Welcome to the Roundup, where we correct, clarify and comment on media reports of family law, explain and comment on published family court judgments, and highlight other transparency news.
MEDIA COVERAGE OF FAMILY LAW, TRANSPARENCY etc
The BBC reported that ‘I had to investigate my own abuse case because the police failed me’ (30 June 2025), about a victim of coercive and controlling behaviour and her difficulty in getting police to investigate it as a crime. She says she had to ‘spoon-feed’ the police who struggled to grasp the seriousness of her ex-partner’s pattern of intimidatory and threatening behaviour. The report says ‘A BBC investigation has found that 10 years after coercive or controlling behaviour (CCB) became a crime, there is a wide disparity in how police forces in England and Wales recognise and understand the offence – with some logging rates that are three times higher per head of population.’
The Daily Mail (£) kicked off the month’s big money divorce news with the story that Ex-wife loses Supreme Court fight against retired banker over the £80m he gave her in a bid to avoid tax – before she divorced him and kept the money (2 July 2025) as did The Times (£) with Retired banker wins fight to keep majority of £80m ‘gift’ to wife (2 July 2025). This referred to the Supreme Court’s decision in Standish v Standish [2025] UKSC 26; [2025] 3 WLR 155 to affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal [2024] EWCA Civ 567; [2024] 4 WLR 60; [2024] 2 FLR 966, allowing the husband to keep most of the £80 million he had transferred to his ex-wife during the marriage ‘in a bid to avoid inheritance tax’. She had claimed to keep half of it, and the High Court had agreed, but in the Court of Appeal her settlement was reduced to £25m. The Times said it was a ‘landmark ruling that divorce law experts forecast could trigger a “surge” in interest around pre-nuptial agreements’, but perhaps it will be of more interest to tax avoidance specialists.
Metro reported that ‘My abusive ex convinced the courts to give him custody of our daughter’ (5 July 2025). The article covers a number of cases involving court disputes over children with abusive parents. In one case, a woman’s abusive ex-partner had been battling with her over contact with their 12-year-old son for seven years, and had lodged more than a dozen applications, requiring an endless stream of hearings in the family court. Though he could be very charming and charismatic in court, he was also coercive and controlling. ‘Thankfully, she was able to prove five allegations of domestic abuse at a fact-finding hearing, which saw him facing a temporary ban on making more applications.’ The report, which is linked to Metro’s ‘This is not right’ campaign with Women’s Aid to highlight domestic abuse, also features quotes from barrister Charlotte Proudman and a number of other case histories.
The Observer reported on an Outcry as council seeks to make man who faced child abuse trial a family guardian (7 July 2025). It said Herefordshire council had gone to court ‘with the aim of making a man who was put on trial for 15 counts of child abuse and rape the permanent guardian of a family of young children’. But it then explained that the proposed foster carer had not actually been convicted in that trial, which took place a decade ago. Despite this, ‘campaigners and the police have raised concerns about him being allowed to foster the children and the prospect of him becoming their guardian’ at a forthcoming hearing of the Family Court; and the fact that the Crown Prosecution Service considered the evidence against him ‘compelling enough to bring to court’ means the council is ‘taking an unacceptable risk in placing vulnerable children with him’.
The Law Gazette reported that Judge finds husband ‘sought to isolate’ wife from her own lawyer in multimillion pound divorce (10 July 2025), reporting on what is understood to be the ‘third-largest divorce settlement in English legal history’, in which Mr Justice Cobb awarded the wife, PN, £230,778,588 – around 44% of the marital assets. The judgment is published as PN v SA [2025] EWFC 141. The dispute concerned the effect of a prenuptial agreement which the judge did not reflect the full intentions of the parties. But the husband sought to use scare tactics to persuade the wife to accept his proposals for settlement. Awarding the wife more than £230m, the judge said: ‘I am satisfied, from all that I have read and heard, that the wife was ultimately placed in a position of obvious disadvantage, without the ability to exercise any real self-determination or free will in relation to the negotiations in 2022-2023 on the division of marital assets.’
