delay in applying to progress the divorce) than HMCTS’s error. For that reason, we cannot say HMCTS’s error caused a two year delay in proceedings.

27. We accept that any delay would have caused Mr O frustration and inconvenience. We can see that HMCTS recognised this as well. HMCTS said they were sorry for what had happened and offered to pay him £250.

28. In these situations, we would expect an organisation to recognise when it has made an error and try to put that person back in the position they were in before the error happened. Mr O’s application for divorce was eventually processed, but later than he would have liked. We think HMCTS has already done enough to put things right and it acted in line with our Principles that say:

‘As a minimum, an appropriate range of remedies should include an explanation and apology from the public body to the complainant, remedial action by the public body, financial compensation for the complainant or a combination of these.’

HMCTS apologised for sending the wrong grounds for divorce in the AOS and the amount it offered to pay is reasonable and in line with similar amounts for complaints of this type.

29. We have noted Mr O’s concern that the delay in finalising his divorce affected his ability to both access a pension fund and use that money to buy land. We do not dispute what he has told us about this. But, as we have explained, we cannot say the delay was due to HMCTS’s error. We understand that Mr O has now been able to access the pension and buy land, but not as early as he may have liked. For that reason, we cannot say he was permanently financially disadvantaged by what happened.

30. We have no doubt this has been a very stressful time for Mr O. We realise this is unlikely to be the outcome he was looking for but we thank him for allowing us to investigate his complaint.

1. We have carefully considered Mr O’s complaint about HM Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS). We have seen HMCTS made an error when it sent Mr O his divorce papers, but it acknowledged this and put things right.