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Could eBay Improve UK’s Divorce Process?

The process of obtaining a divorce in England or Wales is regularly subjected to criticism. It has frequently been argued that the need to regularly attribute fault to one party transforms amicable separations into acrimonious one, for example. Others claim that the fees requested by the court are excessive or that the removal of Legal Aid has increased the likelihood of the process adversely affecting some of the nation’s most vulnerable individuals. For all of the accusations levelled at our family courts, though, one has gained more traction than others: that the divorce process we utilise is cumbersome, slow and, ultimately, inefficient. But could mimicking a system utilised by online giant eBay provide a solution? In order to resolve disputes between users of the site, the internet retailer operates a bespoke dispute resolution system wherein their employees can monitor and review correspondence exchanged between the two parties, mediate the situation and, in the events that the parties cannot resolve their dispute, determine how the matter should be resolved. Authorities in Northern Ireland hope that by aping this system – currently already being used to resolve legal disputes in the Netherlands and parts of Canada – they will be able to simplify and accelerate the divorce process as well as numerous other legal proceedings. The system will initially be used to resolve compensation claims of £25,000 or less in order to determine if it would provide a practicable means of resolving other legal disputes. It has been proposed that users of the system would agree to arbitration and could log in to the site in order to negotiate a settlement with the advice of an impartial mediator with judges potentially becoming involved in more complex cases. Supporters of such a system claim that its implementation would lead to a lower legal aid bill and would also provide those not eligible for legal aid with greater access to affordable legal advice. Others have argued that such a system would be unsuitable for complex divorce cases such as those involving domestic abuse.

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