Community Care had an explainer, The DfE’s child protection and family support reforms explained (10 July 2025). It reported that from April 2025 councils and their partners had started rolling out reforms to children’s social care, which had subsequently faced significant criticism from social work experts. The article looks in some detail at the background to the reforms, what they entail, why they are criticised, and what they mean for practitioners. It says the reforms originate from the findings of the 2021-22 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care and the last government’s 2023-24 Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy, which is being taken forward by the current Labour administration largely intact. Prior to the rollout of the reforms, from April 2025, the DfE published a guide for safeguarding partners on implementing what it now calls the Families First Partnership (FFP) programme. ‘The agenda entails new roles, team structures and multi-agency working arrangements, and has two aims: providing earlier and more effective support to families to prevent escalation of their needs and enable children to stay at home safely; and intervening in a “forensic and decisive” way when children do need safeguarding from significant harm.’
The BBC reported that Woman smuggled baby into UK using fake birth story (14 July 2025) about a Nigerian woman living in the UK who had claimed to be pregnant before travelling to Nigeria and then returned with a baby which she claimed was her own, but which was found not to be. She was arrested on suspicion of trafficking, but it was the baby’s welfare which led to the involvement of the family court. The Family Court in Leeds sent an expert called Henrietta Coker to investigate in Nigeria. The judge, Recorder William Tyler KC, ordered that baby be placed for adoption, and also made a ‘declaration of non parentage’. The judgment (not linked to) appears to be this one: Re EZ (A Minor) (Care Proceedings: Nigerian Fertility Clinic and Maternity Hospital) [2025] EWFC 122. The case, the second the BBC has followed through the Family Court in recent months, is said to reveal ‘a worrying trend of babies possibly being brought to the UK unlawfully – some from so-called “baby factories” in Nigeria’.
The Inside HMCTS Blog had a post, Putting Children First: My Work in Family Public Law (16 July 2025) about the work of the Family Public Law Service and its role in supporting the professionals responsible for the safety of children. It also explains how the court services work with their justice partners to ensure applications relating to children are managed in a timely and effective manner. The post explains the effect of digital reforms, which should improve efficiency, but one of which is that ‘As we now communicate through a digital system, remote from the local courts, we want to ensure that we don’t lose that personal touch.’
The Times (£) published two articles by Emily Dugan on families facing wrongful accusations of fabricated or induced illness (FII). The first, We demanded help for our sick children. We were accused of abuse (19 July 2025) reported on how some of society’s most vulnerable were being ‘torn from their families by officials who claim their parents are fabricating illness’; and the second, I’ve seen abusive parents, but the scale of false claims is shocking (27 July 2025) featured an interview with Linda Sands, a former detective specialising in child abuse investigations, who now works in another area of child protection, who believes the current guidance issued by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, giving 20 “alerting signs to possible FII” is making the situation worse. She wants to see the guidance and training adjusted to reflect the rarity of the abuse and capture fewer innocent parents.
The BBC reported How CCTV exposed lies of couple who murdered their grandson (15 July 2025) with a grim story about a grandfather who killed a little boy, Ethan, who had gone to stay with him and his grandmother after a domestic dispute between his parents. The grandmother was also convicted of murder, having entered into a pact with the grandfather to cover up what happened; while the boy’s mother was convicted of causing or allowing the death of a child and child cruelty. The main point of the story was that while various members of the family were blaming each other for the injuries and neglect that led to the boy’s death, the investigation team had crucial evidence – the family home was covered by CCTV cameras. It was this which helped secure the convictions.
The Times (£) reported that Mother in fatal fall was fighting ex-fiancé over £2.7m home (21 July 2025). This was about Rachel O’Hare, who was suing her former partner, Owen Pacey, 60, an antiques dealer with celebrity clients, for ownership of their Georgian home in Spitalfields, London, when she fell to her death from a high-rise apartment building in Great Ancoats Street in Manchester. The report was prompted by the opening of an inquest into her death, which was not being treated by police as suspicious. (It’s not clear how relevant the marital property dispute was to the story, but the Daily Mail also noted that the disputed property worth an estimated £2.7 million.)
