Couple Accidentally Gets Divorced After Lawyer ‘Clicks Wrong Button’ Using Online Portal

The error was reportedly made after the lawyers intended to complete a divorce for another couple

A couple has mistakenly divorced after an error made by solicitors at a London law firm.

A final order for the divorce of a former couple, known as Mr and Mrs Williams, was accidentally applied for by solicitors at Vardags law firm after they “clicked the wrong button” in an online portal, according to a report.

The error was made after the lawyers intended to complete a divorce for another client “but inadvertently opened the electronic case file in ‘Williams v Williams’ ” by mistake, British judge and president of the family division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, said, per The Guardian. The divorce was finalized 21 minutes later.

Mr and Mrs Williams, who split in 2023 after 21 years together, were in the middle of sorting out financial arrangements when their accidental divorce was granted.

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The solicitors realized their mistake two days later and applied to the high court to repeal the divorce — however, Judge McFarlane refused to meet their request in respect of “maintaining the status quo that it has established.”

“There is a strong public policy interest in respecting the certainty and finality that flows from a final divorce order,” McFarlane said, per The Guardian. “... Like many similar online processes, an operator may only get to the final screen where the final click of the mouse is made after traveling through a series of earlier screens.”

The judge added that he intended to reinforce that the online divorce portal system would “deliver a final order of divorce where one was not wanted simply by ‘the click of a wrong button.’ ”

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Ayesha Vardag, Head of Vardags firm and a top divorce lawyer in the U.K., called out the judge for his “bad decision” over the solicitors’ attempt to fix the error.

“The state should not be divorcing people on the basis of a clerical error," she added in a statement seen by PEOPLE. "There has to be intention on the part of the person divorcing, because the principle of intention underpins the justice of our legal system. When a mistake is brought to a court’s attention, and everyone accepts that a mistake has been made, it obviously has to be undone."

"We’ve heard from the court staff that this happens a fair bit with the new online system. And it should just have been fixed as usual," Vardag added in the statement. "But here the husband inexplicably took issue and the judge decided, effectively, ‘the computer says no, you’re divorced’. "

"It’s the kind of decision that I believe would be overturned in a higher court, but where the upshot is in reality that a wife who wanted a divorce has got one, why would that be worth doing in this case?" she continued.

"That means that, for now, our law says that you can be divorced by an error made on an online system. And that’s just not right, not sensible, not justice."

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