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.
