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 that Ruling paves way for naming medics who treated Nottingham killer (5 June 2025) saying that a ‘fresh legal ruling’ had made it possible for psychiatrists and other mental health workers who were responsible for failings in the care of the Nottingham triple killer, Valdo Calocane, might now be named. The report failed to identify the fresh legal ruling concerned, but we assume it is the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Abbasi v Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust [2025] UKSC 15, [2025] 2 WLR 815, from which the Times misquotes the line that ‘the treatment of patients in public hospitals is a matter of legitimate public interest’. It reported that ‘families of Calocane’s victims hope it will lead to psychiatrists and other NHS staff being held publicly accountable for their actions before the rampage in which Grace O’Malley Kumar and Barnaby Webber, both 19-year-old students, and Ian Coates, 65, were fatally stabbed’. The point of the Abbasi case was to dispel the presumption of anonymity in court proceedings, but this appears to extend it to other contexts. (We assume the medics in Abbasi and the case of Haastrup heard with it, is presumably because the trusts have put in new and different applications to keep them anonymous.)
Sky News reported on The ‘ludicrous’ divorce settlements leaving many women ‘devastated’ (27 May 2025) saying ‘women are coming out of divorces worse than men when it comes to their income, data shows with many being left “devastated”.’ The story was based on the experience of three women who had talked to sky’s Money blog. It also had some quotes and comments from Professor Emma Hitchings, author of the Fair Shares on Divorce report (2023), who said ‘Wives, and particularly mothers, are in a precarious financial position at the point of divorce’ and the law was in need of reform.
The Times reported that Divorce rows going to court hit a 15-year high (10 June 2025), saying that while fewer couples are getting divorced in the UK, those that do are much more likely to ‘end up battling in court over money’. The story derives from recently updated court stats which showed that 76,000 couple divorced in 2023, the lowest figure since 1971 and a more than 30 per cent fall compared with 2021; but that 10,300 financial remedy orders were contested in the family courts in 2024, representing a 66 per cent rise over the number in 2023 and apparently the highest number of financial settlements contested in the courts since 2008. The rigor of the comparisons suffers somewhat from taking one aspect from 2023 and another from 2024. Nevertheless it gave the Times an opportunity to trot out some recent celebrity divorce cases and make generalised observations about the likely causes of the rise in disputes, such as the cost of living crisis, and global financial uncertainties affecting high net worth individuals.
The Law Gazette reported that Partner suspended for harassing colleague – but SDT allows anonymity (11 June 2025). This was about a case before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal concerning a male law firm partner who sexually harassed his female junior colleague on a staff night out, and who was suspended for two years, but the tribunal refused to allow him to be named. The two solicitors on the panel decided at the start of the case to anonymise the partner, after a joint application from him and the SRA, on the basis that naming him posed a risk to his life and would contravene his right to life and to a private and family life. The lay member of the panel dissented, saying the public needed to know the partner’s name and professional details, and saying the principle of open justice outweighed the partner’s interests. But they were in a minority.
The BBC reported on Legal win for son tricked into moving to Africa by parents (12 June 2025) saying the Court of Appeal had allowed an appeal from the decision of Hayden J in S v F [2025] EWHC 439 (Fam), supporting and approving the decision by the parents of a 14-year-old boy to send him to a school in Ghana in order to avoid him being drawn into criminal gang life in England. (We covered this in our roundup for February-March 2025.) Essentially it is a deprivation of liberty case. According to the BBC the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, sitting in the Court of Appeal, took the view that the judge’s analysis was flawed and remitted the case for rehearing. Written reasons have yet to be given, but there is a livestream recording of the appeal, listed as Re S (A Child).
The Financial Times (£) reported that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to announce full national inquiry into grooming gangs (14 June 2025) saying that ‘a full statutory national inquiry into how the state failed hundreds of girls who were sexually abused by grooming gangs’ would be announced in response to a recommendation in a report by Baroness Louise Casey which was about to be published. ‘The inquiry will look into whether state agencies failed to do more to protect largely white girls from the gangs — disproportionately comprising men of Asian or Pakistani heritage — for fear of being accused of racism.’ As this and other reports noted, the announcement followed months of public and political pressure for a national rather than merely local inquiries into the scandal (which was initially exposed by the Times journalist Andrew Norfolk, who sadly died the previous month). The Home Secretary announced the inquiry, among other responses to the Casey report, on 16 June.
