Family Court Reporting Watch Roundup: August-Sept 2025

by reporting watch team | Oct 2, 2025 | Cases, FCReportingWatch, Transparency News

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 Financial Times posed the...

Will my Family Court judgment be published?

by reporting watch team | Sep 19, 2025 | FCReportingWatch

This post was amended on 25 September to add a new link on the Judiciary website. We recently received an enquiry from someone who wanted a court judgment in their case to be published and who didn’t know how to go about this. [EDITED 22.09.25 to clarify this...

British teenager becomes a ward of court to escape from Somalia  

by reporting watch team | Sep 7, 2025 | Cases, Explanation, FCReportingWatch

We spotted this dramatic court judgment published last week although, surprisingly, we’ve not seen any media coverage – Re M (Nationality Based Jurisdiction) [2025] EWHC 1821 (Fam). There are a few similarities with the widely publicised case in July of the 14 year...

A happy ending in Cardiff Family Court

by Julie Doughty | Sep 1, 2025 | FCReportingWatch, Legal blogging

During August, I attended a final hearing in a case I’d written about in May, when I’d said: 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...

Children left with harmful parents because of lack of foster carers

by Julie Doughty | Aug 18, 2025 | Cases, Explanation, FCReportingWatch, Legal blogging

A local authority (LA) applied for care orders for six children in March 2025. At the case management hearing (CMH) I attended in April,  and wrote on here: ‘Completing care proceedings in less that 26 weeks’, a strict timetable was set out by the judge to ensure...

Sending a mother to prison for contempt of court

by reporting watch team | Aug 14, 2025 | Cases, Court of Protection, FCReportingWatch, Open Reporting

This post by Celia Kitzinger on the Open Justice Court of Protection Project site, ‘Sentencing in contempt proceedings’, is actually a Family Court case. Celia explains why the hearing caught her eye in the lists, how she observed it, and why she has...