Reporting Divorce Battles – Balancing Open Justice Versus The Right To A Private Breakup

Since the press were first allowed to attend family court hearings in 2010, there has been an increasingly fierce debate between family judges over the extent to which divorce matters should be kept private or whether the media should be free to report on what are often intriguing and headline grabbing cases.

One judge in particular, Mr Justice Holman, routinely conducts cases in a fully open court in the name of transparency. However, others have not adopted this approach. Mr Justice Mostyn in particular has been openly critical, stating that in his view, judges must start with the presumption that cases should be held in private.

Two cases decided over the past month have highlighted the markedly different approach the judiciary are taking to the issue.

In the Tina Norman case, Mrs Norman and her lawyers allege that her ex-husband, a former banker who previously earned six-figure salaries at the likes of Barclays, Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan dishonestly hid assets worth £300,000 when he divorced her in 2005. Mr Norman rejects the allegation and litigation is currently ongoing to resolve the dispute.

Mrs Norman's legal action first came before the High Court and was reported in 2011. However, an anonymity order was subsequently imposed after she complained of criticism and embarrassing comments in the press.

The media challenged that order last month, claiming that it would have a chilling effect on reporting divorce appeals. Mrs Norman argued otherwise, stating that the financial dispute between her and her former husband was "essentially private business" and there was no public interest in her identity being disclosed. The Court of Appeal, however, has sided with the media, refusing to impose any further order and holding that Mrs Norman and her ex-husband could be named. Whilst Mrs Norman plainly had an expectation of privacy in relation to the information in question, the Court had to weigh those rights against the media's right to freedom of expression and the principle of open justice.

In this case the media submitted that were no children to protect and the evidence would not involve Mrs Norman's privacy rights or deal with her family life or her finances so much as those of her husband. It was a case in the public interest, involving a spouse who maintained that her husband had given false evidence to the court.

In contrast to the case involving Mrs Norman, another judgment handed down last month (in X v X [2016] EWHC 3512 (Fam))...