The BBC reported that Casey report pulls no punches – but will it lead to meaningful change? (17 June 2025). ‘The report said the ethnicity of people involved in grooming gangs had been “shied away from” by authorities with ethnicity data not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators. This meant the data was not robust enough to support conclusions about offenders at a national level.’ While the government accepted all Baroness Casey’s recommendations, the report itself makes the point that many of the problems highlighted were known about and not addressed for years if not decades. The report says too often the children (mostly girls between 10 and 15, many of whom were in local authority care) were blamed, not helped.
The full report by Baroness Louise Casey of Blackstock is published by the Home Office here: National Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. One of the first points it makes in its introduction is that
‘While public attitudes have shifted and children who used to be called “child prostitutes” are now understood to be victims of child sexual exploitation, there continues to be an awkwardness in society with acknowledging and discussing child sexual abuse and there remains a tendency to apportion blame to adolescent children for their own abuse.’
The Times returned to its favourite subject of big money divorce on 15 June 2025 with an article on Why couples are paying judges £10,000 to quietly mediate divorce. This was about divorcing couples wanting to keep their finances out of the public eye by spending up to £10,000 on ‘private sessions led by retired judges and specialist KCs’. Or in other words, mediation, a long established alternative dispute resolution procedure. The article seemed to suggest this was more expensive than going to court, or perhaps a way of avoiding the long queue for a hearing before a judge whose court might be clogged up with litigants in person who couldn’t afford lawyers to help them resolve their cases (there being no legal aid for such disputes).
The Guardian reported that Psychologist who misled court about qualifications may have gone beyond remit in seven other cases (19 June 2025). This was about Graham Flatman, an educational psychologist based in Kent, who was found to have misled the family court about his qualifications. He was only trained to assess the educational needs of children and young people up to the age of 25 who have learning difficulties, but in a number of cases he may have acted outside his professional remit by assessing people for a range of non-educational issues. Now an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) has identified a string of further cases in which he may have acted beyond his remit. ‘None of the published judgments of the seven cases identified by TBIJ correctly refer to Flatman as an educational psychologist. Judges instead describe him as a “very experienced psychologist”, “a child and family psychologist” and a “psychologist”.’ The report added that the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) had said Flatman’s ‘misconduct brought the profession into disrepute’.
The BBC reported that Telegram boss to leave fortune to over 100 children he has fathered (20 June 2025) which seems to be yet another of those sperm-donor stories. The exiled Russian tech entrepreneur Pavel Durov (who faces criminal charges in France in connection with his platform) had told a French magazine that he was the “official father” of six children by three different partners, but the clinic “where I started donating sperm fifteen years ago to help a friend, told me that more than 100 babies had been conceived this way in 12 countries.” He said he will share his estimated $13.9bn (£10.3bn) fortune among them all. Attaboy, Pavel.
The BBC reported a claim by two brothers that ‘Our sister died of cancer because of our mum’s conspiracy theories’ (23 June 2025). This was about Paloma Shemirani, a student at Cambridge who had been diagnosed with cancer but whose mother, Kate Shemirani, a conspiracy theorist who rose to prominence during the pandemic and had been struck off as a nurse for promoting misinformation, had persuaded her to refuse chemotherapy in favour of alternative remedies, before blaming the NHS for her daughter’s death. Paloma’s brothers now claimed that their mother was to blame for their sister’s death. The story was investigated by Marianna Spring for Panorama and BBC Radio 4’s Marianna in Conspiracyland 2 podcast.
BROADCAST & AUDIO COVERAGE
The UK Law Weekly podcast by Marcus Cleaver discussed the case of Abbasi v Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust [2025] UKSC 15 in an episode dated 19 May 2025, and that of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16 on 26 May 2025. The podcasts, which are primarily aimed at law students, are also available on Apple Podcasts:
The latest Double Jeopardy Podcast by Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC (25 June 2025) explores the current parliamentary discussions of assisted dying and abortion. They’re joined by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, who sponsored the abortion amendment. She comments on the parliamentary process, the resistance reformers face, and what it means to legislate on issues where conscience, religion, and human rights collide.
