Dozens of NC divorces may be invalid due to flawed online form

Dozens of divorces may be invalid in North Carolina because of a faulty form in a new online court system.

In February, the state launched a new electronic court filing system in Harnett, Johnston, Lee and Wake counties.

Last week, a letter went out to people who filed for divorce on their own through the eCourts system after a flaw in the system was discovered. The letter is from the North Carolina Pro Bono Resource Center, one of two groups now helping to fix what started with a flawed online form.

Carol Squillace got one of those letters.

“It’s stressful,” she said. “Any divorce is a stressful process.

“It just basically said it (her divorce) may not be legally sufficient. It may not be legal in some way.”

Squillace received the letter this week after she used the eCourts Guide and File system to finalize her divorce as of May 5. She feared she'd have to go through that again when she got the letter in the mail a month after Wake County courts finalized her divorce.

The letter lays out some of the possible impacts from the "inability to legally remarry" to "questions as to paternity of children conceived after your divorce.”

Initially, Squillace thought the letter she received was a scam.

“I definitely thought, ‘Am I not actually divorced?’” Squillace said.

The North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts said it discovered a potential legal issue in early April.

“During the affected period, the legal document generated by Guide & File to initiate an absolute divorce electronically included language that may be insufficient for a valid resulting divorce decree,” the office wrote.

Richard Waugaman leads the Gailor Family Law Litigation Clinic at Campbell University. He said there is a fault in the forms.

“It’s just the materials they were provided had the error in them,” he said.

Waugaman explained the specific issue.

“The complaint and the form didn’t have a notarization block and notarization seal and didn’t require it to be notarized,” Waugaman said.

He said the university’s law clinic is helping about 12 people affected.

“We’ve added the step of having to undo something that may have been done incorrectly and going back to do it the right way to ensure these individuals who think they are divorced are, in fact, divorced,” Waugaman said.

Computer defect leading to extra jail time?

On WRAL at 6 p.m. Monday, WRAL Investigates recent claims of glitches and negligence inside a troubled eCourt system paid for by taxpayers.

WRAL Investigates whether a computer defect led to extra jail time for people across central North Carolina.