That is bad practice and I actually doubt this was allowed practice in the past, especially as I joined earlier than you. Any line item is not for layout but accounting purposes.
Maybe you used a custom theme (obsolete feature) or worse did not realize this would create suspense accounts!
Each line represent an item and if keeping empty it would go into suspense. There have been discussions about this before even recently where someone wanted a solid line and you obviously want spacing so maybe this will help you move forward