Family cases are private and there are quite complicated rules about what information can be published about your court case. If they are broken you or the person publishing the information can be punished by the court, including by being sent to prison. This doesn’t happen often but it does happen sometimes so it’s best to check first. Publishing can mean lots of things – for example it can include facebook updates or emails and not just reports in a newspaper.
You are allowed to tell your lawyer about your case. You are allowed to tell another person about your case if it is necessary in order to get confidential advice and support about your case. That person must not pass information on to any other person and you must check they understand this.
You can show a medical professional or therapist a court report about your or your child in order to obtain therapy or treatment for yourself or your child.
Apart from those examples you should generally not be passing information about your case to people not involved in it.
The press are usually allowed to attend hearings (although they don’t very often come to court), but there are restrictions on what can be reported. Even if the press are allowed to report a case the names will usually be changed for initials.
You should read the Government guidance EX710 “Can I talk about my case outside court? A Guide for Family Court users”.
From February 2024 the WLFC will be part of a project called the Reporting pilot. This is referred to as TIG which stands for Transparency information Group. It is hoped that it will make the family court system more open and your case may be included in this. The link below gives you all the information you need about the pilot and what it means for you and your case.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/TIG.Litigants.PlainEngGuide-v4-FIN.pdf