Posts
Child Protection Conference
Family Law publishes a regular column by The Transparency Project. This blog post originally appeared in the December 2018 issue, [2018] Fam Law 1590. On 15 September 2018, The Transparency Project supported the third Child...
International Online Courts Forum: what we learned
“More than 150,000 people benefited from online justice in 2018”, according to a press release last week from HM Courts & Tribunals Service. Of these, more than 23,000 made applications using the new online divorce portal launched to the public in April 2018, and...
Another runaway mum in the news – what’s the story?
Shortly before Christmas reports began to emerge of a young mother who had disappeared with her little boy, and of the High Court Judge who gave permission for the family to be publicly named and photos shown in order to help locate them. At the time we weren't sure...
Family Court Reporting Watch Roundup
We dedicate this issue to District Judge Nicholas Crichton (CBE), FDAC and transparency pioneer, who sadly died on 17th December 2019. (See this JustGiving page set up by his family and his obituary in the Times) Correcting, clarifying or commenting on media reports...
Quality Circle established in Sussex
This is a guest post by barrister Martin Downs (@MartinJDowns) and social worker Nicola McGeown (@NicolaMcgeown) about an interesting project running in Sussex. It is a commonplace that the family justice system has faced a decade of constrained budgets, increased...
Was the risk really bad enough to justify the remedy?
This question was asked by Lord Justice Peter Jackson in a judgment reported last month, Re F (A Child: Placement Order: Proportionality) [2018] EWCA Civ 2761 The risk here was of future significant harm and the remedy was a closed adoption. However, this...
From private law proceedings to filicide
My name is Annie, and some of you may know me as the author of Surviving Safeguarding; a parents' guide to the child protection process. I'm a birth parent who has been through several sets of concurrent public and private law proceedings and now writes and advocates...
Royals, resulting trusts, and representation
In December 2017, I wrote about Privacy and the Princess, a case involving the divorce of two members of the Luxembourg royal family, Prince Louis and Princess Tessy. The hearing I discussed was about what could be reported about their financial positions given the...
Access to family court hearings: the legal bloggers pilot
Family Law publishes a regular column by The Transparency Project. This blog post originally appeared in the November 2018 issue, [2018] Fam Law 1465. THE NEW PILOT SCHEME FROM OCTOBER 2018 We are very pleased with the outcome of our application to the Family...
Anonymisation Guidance – a curtain of secrecy?
The President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew MacFarlane issued some guidance last week on the anonymisation of published judgments in family court cases. You can read that guidance here. The Daily Mail reported this as follows : Curtain of secrecy should be...