The BBC reported Dad guilty of murdering premature baby in hospital (25 July 2025) with the news that Daniel Gunter, 27, of no fixed address, been found guilty of murdering his two-week old baby on a neonatal ward. Brendon Staddon, who was born prematurely at 33 weeks, suffered multiple injuries including a fractured skull, a broken neck, a broken jaw and broken legs in Yeovil District Hospital’s special care baby unit on 5 March 2024. Gunter denied harming him, but was convicted of murder at Bristol Crown Court and will be sentenced on 3 October. Brendon’s mother, Sophie Staddon, was acquitted of a lesser charge of causing or allowing the death of a child and was told by the judge she ‘was free to go’. Reporting the trial earlier, the BBC noted (5 July) that Gunter had been seen getting angry with Brendon while changing his nappy and threatened to make formal complaints about nursing staff when they tried to intervene.
Family Law Week reported that Office of National Statistics publishes primer on new combined measure of domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking (28 July 2025) saying the new method for producing a new combined prevalence measure of domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking from the Crime Survey for England and Wales ‘will be the main measure for monitoring the Government’s aim to halve violence against women and girls in a decade’. The new survey questions informing the survey will, it said, ‘provide a better measure as they will include more abuse types and cover a wider range of abusive behaviour. This in turn will more accurately capture a victims’ lived experience’. The ONS report can be found here: Developing a combined measure of domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking, England and Wales: July 2025.
The Times (£) reported that Rotherham grooming gang victims ‘were also abused by police’ (29 July 2025) saying five victims of grooming gangs in Rotherham have said they were also sexually abused by serving police officers at the time. One victim said that after she had an illegal abortion, a youth worker contacted social services and the police to report her case, but she felt ‘destroyed’ when a police officer who had been abusing her arrived to interview her. The same man ripped up her statement in front of her a few days later, she said, ending any chance of justice. The newspaper includes a quote from an interview with Kemi Badenoch, leader of the opposition, on Times Radio, where she says ‘One of the things that has been quite striking about this story hasn’t just been the scandal of the crimes and just the sheer wickedness of it, but where it seemed like the state authorities, whether it’s councils, police, social care, that either looked away or seemed to have a hand in it.’
Local Government Lawyer reported that Supreme Court agrees to hear appeal over power of court to revoke adoption orders (31 July 2025) saying permission had been given to appeal against the decision of the Court of Appeal in Re X and Y (Children: adoption orders: setting aside) [2025] EWCA Civ 2; [2025] 3 WLR 173, affirming that of Lieven J [2024] EWHC 1059 (Fam); [2024] 1 WLR 5167, that there was no inherent jurisdiction in the High Court to set aside an adoption order on welfare grounds. Lieven J concluded that there’s a statutory scheme for revocation of adoption orders, under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 but this was confined to cases of procedural irregularity. The question of whether it’s possible to set aside a formally correct adoption order is a controversial one. Supreme Court’s decision is here.
BROADCAST & AUDIO COVERAGE
ITV broadcast Breaking the Silence: Kate’s Story (18 July 2025) in which former MP Kate Kniveton gives ‘a frank and full insight into her experience of being abused and shamed into silence over ten years by her husband Andrew Griffiths’. A number of other women are interviewed, including professional women who worry about their status and careers, to make the point that ‘it can happen to anyone’. The documentary was made by Truevision who summarise it here, with Louise Tickle, whose earlier reporting for Tortoise helped expose the case, as associate producer.
A Lawyer Talks, Joshua Rozenberg’s podcast, featured an interview with the President, Sir Andrew McFarlane in an episode entitled Family law: the future (4 July 2025) in which he discussed the Pathfinder scheme and other recent and forthcoming developments in family justice.