LEGAL BLOGGING
Lucy Reed posted on this blog ‘If I had to live with mum I’d jump out of the window’ – Why two boys ended up living with their dad (29 June 2025) about a case she’d attended in Worcester concerning the care of two boys whose separated parents couldn’t agree and there were concerns about the mother’s care and how it felt to them. ‘Their text messages to their father before their phones were confiscated, when read out in court, were powerful windows into what life was like for them at home, and helped make sense of why they had voted with their feet and turned up at their dad’s door whilst their mum was in the pub. … The overwhelming picture from what I had heard and read was of a mother who was struggling to cope, and about whom everyone – including the kids – was genuinely worried, but who was unable to accept help or the need for it.’
On 18 May, Lucy Reed had written about an important hearing she’d attended regarding the use of expert witnesses where injuries to children are an issue in a Family Court case. Her post has now been updated here to include details of the published judgment, A Local Authority v X (Attendance of Experts) [2025] EWFC 137.
RECENT COMMENTARY
The Law & Religion UK blog published Assisted Dying, England and Wales – an overview (28 June 2025) following the majority vote in the House of Commons supporting the third reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. The post by David Pocklington considers three aspects of the Bill: i] the events leading to Friday’s vote; ii] the responses of groups; and iii] the next stages of the Bill.
Lucy Reed via her Pink Tape blog (28 June 2025) commented on A confusing post-script in a recent judgment in which the judge had drawn attention to the fact that the mother in the case had not had the benefit of a conference with counsel before the hearing to go through the evidence in the case. Those comments had been picked up by the Law Gazette as Judge issues pre-trial legal aid plea after mother left alone (26 June 2025). ‘But the point is,’ commented Reed, ‘whatever the judge is describing and trying (it seems) to flag as a problem may not actually be a problem at all. Or may not be the problem s/he thinks and suggests it is. Which rather begs the question why anything was said at all.’
Analysis by Victoria Holland of recent Court of Appeal judgments, Re T (Children: Risk Assessment) [2025] EWCA Civ 93 and Re A (A Child) [2025] EWCA Civ 424, was published in Local Government Lawyer (18 June) – ‘The seven questions to address in a welfare analysis’.
NEW JUDGMENTS OF INTEREST
Re H (Care Proceedings: Risk Assessment) [2025] EWCA Civ 727
This was an appeal by an un named local authority against a judgment in Northampton Family Court refusing to make a care order for a two year old child. Sadly, the child’s mother had had four children previously removed and adopted because of the risk of emotion harm pose to then by abusive partners. The child’s father was described by the local authority as dangerous; they applied for care and placement orders. The judge had disagreed and concluded that the mother ha made progress in demonstrating that she could keep the child safe. However, the Court of Appeal decided he had not carried out a full assessment of risk and sent the case back to be heard by a different judge.
London Borough of X v JM & Anor [2025] EWFC 149 (B)
Siblings now in their early teens had been placed for adoption 12 years ago although the adoptive parents split up during the adoption process. The children were to live with one father and spend time with the other. However the parents’ relationship had badly deteriorated, and the parent who had residence was leading a very dangerous lifestyle. The anonymised local authority applied for supervision orders. Following lengthy consideration including meeting the children,, HHJ Robertson decided that they should remain at home but that a care order was necessary.
The City of Doncaster Council v The Mother & Ors [2025] EWFC 151 (B)
This judgment from Sheffield Family Court begins with details of the reduction of direct contact to take place following the placement order being made with a view to subsequent indirect contact following the eventual adoption of two young sisters. The judgment incudes an order under s 26 Adoption and Children Act 2002 regarding contact arrangements under the placement order, as applied for by the parents although opposed by the local authority and Cafcass guardian.
Re Care Proceedings (wishes and feelings of a child aged 14 ½) [2025] EWFC 169 (B)
The judge in this case, Recorder Cooper, was very critical about the length of the care proceedings – 16 months – and said this was mainly due to a delay in listing, commenting:
… a sad indictment of the difficulties listing even the most serious and sensitive cases involving children and young people who are clearly well aware of the decisions that are being taken about them. I can only apologise on behalf of the courts to the parties involved, particular to [the child], for the no doubt extra stress that this has caused all of them.
