https://insidehmcts.blog.gov.uk/inside-hmcts-podcast/reducing-the-heat-what-to-expect-from-our-online-divorce-service-podcast-transcript/
Reducing the heat: what to expect from our online divorce service - podcast transcript
Michelle:
I felt like I was filling in a form from the 1950s. And I remember thinking I work in the court system, so why don't I understand what they're trying to get at?
Isabel:
The transformation really is making a very long paper form into a digital submission.
Karen:
From a solicitor's perspective, it's great. I love my tech. I run a virtual firm myself, so I'm paperless.
Crispin:
Previously, I think it would take two years, possibly for the whole process.
Karen:
And I will often say to people that come and see me for advice look you don't need a solicitor to do divorce now. It's very simple through the online portal.
Liz:
Hello and welcome to this HM Courts and Tribunals Service podcast. Today we'll be talking about how we're modernising our justice services and making them easier and more accessible for our users. I'm Liz Bryant, Communications Manager at HMCTS.
Since 2016, we've been transforming our court services after the government invested 1.3 billion into the reform of our justice system. Today, I'm talking to Izzy Syred, who's a Service Manager for HMCTS and has worked on the reformed divorce online service since 2017. I'm also joined by Karen Dovaston, a Solicitor from Dovaston Law who will be sharing her views of the online divorce service.
Can I come to you first Issy and ask what first brought you to the HMCTS reform programme and in particular the divorce service?
Isabel:
Hi, Liz. Nice to meet you. I've always worked in the civil and family courts, and I've been in the courts service now for 38 years. I know I don't look that old! You don't have to say anything! But a long time and I've worked really on civil and family work mainly, and I've worked through the courts and then progressed. I also worked on crime as well, but my favourite subject has always been family work, private law and also divorce work. So, I applied to work on the divorce project and that's when we first looked at making a digital submission for citizens, people in person and also solicitors.
Liz:
So, can you tell us what? What was the divorce service like before, reform.
Isabel:
It was all done on paper, so everything was submitted via the post and payments were usually cheque payments, fee, concession and fee remission as well, and so all the paperwork would be opened in a post opening room by members of staff and the file would be made-up and it would be referred to a judge and would be processed and listed for pronouncement hearing. So, a lot of the stages in divorce have remained the same, obviously with the implementation of new law that has changed certain stages, but broadly the same but very paper orientated. So, you can imagine the storage of all those files, these are.
Liz:
We're still following many of the same parts of the process, but can you tell us about the changes which have been made for the online divorce service?
Isabel:
Yeah. So, we're making it digital. We make the service into more plain English. So, when the designers and researchers were building the divorce digital divorce service, we obviously talked to a lot of people who'd been through a divorce or who were thinking about going to a divorce. So, we held loads of research sessions. Also, with solicitors and so we talk to our friends, like Karen has helped us tremendously with building the solicitor's journey, digital journey. The transformation really is making a very long paper form into a digital submission, but in plain English and also with validation in the screen, so that if a user did put in the incorrect date, so you have to be married for at least 12 months before you can apply for a divorce. Then immediately it would flag up saying you've not been married long enough. You can't apply and give them that signposting then.
Liz:
And Karen what do you think about the changes which have been made specifically for solicitors?
Karen:
Well, I'm a huge fan. I'm a huge fan of Izzy and how she's run the team and the collaborative relationship that we've got. So, I'm a fan of the system itself. I can see the benefits to litigants in person. I think it's fantastic from a solicitor's perspective. It's great. I love my tech. I run a virtual firm myself, so I'm paperless and I've been interested in tech since. Well, probably I think we were one of the first-time e-mail addresses back in the mid-90s, couldn't actually e-mail many people cause not everybody else had the e-mail addresses. But yeah, I've loved the text since then, so it's been really a good information flow and there's been e-mail exchanges in between meetings. If something has happened, somethings gone wrong well, we've been there to test it from the outset and we've tried to break it to push it to its limits, to see if it will work and what won't work. And in terms of the day-to-day for a system, I mean, I think that the litigant in person journey is a really great development, and I would often say to people that come and see me for advice look, you don't need a solicitor to do divorce now. It's very simple through the online portal because there are, as you said, you know, there's so many benefits, even to the extent of my goodness, not using all the paper and the forms.
