The law in England permits a divorce application to be made after the first year of marriage, meaning that any application must be made after your first wedding anniversary. For a few unfortunate couples, the court's own IT systems allowed them to apply too early, and worse still, it then permitted them to finalise their divorces.

The High Court is now being ask by the Ministry of Justice to decide whether these unfortunate few should be told that they are not actually divorced, or whether (and preferably), the High Court can decide that the divorces remain valid. If the High Court decides that the divorces are invalid, those couples will have to start the process all over again, meaning a minimum of a six month wait to get to the point they believed they had already reached.

Some of those affected have re-married, justifiably believing that they were free to do so. The ramifications for those individuals could be far reaching and consequential – or as the Minsitry of Justice put it “highly unwelcome”!

In a case earlier this year, the High Court refused to overturn a final divorce order made after an error by the law firm Vardags, who mistakenly applied for the final order on behalf of the wrong Mr & Mrs Williams.

The question is, can the court treat its own errors differently to those of anyone else?