BBC iPlayer’s The Big Cases series featured a documentary entitled The Aristocrat, the Convict and the Missing Baby (14 July 2025) about the case of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon and their dead baby. It appears to have been released on the day that Marten and Gordon were convicted following a retrial for gross negligence manslaughter of their baby Victoria, having previously been convicted of child cruelty, concealing Victoria’s birth and perverting the course of justice during their first trial in June 2024. The programme also contains material the BBC says was derived from court papers relating to earlier family proceedings involving the pair and their children, helping to show a history of family problems and parental failings.
A note on Doughty Street chambers website on 18 July 2025 records that in response to an application by various media applicants, including the BBC, the Family Court (HHJ Reardon) had released a number of earlier judgments from the family proceedings: see The BBC v A London Local Authority & Ors (Press Disclosure Application) [2023] EWFC 310 and The BBC & Ors v Marten & Ors (Publicity Application) [2024] EWFC 91.
The original judgments which were then published relate to care applications for a total of five children. The four older children were made subject to care and placement orders in 2022.
- Carmarthenshire County Council v Constance Dorothea Marten & Ors [2018] EWFC 104 (B)
- A London Local Authority v Marten & Ors (Fact-Finding Hearing) [2021] EWFC 129 (B)
- A London Local Authority v Marten & Ors (Final Welfare Hearing) [2022] EWFC 213 (B)
- Baby Gordon-Marten (Interim Care Order Hearing), Re [2023] EWFC 308 (B)
- The Crown Prosecution Service v A London Local Authority & Ors (Disclosure Application) [2023] EWFC 309 (B)
See also, on the same story:
- The Times, Constance Marten’s life in jail: killer friends and magazine covers (14 July 2025)
- The Times, The 53-day hunt for Constance Marten, by the police who caught her (19 July 2025).
- Guardian Podcast: A relentless, destructive energy’: inside the trial of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon (25 July 2025)
LEGAL BLOGGING
In A failed reunification plan (20 July 2025) Julie Doughty followed an unusual case in Exeter Family Court, in which an adolescent boy was refusing to comply with court orders that he spend time with his mother following his parents’ separation.
in Legal blogging – placement order for adoption of a baby (28 July 2025) Julie Doughty covered what first appeared to be the case of an abandoned baby for whom adoption would be the right outcome, but then it transpired that a kinship carer solution might be available in the form of a paternal aunt.
RECENT COMMENTARY
Dexter Montague LLP solicitors had a piece by summer work experience student Amelia Disbray (University of Reading) called LOST IN TRANSLATION? Gender Reassignment Surgery in Financial Remedy Proceedings is making Headlines in the Media for all the wrong reasons (21 July 2025). This was about a financial remedy case in which The Sun Newspaper had ‘cherry-picked’ an issue over whether the cost of gender reassignment surgery should be paid for out of the matrimonial assets. Since this issue formed only one of the four main issues before the court in the case of JY v KF [2025] EWFC 195 (B), the fact that it was ‘handpicked as the main focus in The Sun’s article’ was, Disbray says, ‘arguably used to push a narrative that is far from the reality underpinning this case’. Announcing her commentary on LinkedIn, she explains that it ‘serves as a reminder of the dangers of mainstream media taking snippets from cases which happen to align with current and popular political discussions, twisting them to suit their own narrative for the sole purpose of gaining clicks on their site. Such ignores the wider effects on the public, leaving readers misinformed about the law in an area that arguably matters most to us all: family.’
The Courts and Tribunals Observers’ Network republished a post on A failure of open justice in a Court of Protection committal application (22 July 2025) in which Celia Kitzinger, the co-director of the Open Justice Court of Protection Project, wrote about failures of open justice in relation to a committal application in the Court of Protection. Not only were these failings a cost to the principle of open justice but, Celia reports, may also have had “a concrete practical cost to the administration of justice”. The case referred to was eventually published on the Judiciary website as Committal for Contempt of Court: Cornwall Council -v- Orange and others (Case No: 14097168).