When I started doing divorce it was nothing like they have now. You know you got nice little boxes to put the information in. They were sort of the ones where it would be typed, and you had to guess where the gaps were and then guess what you were supposed to put?
So, everything has improved in the journey most definitely.
Liz:
Speaking about the paper forms and the service before it was reformed, we're now going to hear from Michelle in London. She used the divorce service in 2018 before it was reformed and can speak about her experiences of using the service. Here's what she had to say.
If you can tell us just a little bit about yourself and your experiences going through this process? So, when was it you first kind of started going through the process as it were. When did it all kick off?
Michelle:
It first started me in around 2018, so that's when I decided that actually got to. It actually took me a while to even decide to get divorced because I work in the system and so I found it like I felt like a bit embarrassed. That's a really odd thing to say, but I felt quite embarrassed. It took me a while to get my head around. There's gonna be people that process my application, and they might. They'll know my name. That was really hard for me and so I started in 2018. And I started it with a mind of because I've been in the court service a long time. Not I knew everything about it, but I knew the language, that I knew the process, and I was just so wrong. I was so wrong about the bureaucracy and the challenge of language. Even for me, as someone who's been in HMCTS for a long time, I've been in the court system, you know from the age of 19, so I thought I understood language, that I knew the process. Boy, did I not understand the language at all. And so, my first reflection was how the devil do people understand this?
Liz:
So, what were you expecting before you started? How did you think the process would be quite straightforward or?
Michelle:
Yeah, I did. I thought it would. I thought it would be a very user centric process. I thought that it was going to be a process that everybody could understand. I thought that it wasn't gonna have much of a delay. But overall I came, I felt that the biggest thing for me was how the devil other people do this cause I can't and how and how can you make this better for people that are even more worried about getting divorced than me, but how it felt like I was an outsider in the system and that people were speaking to me like in a different language, completely different language. So much so, I had to get. I thought I was never going to get a solicitor. I thought I can do this on my own. I had to get a solicitor and the reason I had to get the system was because of the language and the bureaucracy of the process.
Liz:
So, what were the steps that you had to go to, what kind of sort of application did you need? You need to make. What did you need to do?
Michelle:
Yeah. So, I had to. It's a feeling. I mean, goodness, I can't remember how many pages the application was. It felt so lengthy it. It felt like I was putting my life on paper, and I felt that the actual paper that I had to fill in. It was paper wasn't online and it was really hard to navigate form.
And you couldn't really understand the question and I remember thinking again, but I am working the court system, so why don't I understand what they're trying to get at?
Liz:
So how long did the whole process take? So, you had the form, you filled it and you made the application. How long did the whole process take?
Michelle:
The whole process took two years and the reason why it took two years is because I had to stop. Because I couldn't. I because it was bureaucratic and it was, I couldn't understand what was going on. I stopped it. I can't do this anymore, cause it’s having a negative impact on me because I kept being told to fill in another form to fill in another form to provide information on this. And I just thought this feels like I'm running a marathon to get what I really need which is a divorce.
Liz:
And you, you said you thought you had to hire a solicitor. What? What? What did they do for you. What kind of services did they provide?
Michelle:
They provided language that I could understand, so they provided clarity in understanding of the forms, and particularly when I was talking about. Money and how that will work. Before I remember the form when I was filling the information about money, my goodness, I felt like I needed a degree to understand it. I really did, and I, and I felt like again this the process was excluding me from getting what I wanted. Having a life and having work and having children and then having to go to a solicitor’s firm to fill the form or to sign a form. I was like this is just so antiquated and again I thought that that was a barrier to me getting what I wanted, but it was me having to put in huge amounts of effort.
But because of the way that the paper divorce system had been designed and had been there for a very long time and I used to think how are the devil? How have people gone through this?
Liz:
You talk about the issues with the language and the fact that you know you kind of had to fill out. Things on paper and use the solicitor. If you were kind of giving advice to people who were looking at that process and saying how do we make this better, what specific things would you have said to them? What would what, what did they need to fix from your point of?
Michelle:
OK, simple language simple language that anybody can understand? I think that's probably the ultimate thing. I felt like I was filling in a form from the 1950s, but I remember having many, many, it's like just trying to contact the court cause the divorce was in the courts at that point. I just remember trying to contact the court and I remember. You say you know phones ring and ring and no one answers. And that was true. I remember sitting on the phone for hours, waiting for someone to pick up. And I remember emailing and not getting a reply. You know, the whole thing just felt like it was ready for reform. And of course it was going to be. But it felt like it was ready, and it felt like it needed a massive overhaul.
