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Online Divorce Means Not Going To Court

Here’s something to mull over: divorces, in their entirety, will soon be able to be lodged online.

That means no visits to the court registry.

Presently, divorce applications can be submitted online, then posted to a family law registry for filing and signed by a Justice of the Peace of a lawyer.

In the near future, the Family Court and Federal Circuit Court are to trial a new system in Brisbane that enables divorces to go ahead without the need to go into a court registry.

Federal Circuit Court executive director of operations Steve Agnew told The Australian the e-divorce system would be rolled out nationally and would allow someone to access their court file from any location, removing the need to queue at a registry.

“The benefits of doing this online is that they will have access to their court file, they will be able to see all of their documents online and, at any future point in time, if they need a copy of their divorce order they will be able to get one free of charge by going online,” he said.

He said that presently if people misplaced their divorce order, they had to write to the court requesting a copy and had to pay a fee.

“It’s particularly beneficial for people who live in regional and rural areas and people who live in the outer suburbs — they don’t have to come in to the registry, they don’t have to post their applications in, they can do it all online,”

Mr Agnew said only about 17 per cent of couples have lodged an application online with the old system.

So much of our life is already online. What do you think of e-divorces? 

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Alana Lowes

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