Munby: State 'washed its hands' of couple branded bigamists after court failures (Law Society Gazette) (25 March 2019)

The Law Society Gazette has written on the recent case of the former-spouses who were at risk of being named bigamists due to the fact that an administrative error threatened to invalidate the decree absolute they received in 2014. Both remarried after they attained the decree they thought finalised their divorce. However district judges allowed an error to slip by when the pair made their application for a divorce on the basis that they had been separated for 2 years when in actual fact they had only been married for 22 months. It was then district judge Middleton-Roy’s decision to amend the reason for divorce in retrospect in an attempt to rectify the mistake, which prompted the Queen’s Proctor to call this out as an error in itself and that the divorce should be named void. When bringing this case to retired family division president sitting as High Court Judge, Sir James Munby, the question was posed: is the divorce void or is it voidable as a result of these errors? In M v P [2019], he ruled in favour of naming it voidable which does not invalidate the divorce, but merely identifies that it could be arguably voidable. This, he stated, was in order to save the parties and their new spouses undue punishment for the courts’ failure to spot the mistake when granting the decree nisi and decree absolute. Paul Nuttall and Sundeep Budwal, family solicitors based at our Shepherd’s Bush branch, were instructed to act on behalf of P, the former wife, in challenging the proceedings brought against her and her former husband by the Queen’s Proctor. After first seeking a divorce 5 years ago, she is pleased with the success that this judgment has brought, which will also impact future cases of this sort. Whilst not criticising the Legal Aid Agency directly, Sir James Munby was also very critical of the lack of funding available for P, especially in lieu of the fact that she was facing the Queen’s Proctor, an officer of the state. Without Duncan Lewis having taken on her case on a pro bono basis, P would have been without representation facing a serious application made by the state.