Liz:
Thank you very much to Michelle for taking the time to talk about your experiences and what it was like using the pre reformed service. It sounds as if the changes as well as improving the efficiency of the overall process have just made it easier and a lot less daunting for people.
Isabel:
I think so. Yeah. And I think it's also not people get, people have successful applications, they don't get stopped as often. Whereas I think we used to reject quite a lot of divorce applications that were on paper initially it was in the region of about 40%. Well, we reduce that down completely down to less than 1% and that's a massive, massive saving.
Because people don't get things wrong cause of that inbuilt validation in the digital system in that different way of asking the question in that plain English way. So, we're extracting the information from people in the right way without over complicating things and that end-to-end timeliness as well.
Karen:
On the solicitor side, again it's efficiency. You know, I can log in and see all my cases and see exactly what's going on with them it's really, I mean it makes you know, it's really efficient in terms of being able to update your clients as to what's going on and where things are. You can download documents very easily, making your applications that you need to make along the way easily done and quickly done.
And the knock-on effect for that, you know, for me, for my clients I have a fixed fee for the divorce and I fix it. I'm happy with it and it means that I can pass all those savings on to my client because I'm not then spending all the time that I would have been spending drafting paper documents, keying in information in paper documents, because the digital system just pulls it all through.
Isabel:
It's improved because a lot of the tasks are automated and don't get delayed as much because, you know, people getting it right first time.
Liz:
There's been a lot of work to try and make the divorce process simpler. Easier for people to understand what's being asked and to walk them through the process, but perhaps for someone who's going through a more complicated situation, perhaps with assets to be divided or there's a family to think of. How does that process work for them then? With the new online service.
Isabel:
We do have obviously divorce and the children's side of things is dealt with separately, under the children act under private law. So that would be separate forms to fill in or the digital system that we're just developing on private law. And for financial remedy there is signposting to financial remedy and what help you may need for that to sort out your assets and everything. So, there are help organisations as well. There is signposting on the divorce system for people to. If they indicate that they wish to have a financial remedy order that they need to tick yes on the on the divorce application to say, yes, they intend to apply for financial remedy order at a later point.
Karen:
Well, I would say actually the biggest change for dealing with families is the introduction of no fault divorce and that, coupled with the digital system means that a lot of the heat is taken out of the divorce process. So, divorce and finances are two sides of the same coin. They're linked, but in effect they're siloed, so they're dealt with in different application streams.
You can't get a financial order without starting divorce proceedings and to have got it to the stage of conditional order. But even with getting divorce proceedings started under the old law, there were often disputes about who was going to start the divorce proceedings, about what basis they'd be on or about what was put in their divorce petition. And the difference with the digital system, so even on the old law, the difference was that you had an opportunity to draft the petition and then send it to the other party and say this is what we're going to be sending.
On the new law that heat is completely taken out of the system, particularly because you can make joint applications now. So, a husband and a wife or a husband, a husband and wife, wife, whichever it is, they can both make the application for a divorce together. And the system has been developed digitally to allow them to do that quite easily for them to do that.
If they're dealing with it in person again, you know the with the changing law, so there's no arguments possible about costs. Who's gonna be paying the cost of it? That's gotta be dealt with before you even get to the stage of issuing a divorce petition or divorce application as they’re now called. And also, with it being no fault divorce, that again has taken the heat out of the system.
So, the law coupled with the digital process makes it very much more formulaic and it becomes almost like a something that needs to be done, because actually it's not really the divorce itself that gets people hot under the collar it will be sorting out the finances and sorting out the arrangements for the children.
Liz:
So, while we're talking about no fault divorce, and we're going hear now from Crispin from East Sussex who applied for a divorce using the reformed online service. And he waited for the no fault divorce legislation to come into effect. So, he applied for divorce on the day it was introduced, which was the 6th of April 2022.
Crispin:
So, from memory I applied for the divorce and my ex-wife, she agreed straight away. And I heard on I think, I sometimes listen to money programmes on the radio, and they were covering divorce. And one of the money programmes and they talked about this new no fault divorce coming through and they also talked about how people were waiting for it because previously I think it would take two years, possibly for the whole process.
