The simplified divorce process in Scotland is anything but simple
An account of my awful experience trying to use the Scottish Courts website when applying for a simplified divorce in Scotland.
A divorce process Scotland should be ashamed of
When applying for a divorce, I used what’s called the simplified divorce procedure in Scotland. You can use this route if you don’t have kids with your ex and have sorted all your financial matters. However, you need to wait until you’ve been separated a year before you can apply.
Side note: it’s wildly cruel you have to wait a whole year to apply (and it’s 2 years if your ex doesn’t consent!). It’s the 2020s. I think I know when I’m ready to get divorced, thank you very much.
Back to the focus of this post. I work as a content designer, so I’m naturally critical of poor user experiences. But I’m extra critical when that poor experience is for services for the public. This is divorce — something any married member of the Scottish public might have to do one day. The experience of using the Scottish Courts website and the application process is something Scotland should be ashamed of.
The website is not easy to navigate and is full of legal jargon. The application process comes with some unclear, outdated, and unsafe instructions. Neither are not fit to serve members of the public.
This post talks through my experience of using the website and applying for divorce in spring 2022.
A website that made me cry
Before I get into my experience of using the website in 2022, it’s also worth noting that I used the website in 2021 shortly before I ended my marriage. I wanted to know the ins and outs of divorce before I told my ex that’s what I wanted.
I had to plan an exit from the relationship while still living with my ex during lockdown. I googled divorce in Scotland and tried to make sense of what the Scottish Courts website was telling me.
I remember crying and freaking out because I couldn’t understand what I was reading. I couldn’t find answers to the questions I had.
It made me stop searching online for information because I physically could not engage with information that made no sense, all while I was living in constant fear of how I’d get through ending a marriage during a national lockdown in a country where I didn’t have any family members.
It’s what eventually led me to seeking out a lawyer, which I also have some not-nice things to say about in another post. Regardless of that poor experience, being able to afford a lawyer is a privilege.
I shouldn’t have to pay hundreds of pounds for a professional to tell me information that should be freely available, accessible, and written at a level members of the public can understand.
With all that said, let’s talk through the experience of using the site in 2022, when I had officially moved out of the house I shared with my ex and was in a much more mentally stable state.
Which court do I apply to?
As I already knew I was applying for the simplified divorce, I knew I needed to get to the page about it.
Simplified/Do it Yourself Procedure page on the Scottish Courts website
My first task on this page was to find the application I needed to fill in. Easy enough heading to find: ‘Which forms do I need to use?’
That was where the easiness stopped. The text below the heading linked to the different forms and guidance notes depending on if you are applying to the Sheriff Court or the Court of Session.
There was no text that explained when to apply to the Sheriff Court versus the Court of Session. What’s the difference? Can I only use one or the other?
How should anyone know which court to apply to if you don’t specify this?
To this day, I still don’t know the answer. Upon further investigation, the only difference I could find was the price. It was a slightly cheaper application for the Sheriff Court, which is why I ultimately chose to apply there.
The battle to find the cost of an application
Finding how much an application cost was a battle. The next subheading down from the forms and guidance links was ‘How much does it cost to lodge the application in court?’
This is the type of question you want easily answered by a number, but that’s not the easy kind of experience the Scottish Courts website will give you.
Instead you are met with paragraphs of text to read through to find where you need to go to get the answer.
The first paragraph said the fees depends on the court you apply to and to see the Court Fees section.
I clicked on the Court Fees link. I kept scrolling down the page I was taken to until I could see some monetary figures. I didn’t see any.
The first thing that stuck out to me was a heading that said ‘Current Fees Orders are available on the legistlation.gov.uk website at the links below’.
I had no idea what a fees order was, but I assumed it was a legal way of saying list of fees.
I scrolled first to the Sheriff Court. Weirdly enough, my instinct to look first at the Sheriff Court was driven by my knowledge from taking the Life in the UK test. I remembered that the Sheriff Court dealt with less serious cases, so it felt logical to look there first.
(Note: this is not an endorsement of the Life in the UK test. Get rid of that awful test.)
The Sheriff Court section had a very non-helpful list of links, the first directing me to ‘The Sheriff Court Fees Order 2018 No.81’, the second to ‘Schedule 3’. What did these mean? I had no clue, but the first one said fees, so I clicked on it.
From there, I was taken to a formal piece of legislation to read through.
What. The. Hell.
Granted, that heading on the previous page told me the fees orders were on legistlation.gov.uk, but let me repeat: What. The. Hell.
You want me to navigate through an entire piece of legislation to find the fees? There wasn’t even a link smack center in the page telling me where in the legislation to look.
I went back to the Court Fees page, which listed links to the different courts at the top. I scrolled past this first time I was on the page because nothing about the links seemed to imply I would be taken to fees information. It was just names of courts.
I clicked on Sheriff Court.