Oddly, however, the locality of the court is missing from the TNA judgment, nor is it identified in this brief Law Gazette story. We think it is probably the Central Family Court in London.
Louise Tickle v The Father & Ors [2025] EWFC 160
An interim hearing in this case was held to deal with an application that was apparently being made by a father’s lawyer that journalists be ordered to reveal how they had leant about a hearing that they then asked to attend. Ms Justice Henke reaffirmed the legal principle that journalists should not be subject to such an order, other than in exceptional circumstances. We explained the background and the judgment here – Can a court make a journalist reveal their source of information about a family court hearing?
X & Anor v LB of Hillingdon & Ors (Transparency: Restrictions on Disclosure of Information by Parties) [2025] EWHC 1525 (Fam)
Here’s another case about transparency – where parents whose children were being adopted wanted the standard Family Court reporting restrictions lifted so that their views and experiences could be reported. Minor adjustments were made to a transparency order. An earlier judgment on the issues in the case (with which the parents don’t agree) is now published here.
OTHER TRANSPARENCY etc NEWS
The Judiciary website published the Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Guide 2025 (4 June 2025), the latest edition of a guide intended to assist both litigants in person and legal representatives by setting out the steps which need to be taken when applying for permission to appeal in the Court of Appeal or pursuing a substantive appeal. It mentions ‘open justice’ four times in the same paragraph, and nowhere else, when saying that even if a case has been anonymised in the court below, any continuation of anonymity in the appeal hearing will need to be justified anew by way of a fresh application. There are detailed provisions about skeleton arguments, which lawyers must file but unrepresented litigants need not unless they want to, about court bundles, and about the need to obtain a transcript of the judgment (if a written one has not been published) in the court below. Some individual divisions of the High Court have similar user guides but not, apparently, the Family Division or Family Court (though there are plenty of guidance documents issued by the President on particular topics, such as the reporting pilot).
The Parole Board published a Transparency Review by two of its experienced judicial members, HH Peter Rook KC and HH Michael Topolski KC (5 June 2025). The review covered a large scope but focused on three main areas:
- Parole Board public hearings
- Victims observing private hearings
- Decision summaries
Among the 34 recommendations it made was a recommendation to start a pilot of sharing redacted decisions, instead of decision summaries; and a pilot to test out different forms of holding a public hearing, including alternative observer locations and unsupervised streaming to accredited members of the media and legal bloggers. The review accepted there was a need for greater transparency to foster better scrutiny and to address the widespread public misconceptions about its functions. (It notes, for example, that since their introduction in 2022, the Board has only conducted six public hearings.) It also acknowledges that, as a body exercising judicial functions, it should bear in mind the key components of open justice as identified by the Transparency and Open Justice Board (see below).
As chair of the Transparency and Open Justice Board (TOJB), Mr Justice Nicklin gave a speech on Open Justice – Fit for Purpose (4 June 2025) at the conclusion of a one-day conference organised by the Court & Tribunals Observers’ Network at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, and sponsored by the Sheila Kitzinger Programme, at which the network’s members and other legal and policy specialists gathered to discuss open justice in practice. In his speech, Nicklin J outlined some of the developments initiated by the TOJB including a pilot to publish skeleton arguments and judgments in pending civil appeals, to help observers understand hearing, and the creation of a new role, within HM Courts and Tribunals Service, of ‘open justice champions’ as a point of contact for observers encountering obstacles in attending remote or physical hearings. The event was also covered by freelance reporter Charlie Moloney (who had attended it), in the Law Society Gazette (Courts to have ‘open justice champions’) and by Joshua Rozenberg on his A Lawyer Writes blog (Open justice champions)
Cafcass Cymru published its Domestic Abuse Practice Guidance suite (5 June 2025) which it said would aid practitioners to understand and accurately assess the lasting impact of domestic abuse on the wellbeing and safety of children and adults. It contains information, recommendations for further reading, best practice pointers and reflective questions to support them in their work with children and their families. It said: ‘Practitioners are encouraged to utilise an investigative, objective, and empathetic approach to each assessment and with each family, focusing on behaviours and their impact in relation to child wellbeing, risk of harm and safety.’