And they said that this has been a long time coming. The whole divorce industry were looking forward to it in many ways. And so, I kept my ear to the ground and applied on the first day and the process started on the 6th of April 2022 because we'd agreed everything beforehand.
Our financials were, it was in some ways it was an amicable divorce because we had already come to the application with everything divided. We were living in our new houses and so the application because of that was quite simple, I think.
I think that's probably an important part. This isn't going to help you decide anything, it's there to kind of rubber stamp what you've already agreed. The overall experience was pretty smooth, and it was reassuring that the notifications came when they said they were going to come. And it, well, it felt like one of the more positive parts of the divorce, to be honest, because it all went as it should do. And yeah, every everything kind of worked. So, the experience was a good experience. As far as divorce experiences can go.
Liz:
So, it's been really interesting to hear from Crispin, who's used that new online service and actually waited for no fault divorce to come in before he began the process. Issy, can you tell us what kind of feedback have you been having from people who've used the new reform service.
Isabel:
Really positive. I mean, we have got survey links in the system as well and most people report positive things about how easy the system is to use, how straightforward. And we are getting more joint applications now. I think roughly we are around 25% of divorce applications that are joined.
And then obviously it's not contested then they want to apply for this divorce together. It's not an us and them situation. It's, you know, It's all done in agreement, and then the divorce should go through to the 20 weeks reflective period, which some people can see as you know, why do we have to wait for that 20 weeks and you know, we have had some feedback around that 20 weeks but also it's a period to use, you know, to sort out your finances or anything to do with your children, et cetera. It's a reflective period really. Whereas in old divorce law, you may have had to wait two years or five years as part of the facts or part of the reasons that you may have used for your divorce application.
So yeah, overall, it's been really positive.
Liz:
So, you've spoken about how we try to make the process easier for people with help to walk them through the forms and make sure they have all the appropriate information. Some people are more comfortable with online services and with technology than others, is it still possible to apply on paper for people?
Isabel:
Yes, yes, yes, it is. Yeah. I mean our digital uptake for litigants in person is roughly around 93%. So that's really high for a digital service.
Liz:
So, we've spoken a little bit about the feedback you've had from users Issy. So, Karen, what kind of feedback have you been giving to the team in terms of how the service should continue to develop in future? What are you hearing from other legal professionals?
Karen:
It's a fairly mixed bag. I think the majority are really pleased with the service. You do get some diehards. I think it's sort of change is always difficult for people.
And it’s big change as well, and you're either someone that's gonna go running into it with your arms wide open and really embrace it, or you're gonna sit and sulk a bit at the back with your arms crossed, saying that you're not. You don't really like it, and things should go back the way they were. I love it.
So, I really do like the digital service, so I can't imagine going back to paper system. Quite frankly, it fills me with horror thinking of that and it just doesn't make sense to me. So, you know, I can't imagine going back to paper and I just think of the horrendous cost in terms of paper, time, postage, stationery, all the rest of that is all gone. You sometimes hear complaining. Oh divorce is made easy now. It's really easy. It's too easy. No, the process is easier. The actual divorce law is not really changed. You've got no fault divorce yes, but you've still got that reflection period of 20 weeks, which is actually longer than it was in the old divorce law, where you didn't have that period of reflection.
So, you'd find lots of people pushing to have a divorce based on behaviour and where you've got to make allegations about the other party and that never goes down well. It just inflames the situation from the off and most of the time, by the time people come to do divorce they've done the heavy lifting.
Liz:
For anyone who is trying to use the online service, but they maybe need a little bit of help or support just using those sort of digital tools we do have the digital support service, don't we?
Isabel:
Yes, we do. Yeah, it's called the assisted digital support. Yes, we do have that.
So, at the CTSC, because obviously divorce in the olden days, you know pre 2017 and pre 2014 was dealt with in the local courts but now it's all centralised into the court and tribunal service centre in Stoke-on-Trent. So, you know we do have phone calls and web chat. They're available for people to talk to if they've got any problems with using the digital system, and there is a support service as well attached to that.
Liz:
We'd like to thank all of our guests for being involved in today's podcast.
If anyone listening would like to use our online divorce service that feels they need some help. Please search online for “HMCTS we are digital” or text form to 260777 for help from our digital support service.
Thank you to everyone for listening. We really hope you found today's podcast interesting and do listen now for more episodes from HMCTS.
