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Staff Writer: Maya Arruda

Email: marruda7@umassd.edu

Everyone makes mistakes, right?

Who hasn’t taken a wrong turn or bought the wrong item at the store? Who hasn’t clicked a wrong button once or twice in their life? Sometimes, you just don’t feel like double-checking your work before submitting it, and you belatedly realize you forgot to finish a sentence. 

People make mistakes. That’s just a fact, but for this couple, a judge has decided that their lawyer’s mistake is legally binding. There is no UNO reverse card, no undo button, and no chance to fix a mistake that they did not even make.

The now ex-couple, Mr. and Mrs. Williams, were divorced when a lawyer working on another couple’s divorce order clicked on the wrong case file, unintentionally sending out a request for the Williams’ final divorce order. 

It’s as if clicking the wrong button on MyCourses not only made it so you couldn’t submit your homework but it also disowned you from your family while it was at it. 

Apparently, the law firm involved — Vardags Law Firm — was using an automated system to process paperwork, and all the lawyer had to do was click the wrong button. The Williams’ divorce was finalized just 21 minutes after the initial request. 

Of course, paperwork and bureaucracy are only efficient when you least want them to be. Oh, the irony. 

Worse, the lawyers only realized the error two days later, way after the paperwork had already been finalized. The Williams were already divorced without their say. 

While unfortunate, Williams’ divorce was obviously just a clerical mistake; it was just that the wrong button clicked. Most people would be understanding and sympathetic to the Williams couple, who had nothing to do with the whole debacle and thus should not have to bear the consequences of someone else’s actions in a just society. 

Judge Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the family division, is not like most people and refuses to repeal the divorce. 

“There is a strong public policy interest in respecting the certainty and finality that flows from a final divorce order and maintaining the status quo that it has established,” Judge McFarland stated. 

Who would genuinely think clerical mistakes should be legally binding is beyond me. But hey, that’s why they pay judges the big bucks — to tackle the big problems with logic and common sense in a reasonable and practical manner, clearly. 

Ayesha Vardag, leader of the law firm and well-known divorce lawyer, had her own two shillings to add:

“The state should not be divorcing people on the basis of a clerical error. There has to be intention on the part of the person divorcing because the principle of intention underpins the justice of our legal system.”

Just to clarify, this is a British law firm, and a British legal precedent being established. While it might not directly affect us across the pond, as it were, the standard it sets in modern law is a bleak one. A computer mistake is now making binding legal decisions.

The worst part about all this is that neither of the Williams had requested this, and all of this had happened and disturbed their normal lives without their knowledge or consent. Were they even made aware that they were divorced in those two days when even the lawyers didn’t realize something was wrong? 

To quote Vardag, who summarizes it best: “That means that, for now, our law says that you can be divorced by an error made on an online system. And that’s not right, not sensible, not justice.” 

It seems the only matter of recourse for the Williams is to try to legally marry again, though I am unsure if this is what the Williams would want, considering they were in the middle of marital strife. At this point, it may be best just to deal with being divorced since McFarland refuses to budge on the matter. 

Either way, I’m sure the added stress from this ordeal certainly did not help the Williams’ relationship issues.