The Courts and Tribunals Observers’ Network also published a post on A contra mundum super-injunction is discharged after almost two years (23 July 2025) commenting on what one hopes is a very rare example of the government using the courts to cover up what appears to have been a very serious and potentially very dangerous personal data breach involving Afghan people who had aided the allied forces in Afghanistan during hostilities and were applying to be relocated to the UK following the Taliban takeover in 2021. The data breach occurred in 2022, but the government did not seek an injunction until late in 2023, after some of the data emerged on Facebook.
There was also commentary on the ICLR blog: Comments on the MOD Afghan data leak superinjunction case (25 July 2025) and lots of newspaper coverage, once they were finally allowed to discuss the case. Interestingly, the judge who finally lifted the superinjunction and released all the relevant judgments for publication, Chamberlain J, made a point of praising the press for its restraint in, er, complying with the injunction. (Nor did any MPs attempt to bypass the court’s order under the protection of parliamentary privilege, perhaps because they hadn’t been informed, even via WhatsApp, of the underlying facts – or of the measures taken, by a secret Cabinet committee, to deal with the catastrophe.)
NEW JUDGMENTS OF INTEREST
Re S (Placement Order Contact) [2025] EWCA Civ 823
This appeal raises a number of issues of general application regarding the court’s approach to contact between siblings in adoption and the approach to be taken to sibling contact at the placement for adoption stage. The brothers, aged eight and two, were both subject to care orders but only the younger child was to be placed for adoption. The Leeds Family Court judge had declined to make an order for direct contact between them when he made the care and placement orders. The Court of Appeal agreed with that decision. The significance of the case is indicated by the fact that the Association of Lawyers for Children and CoramBAAF joined the case as intervenors, supporting the mother’s appeal.
Re S was relied on in a Bristol Family Court case heard shortly afterwards regarding contact with birth parents post-placement order, A Local Authority v Mother & Ors [2025] EWFC 217 (B)
Birmingham City Council v EM & Anor [2025] EWFC 205 (B)
The mother of a 12 year old and a baby was unable to safely parent them without 24 hour support. After considering the assessments where they had been in a residential placement and the guidance on supporting parents with learning disabilities, the district judge concluded that the only option was an interim care order with removal of both children.
In contrast, in R & Anor v Shropshire Council & Anor [2025] EWHC 1791 (Fam) a child of parents with learning disabilities had been subject to care proceedings since birth in 2021 (and four court judgments). A final care order, with a support plan to allow her to remain at home, was eventually made by the High Court.
Re Maisie (simple judgment for parents with learning difficulties) [2025] EWFC 222 (B)
This is a sad case where the judge concluded that although both parents love their baby very much, they are unable to care for her without constant support, to the extent that there would always be a third party at home with them all the time and this would not be in the child’s welfare. HHJ Pemberton in Sheffield Family Court made care and placement orders but included an order for future direct contact between the child and her parents, at least once a year (in contrast to the Bristol case above). The local authority plan was to find adopters who would promote contact. As the name of the judgment explains, it is written in an appropriate style for the parents to understand, and for the child when she is older. There are some interesting comments by the judge on the various professionals and the support they offered.
K and G (Care Proceedings: Fact-Finding) [2025] EWCA Civ 910
In this unusual case, the local authority, supported by the parents and the Cafcass guardian, was appealing against a fact-finding judgment regarding injuries to a five month old baby. However, although all parties wanted the case re-heard by a different judge, the Court of Appeal did not agree. The Family Court judge had made findings that the child had been injured by one of her parents but was unable to conclude which of the parents it was. The Court of Appeal said that this decision had not been wrong and they therefore dismissed the appeal.
Somewhat confusingly, Mrs Justice Lieven says in this judgment from Leicester Family Court that it should be read alongside two earlier judgments to be fully understood – but neither TNA nor BAILII give links to those earlier judgments. Nevertheless, it appears that after several years of litigation and attempts at enforcing orders, Lieven J transferred residence of four children from their mother to their father in March this year. The children are reported to be doing well . Notably, Lieven J also said:
‘the evidence shows in clear terms that the M [mother] was seeking to influence the children against the F. Secondly, the M has lied on oath to the court … Thirdly, the M is a professional child psychologist. The fact that she is prepared to harm her own children in this way and to lie on oath to the court is a matter of considerable professional concern. I have already ordered that my judgments in this case should be sent to the M’s professional regulatory body.’