I was taken to a list of Sheriff Court fees. I was actually familiar with this page from work I had done for a death tech company. (It’s an even worse experience for finding the cost of death-related documents. Have a look at the headings in the picture below and try to guess where the death-related fees are.)
It was easy enough to see ‘Divorce’ on the list. I’ll note that’s only because I was applying for the simplified procedure, which listed the keyword ‘divorce’ first. The ordinary procedure was listed under ‘ordinary procedure’. Not helpful.
When I clicked on ‘divorce’, I could see it cost £128. So there was a place that clearly listed the fee, but the link text to get to this page did not make it obvious.
Of course, that only told me the Sheriff Court fee. I wanted to see what the Court of Session fee was.
You have to scroll through legislation to find the Court of Session fee
Back to the Court Fees page. Thinking I had learned my lesson this time, I clicked on the Court of Session link from the list of different court fees at the top of the page — the one that led me to the easy-to-find Sheriff Court fee.
Except this did not give me an easy-to-find fee. It was a short page that linked to ‘The Court of Session etc. Fees Order No.83’ and ‘Schedule 3’. So similar link text to the original Sheriff Court fees links I found.
And sure enough, like that original Sheriff Court link, the ‘fees’ link took me to a piece of legislation. When I scrolled down this page, I could see a massively long table listing every sort of fee you can pay to the court.
No way was I going to try to find the divorce fee by scrolling. I searched the page for ‘divorce’. I found 3 different table rows for ‘simplified divorce,’ all with different fee amounts, ranging from £128-£134.
What I eventually realized was this piece of legislation had 3 different tables for 3 different years. You can see it at the top of the screenshot above. The table says ‘payable from 25th April 2018’ (called ‘Schedule 1’). The second table is for 2019 (called ‘Schedule 2’), the last for 2020 (called ‘Schedule 3’).
I then realized the ‘Schedule 3’ links were on the previous pages to bring me to the bit of the table with the current fee. But of course, I would have never realized this on my first go because ‘Schedule 3’ is an absolutely meaningless term to someone who wants to find out how much it costs to get divorced.
So the Court of Session was £134, £6 more than the Sheriff Court. As I said previously, that was the only difference I could find, so that’s what led me down the Sheriff Court route.
It’s absolutely ridiculous how long it took me to describe this horrendous process of finding the cost of an application. It’s a number, not a complex process to describe. It should be the easiest thing to find on the website.
The divorce application form needs to update its language
When I finally had been separated a year, I started filling in the simplified divorce application form.
I actually don’t have much to criticize about it from a usability or readability perspective. (I would later find out after I applied there was one very serious readability issue that resulted in the application being sent back to me — more on that later.)
While filling it in, there was only one bit of wording that tripped me up, but I knew at least that it didn’t apply to me.
You had to put a tick next to statements about your address, indicating whether you had lived there at least 40 days or whether you no longer lived in Scotland.
The last two statements did my head in:
‘I/my spouse lived at the address shown above for a period of at least 40 days ending not more than 40 days before the date I signed this application and have no known residence in Scotland at that date.’
Reading it back, it’s taking me ages to parse out its meaning. But when I was filling it in, I knew I lived in Scotland, so it wasn’t relevant.
I was more critical of the language used in the form. To start with, referring to my ex as my ‘spouse’.
Now I know until this divorce went through, legally, my ex was still my spouse. But I was divorcing him because I very much did not want him to be my spouse.
Every divorce is different, but c’mon. I’m sure plenty of us who have had to fill in this application do not appreciate the person we want to legally separate from being called our spouse.
Not to mention you have to wait at least a year to apply for a simplified divorce. When I was completing the application, my ex was not someone I would have referred to as my spouse for a long time.
Call them the ‘person you are divorcing’.
Finally, I have some feelings about the ‘reconciliation’ section of the form. This is the part where you have to check a box that basically asks, you really sure you can’t work things out?
The notes for this section say: ‘Is there a reasonable chance that you can still settle the differences with your spouse and resume normal married life?’
This wording makes me want to scream.
It’s like this form wants you to feel shame for getting divorced. Married life is the ‘normal’ state, and you’re doing the abnormal thing by separating.
If you’re not in a good relationship, remaining in ‘normal married life’ isn’t some virtuous thing. Let’s recognize that ending relationships can be a normal, healthy option in life.
You have to let your ex know where you are living
The most horrific part of the divorce application form was that it asks you to write your address. This might seem like a harmless bit of details, but it’s not harmless when a copy of your divorce application has to be sent to the person you are divorcing.
When I left the marital home, my ex and I weren’t on friendly terms. I did not want him to know where I was moving to.
I didn’t ask the Court to see if there was a way I could leave this off the copy of the form sent to my ex, though. Why is that? Because my lawyer already screwed that up by preparing documents to be sent to my ex that had my address on it. Did they ask for my consent to use my address? No. More on that story in a different post.
