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Comment by meepmorp | Hacker News Reader

> They lawyer has not even agreed to fix their error.

How do you suggest the lawyer fix their error?

England and Wales allow unilateral divorce, and at least the husband wanted to divorce, so even without this mistake the result would be divorce. The mistake must be in the details of the settlement, so there's a good chance it's a material cost that the lawyer who made the mistake or their firm can compensate for monetarily

Financial orders are separate from the granting of the divorce itself in England and Wales and the two can be done in (sort of) either order, confusingly.

It's usually thought of to be in the interest of one (or both) parties not to finalise the divorce until a financial order is made (eg if one party dies in the period between then the other may never get assets they would have done in a financial order; or there may be tax consequences if assets end up with the wrong party for a period). In this instance it seems like this disadvantaged the former wife because she ended up divorced without a financial order in place.

Presumably lawyers can figure that out. That's what they were hired for in the first place.

My guess is that a lawsuit would follow and whomever messed up would be on the hook for any losses between what the final divorce settlement was and what it most likely would have been had it been properly negotiated, plus any emotional damages coming from misapplied parenting rights agreements and the like.

Given that they were using online lawyers, likely that is not very much.

If this was in America, depending on the couple's total wealth and circumstances it could run into the several hundred thousand / low millions.

I don't know the laws in the UK or how that would play out there though.

Marry the client?

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