Re B (a child) (Sentencing in contempt proceedings) [2025] EWCA Civ 1048
The judgment in this appeal was sent out by the Judicial Press Office but we haven’t seen any media coverage of it. The father in the case is serving a prison sentence for fraud in Slovakia. He has made repeated applications regarding the child after the mother moved to the UK about eight years ago. Orders were made in Oxford Family Court for the mother to provide welfare updates to the father and to allow a Cafcass guardian to begin some work with the child on learning about her paternal heritage. These orders were not complied with by the mother and she was found to be in contempt of court: the father applied for her to be committed to prison. However Ms Justice Henke concluded that although she could send the mother directly to prison, this would make no difference to the mother’s attitude towards allowing the guardian to meet the child. The father appealed and the Court of Appeal decided that Henke J had been wrong not to impose any sanction on the mother. The mother might see things differently when faced with imprisonment and the authority of the court needed to be upheld. The case was sent back for the High Court to reconsider the sentence.
We’re including this judgment about a non-molestation order under the Family Law Act 1996 (FLA) mainly because of the discussion about the anonymity of the parties. There are other interesting points in it about disclosure of the judgment and of police records, in the context of possible disciplinary proceedings against the applicant for the order, who was a police officer. The respondent to her application (her ex-partner) wanted the judgment published. The applicant and the lawyer acting on behalf of the police were concerned about the impact of publication on the investigation into the applicant’s conduct. The judge, Deputy District Judge Hales in Barnet Family Court, considered the starting principles of open justice and whether anonymity was necessary (there were no children involved). He referred to a suggestion by HHJ Reardon in G v S (Family Law Act: Publicity) [2024] EWFC 231 that parties’ privacy rights are highly likely to outweigh Article 10 rights in FLA proceedings. He also took into account the risk of publicity to the police investigation and concluded that the parties should be anonymised.
OTHER TRANSPARENCY etc NEWS
The Potato Group published a new report, Far, Far Beyond the Adoption Order: Lessons From Lives Impacted by Trauma (30 June 2025), as a testament to the lived experiences of adoptive families caring for children and young adults affected by early-life trauma. Potato (Parents Of Traumatised Adopted Teenagers Organisation) is an established online peer-to-peer support group. This report ‘brings together the voices of adoptive parents who shared their stories of love, determination, and challenge. It exposes how neglect, abuse, and loss in early childhood continue to impact children well into adulthood, and how families are too often left to navigate crisis alone’. The report is aimed at practitioners, policy makers, parents and researchers.
‘From child-to-parent violence to mental health crises, sibling relationships, harmful sexualised behaviour, experiences with youth and criminal justice systems and repeated struggles with services, the findings are stark but essential reading for anyone working in adoption, social care, education, mental health or the criminal justice system.’
The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory published a new report, Child-focused, Data-driven: Learning from youth justice to improve family justice data (2 July 2025), which explores lessons that the family justice system could learn from the way data is used in the youth justice system. Reliable, meaningful data not only enables people to track progress against aims and objectives but also brings transparency to how the system operates. The National Audit Office (Improving family court services for children) has highlighted significant problems with the availability and quality of data in the family justice system, which still lags behind other parts of the system. The aim of this FJO report is to encourage family justice professionals to learn from good practice and innovation in the youth justice system, to know that challenging new data collection is possible, and can achieve positive outcomes for children and their families.
Sir Nicholas Mostyn gave the Bar Council’s law reform lecture 2025, on 2 July 2025, under the title A Priceless Inheritance: Family Law, Open Justice and the Rule of Law, which has been published by the Financial Remedies Journal. It traces the history of the development of the open justice principle up to Scott v Scott [1913] UKHL 2; [1913] AC 417 and its treatment thereafter, and considers recent practice directions, procedural rules, and pilots either imposing or reversing a presumption of privacy in financial remedy casese. It is erudite and uncompromising in its examination of the topic.