Regardless, though, I can’t believe there is nothing in the form guidance on what to do if you feel unsafe with your ex knowing where you live. What are we saying to people in abusive relationships trying to leave? That if they want to leave, they have to let their ex know where they stay?
This cannot be the way things are done. People deserve better than that.
No directions on how to pay by card
As awful as the process was to find the cost of an application, at least that had an answer. Finding out how to pay by card didn’t.
I first saw payment method information in the form itself. It says when returning the form to the Court, you must enclose ‘either a cheque or postal order for the Court fee’.
I’m sorry, in the year 2022, my only options were to send a check or postal order? I had to even Google what a postal order was. I asked my bank for a check book, but it wasn’t even offered with the type of account I had.
I eventually saw on the website it said you could pay by debit or credit card.
How do you pay with a card on a form you have to post that only asks for your address and phone number?
I had to email the Court to ask them.
I will hand it to the Edinburgh Sheriff Court — they do reply to emails very quickly. Soon after emailing, they replied back to say to provide my number when I apply and they will contact me for payment.
Was I just meant to assume that when the form asked for my number, that’s how they were going to collect payment? Why would I think that?
They must repeatedly get asked this question. It’s so fundamental. Put the answer on the website and the form!
The extra cost to get a lawyer to sign the application
While the form is quite basic to fill out, there is an onerous bit where you need to get the signature of a Justice of the Peace or notary public (essentially, a lawyer).
There is a free Justice of the Peace signing service, but this had been closed due to Covid.
I asked the divorce lawyer who I was working with how much they charged. They said £150 + VAT. So £180.
£180 when the application itself cost £128. £180 to sign a piece of paper. Not to look at it or check it over. £180 for a lawyer to write their name — something which I could not get divorced without.
This is such an incredible barrier to people trying to break free of relationships. It’s absolutely shameful any law firm would charge this, especially when the Courts weren’t offering a free option.
In the end, I got the law firm I employed to sign it for free after they massively screwed up handling my house transfer (again, a blog post for another day). They didn’t offer it for free, though. I had to haggle for it.
Having to explain that I didn’t change my last name
This next point about the application experience is the one that angers me most.
The day finally came to submit my application. I felt such relief when my ex signed the application a few days before. I thought that was going to be the biggest obstacle to me getting divorced.
But no. Sexism was.
About 10 days after I posted my application, it was mailed back to me. The reason for this? Because I apparently had to provide an explanation that I did not use my ex’s surname.
I, Lauren Tormey, who have always been called Lauren Tormey, had to explain myself for not taking someone else’s name when I got married.
I angrily checked the form notes to see where this was listed. I read those notes over while completing it. As much as I would have hated doing so, surely I would have provided an explanation if it said to?
Reading it back, this is what I found on the form:
If the surname for a female spouse is not her present married name an explanation should be included with the application. Her maiden name and any names from previous marriages should be entered in the space for other names.
I’m guessing this was the note relevant to me providing an explanation, but I don’t know why the courts would think someone who has never changed their name would find it relevant to them.
It says if a female spouse’s last name ‘is not her present married name’ — I never had a married name. I’ve only ever had my own name.
Not to mention, there’s no note about a male spouse’s surname. Only female.
So clearly this is some sexist garbage.
It was lucky timing this letter arrived when I was about to go out on a run. I had a way to channel my rage.
Does this letter say I’m divorced?
After submitting my form a second time, I was contacted to pay by card. The Court then had to serve papers to my ex in a signed delivery. If he didn’t sign for it, they would have to keep trying.
I’m assuming he signed for it the first time because the process seemed to take the expected amount of time after, based on a letter the Sheriff Court sent me. After being served papers, my ex had 21 days to potentially lodge an objection against the divorce. If he didn’t, the divorce would be granted. Then, ‘14 days must pass after decree has been granted until the Extract Date’.
What in the world does that sentence even mean? Who knows, but I took it to mean it would be another 2 weeks before they would actually finalize it.
Almost 6 weeks after the application had been served, and just over 8 weeks after I resubmitted the application, I got the letter in the mail to say the divorce had been approved.
Except, I had to read it a few times over to make sure it was the letter I thought it was.
Again, it was using the silly terminology above calling it ‘Extract Decree of Divorce’ and said ‘The Sheriff pronounced Decree divorcing the Respondent from the Applicant’.
I just wanted a piece of paper to say ‘You are divorced’. None of this mind-boggling legal speak.
Be better, Scotland
Legal jargon, poor content choices, and complicated processes should never be a barrier to someone’s ability to end their marriage.
The poor user experience adds stress to an already stressful situation.
It also has to be said that for those stuck in abusive relationships, these content barriers enable abuse. They make it harder to understand how to break legal ties to abusers, and thus leave the relationship.
Be better, Scotland. Invest in a better user experience for those who need to use your legal system.
If laws are written for people to follow, make sure people can understand them.
The divorce series
This is post two in my series of divorce blogs, following my first post:
In my next post, I will share what happened in the seven months of financial negotiations with my ex.