The Lady Chief Justice, Baroness Carr give the keynote address at this year’s Bar Conference in Birmingham on 7 June 2025. The speech hasn’t been published but there is an account of it by Joshua Rozenberg, under the title Law at the precipice. Among other things the speech noted that the family jurisdiction is leading the way in transparency and open justice, and ‘We can work together to support new initiatives, such as Pathfinder in the family courts’ saying the Chair of the Bar and the President of the High Court Family Division were both pressing for these child-led, problem-solving, courts to be extended.
FAMILY LAW AND TRANSPARENCY IN OTHER JURISDICTIONS
Denmark
The Guardian reported that ‘The nurse told me I couldn’t keep my baby’: how a controversial Danish ‘parenting test’ separated a Greenlandic woman from her children (29 June 2025). This was about the use of a parenting test, used in Denmark to determine whether babies should be removed from their mothers, which is more likely to be failed by women of Greenlandic or Inuit descent owing the nature and bias of the questions asked. The tests cover attachment, personality traits, cognitive abilities and psychopathology, and take about 15-20 hours. A psychologist is quoted as saying it is ‘almost impossible’ to pass the tests, which are ‘ culturally specific and a poor way to measure innate intelligence’. A 2022 report found that 5.6% of children with Greenlandic parents were removed compared with just 1% of those with a Danish background. Such tests should no longer be used for Greenlandic parents, following a change in the law, but apparently many local authorities are still using them. The article follows the story of one such mother, Keira, and her baby Zammi, among others.
Jersey
The BBC reported that Wholesale review of ‘archaic’ family laws urged (15 June 2025). This followed last month’s Proposal to remove ‘illegitimate’ child status (28 May 2025) by Home Affairs Minister Deputy Mary Le Hegarat, who is now being urged by lawyers to conduct a ‘wholesale review’ of parenting laws to remove ‘outdated’ legislation. Currently, only children born to a mixed-sex couple who are married are considered legitimate, while children born to a couple in a civil partnership are still regarded as illegitimate. In some cases the fathers of children born ‘out of wedlock’ before a change in the law in 2016 do not have parental responsibility for their child, it seems, even if they subsequently marry the child’s mother.
Northern Ireland
The BBC reported that Proposed changes to divorce law could end blame game (29 June 2025) in Northern Ireland, after a consultation on the divorce processlaunched by the Executive. The current law requires couples to either go through a lengthy separation before a divorce is granted, or proceedings can begin straight away if one person is at fault either through desertion, adultery, or unreasonable behaviour. The alternative options included in the consultation are largely based around how divorce works in the Republic of Ireland, England and Wales. A lawyer in the province is quoted as saying that ‘Northern Ireland’s divorce laws are “very antiquated”, adding that they should “fall in line with the English system”, which the report describes as an ‘administrative, no-fault divorce’ approach.
United States
The New York Times (£) (28 May 2025) reported that Lawyer Murdered Client in 2013 to Delay Start of Her Divorce Trial, Prosecutors Say, adding that ‘the former lawyer, Gregory J. Moore, 51, had also sought to avoid court dates by feigning illnesses, getting into a car crash and calling in bomb threats’. This was about a lawyer in Ohio who was alleged to have lured his client, Aliza Sherman, to his office in downtown Cleveland the day before her divorce trial was set to begin, with a view to kidnapping her to prevent the trial going ahead. But as Sherman stood outside Moore’s office, ‘a person who was “either Moore or an unknown co-conspirator” approached Ms. Sherman, circled behind her, chased her and then stabbed her repeatedly before running away, the indictment states’. The current prosecution appears to have resulted from reinvestigation of a cold case; but the report does not indicate whether Moore had a successful or unsuccessful practice otherwise, or had adopted similarly desperate tactics (if indeed he did) to avoid exposing his clients’ cases to the judicial process. Moore has pled (or as we would say, pleaded) not guilty but the trial has yet to conclude. The case has also been covered elsewhere, including by CBS News.
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