Posts
Family Court Reporting Watch Roundup: June 2025
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 Times (£) reported...
‘If I had to live with mum I’d jump out of the window’ – Why two boys ended up living with their dad
On the day I saw them trot across the court waiting room on the way back from meeting the judge, Jamie and Andrew* were 10 and 14. I didn’t know that at the time, to me they looked smaller, younger. But the visit seemed to have gone well, as best I could tell from...
Can a court make a journalist reveal their source of information about a family court hearing?
A recently published judgment, Louise Tickle v The Father & Ors [2025] EWFC 160 is helpful in reaffirming journalists’ rights to protect the confidentiality of their sources, specifically in the context of a Family Court case. This judgment about sources of...
Family Court Reporting Watch Roundup: May 2025
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 Observer ran a piece...
Child protection and domestic abuse – a legal blogging report from Cardiff Family Court
The circumstances in this case may sound all too familiar to some readers. A child aged ten was terrified of his mother’s violent male partner and is now living with his grandparents. The local authority (LA) had applied for an interim care order (ICO). The good news...
Can secret recordings be used as evidence in court?
If you record a meeting or conversation about your children, without people being aware you’re recording them, can you then produce and rely on that recording as part of your evidence to a family court? This is a question that has been hanging around for several years...
Cross examination of medical experts – exceptional or exceptionally important?
What this post is about When medical expert witnesses are instructed in family cases, usually to help work out how an injury to a child was caused, their evidence can sometimes be accepted by all the parties, in which case the expert doesn’t need to attend court to...
Family Court Reporting Watch Roundup: April 2025
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 the sad...
ASSISTED DYING: WHAT ROLE FOR THE PANEL? Thoughts on the latest (amended) proposals
Sir James Munby expresses his serious concerns over current legislative proposals for judicial involvement in the approval of assisted dying decisions and over the lack of public scrutiny that the process might permit.
Happy Tenth Birthday to TP!
In fact, like the Queen, The Transparency Project has two birthdays. One in early 2014, when we emerged from the primordial online soup into a loose multi-cellular organism, and one when we were officially formed as a charity on 29 April 2015, with charitable...