Women’s Aid published Nineteen More Child Homicides (2 July 2025), a new report on fatal failings of the family justice system to protect children from domestic abuse. It says this is now ‘the third of a series of harrowing reports, revealing 67 children have been killed by a parent who was also a perpetrator of domestic abuse, in circumstances relating to child contact, over the last 30 years’. This new report ‘highlights how a widespread lack of professional understanding around patterns of coercive control, a constant minimisation of risk, and significant over optimism that perpetrators of abuse can still be “good enough” fathers, led to children killed by known perpetrators of domestic abuse.’ The report says that a ‘pro-contact culture’ is costing children’s lives, and the government should legislate to repeal the ‘presumption of parental involvement’ to prevent children from paying the price. See also TBIJ: Report into murdered children links parental alienation to ‘pro-contact culture’ of family courts
The Nuffield Foundation published an essay collection, Why Justice Matters (17 July 2025) as part of its ‘Public right to justice’ programme. It says the essays are authored by leading experts from across academia, policy, and practice, and highlight the often-overlooked but vital ways the justice system shapes our daily lives – from the economy to health – the risks created by a fraying system, and ideas for change. They also shine a spotlight on a range of current concerns facing the justice system, including backlogs, deteriorating IT and infrastructure, and limited access, which threaten to undermine efforts to build a fair, prosperous, and inclusive society.
The Transparency and Open Justice Board (TOJB), established last year by the Lady Chief Justice and chaired by Mr Justice Nicklin, has now published its finalised Key Objectives, together with the Board’s Response to Public Engagement on the Key Objectives. The latter explains the public consultation which was held over what the key objectives should be, and how people and organisations responded. (You can see TP’s response here.) Many of the suggestions were accepted in principle. Much of the board’s current work focuses on the provision of more case information in advance of or during hearings in court or online (livestreamed), including publishing the parties’ skeleton arguments, links to cases cited, etc. A pilot has been running in the Court of Appeal, Civil Division, since April, providing skeleton arguments and/or a link to the judgment below for a selection of pending appeals, to assist observers watching the hearing via livestream or in person; and a similar project is set to begin in the Commercial Court from October, according to a recent report in the Law Gazette: Commercial court case documents to be made public this year (24 July 2025).
The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory published a new briefing paper, Residential family assessment centres: Data trends and questions (29 July 2025). It says that ‘Despite the surge in numbers, residential assessment and post-birth support for families experiencing vulnerability is an understudied area with limited research on parent experiences, outcomes and effectiveness of approaches. The voices of parents within the centres are rarely heard, and no data is collected at a national level about the characteristics of families that are referred for assessment nor the outcomes for those families after assessment.’ The briefing paper examines the patterns around the increasing number of new registrations of residential family assesment centres across the country. NFJO says it ‘highlights what we know so far about the practices and policies regarding these centres, as well as outlining questions for stakeholders to consider’.
The parliamentary Justice Committee has launched an inquiry into access to justice, which will consider how the provision of legal advice and representation, and supplementary advice services, have developed in response to the restrictions on the provision of legal aid and, more recently, the the impacts of the cyber-attack on the Legal Aid Agency. The Inquiry has issued a call for evidence, asking for responses by Tuesday, 30 September 2025 on a number of questions.
The Law Commission published Evidence in sexual offences prosecutions: a final report (22 July 2025) following its examination of the trial process and consideration of the law, guidance and practice relating to the use of evidence in prosecutions of sexual offences. The Government’s End to End Rape Review found that the prevalence of rape and sexual violence has remained steady in the last five years but there had been a sharp decrease in the number of prosecutions since 2016/2017. There might be many complex reasons for the decline in cases reaching court, but the commission’s focus has been on how evidence is used in trials involving sexual offences and the impact of so-called ‘rape myths’ which affect jurors’ assessment of victims’ evidence. The report makes a number of recommendations, including the setting up of specialist sexual offences courts, mandatory training for all legal practitioners on myths and misconceptions, and improving the directions which judges give to jurors. In his podcast, A Lawyer Talks, Joshua Rozenberg interviews Professor Penney Lewis, the criminal law commissioner responsible for the project, about Trying rape fairly (22 July 2025).
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
Family Law Week’s Public Children Law Conference will take place at Millennium Point, Birmingham, on 30 September 2025. Highlights include Keynote Address by Ms Justice Harris, Public Law Update by HH Stephen Wildblood KC, and a session on Fabricated or Induced Illness (FII) cases with Dr Freda Gardner.
The Family Procedure Rule Committee (FPRC): Annual open meeting will take place on Monday 3 November 2025. The meeting will take place via MS Teams, starting from 11:00am, and will include an open section during which invited attendees will be able to observe proceedings and put questions to the Committee, which are sent in advance of the meeting. Anyone wishing to attend the meeting should apply using this form (MS Word Document, 43.1 KB) by Wednesday 17 September 2025 at the very latest, or directly to the FPRC Secretariat by email: FPRCSecretariat@justice.gov.uk.
FAMILY LAW IN OTHER JURISDICTIONS
Germany
The Guardian reported on A steakhouse heir, Israeli spies and a cross-border abduction: the custody battle gripping Germany (20 July 2025), about ‘a bitter and extraordinary custody battle between the heiress to the family business, Christina Block, and her ex-husband over the youngest two of their four children’. Amidst unusual levels of publicity, given Germany’ strict privacy laws, Block is standing trial in a high security court room in Hamburg, accused of aggravated child abduction, grievous bodily harm and unlawful detention. The central allegation is that she contracted a global security firm to carry out the violent, cross-border kidnapping of her two youngest children. If convicted she faces up to 10 years behind bars. Among those accused of being involved are Israeli spies and the former head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service. Her defence includes allegations against her former partner that he breached earlier court rulings as to the children’s custody.
Northern Ireland
The Belfast Telegraph reported that NI media to be granted access to family court proceedings under pilot sheme (17 July 2025), saying that journalists will be allowed to report on High Court family proceedings for the first time in NI as part of a pilot scheme. Such cases are currently closed to the media and the public for the protection of those involved. The scheme was also reported in Irish Legal News, Journalists to report from family court hearings in Northern Ireland pilot (18 July 2025) which says greater transparency in the family courts was one of the issues to be examined by a judicial working group established by the Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, Dame Siobhan Keegan in September 2024.
Under the scheme, which appears to be largely based on the Reporting Pilot which has been running in England and Wales, media representatives who have registered to take part may apply for a transparency order allowing them to attend and report on what they see and hear in specified cases in the family division of the High Court, subject to the principles of anonymity. The scheme will run from October 2025 to June 2026, but any permanent implementation would require legislation. Prior to the launch of the pilot, the the Judicial Family Working Group is currently running a consultation.
USA
The Times reported that Denise Richards divorce intensifies amid mutual claims of violence (17 July 2025) saying the ‘actress alleges years of abuse and death threats, submitting photographs showing her with a black eye. Her husband Aaron Phypers has now filed his own criminal report’ in what the newspaper describes as a ‘bitter’ divorce between the couple, who married in 2018 and whose relationship featured on the reality television show The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. (The story goes on to provide graphic detail of assaults and injuries, somewhat reminiscent of the Depp v Heard case, which we needn’t go into.)
Finally…
We have a small favour to ask!
TEN YEARS A CHARITY
The Transparency Project is a registered charity in England and Wales run by volunteers who mostly also have full-time jobs. Although we’ve now been going for a decade, we’re always working to secure extra funding so that we can keep making family justice clearer for all who use the court and work in it.
We can’t do what we do without help from you!
We’d be really grateful if you were able to help us by making a small one-off (or regular!) donation through our Just Giving page.