Kyle Walker, Lauryn Goodman and a rare insight into Financial Remedies Proceedings
23/08/2024
You’ve surely read about the £31,200 request for artificial grass on the basis that a baby kicking a ball from a crawling position could make her a Lioness, and the £2.4m Sussex house that Kyle Walker paid for in the naïve hope of maintaining secrecy over him fathering Lauryn Goodman’s younger child…. and that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Well, upon reading the salacious details of the recent court proceedings between the pair, did you wonder why and how so much detail was in the public domain? Well, let’s take a look…
In January 2023 we wrote about the commencement of a Transparency Reporting Pilot in certain areas of the family court. Considered long overdue by many, the pilot aimed to improve transparency and accountability in the notoriously secretive arm of the courts of England & Wales.
Then, in January 2024 the pilot was extended and the ‘Transparency Reporting Pilot for Financial Remedy Proceedings’ was introduced.
It goes without saying that elements of what happens in the family courts needs to remain private for obvious reasons, but the Pilot’s extension was aimed at improving media access to and coverage of further areas of the family courts.
Under the Pilot accredited journalists should be allowed to attend Financial Remedy Proceedings and be supplied with the parties’ position statements.
The Judge should then make an “Interim Transparency Order” which regulates what can be published as the proceedings take place, with a “Full Transparency Order” being put in place when all arguments have been made, including representations from journalists.
It is against this backdrop that the Financial Remedies case of Lauryn Goodman versus Kyle Walker came to court. On 30th June 2023, when her daughter was just 2 days old, Ms Goodman made a Financial Remedies application, from which these proceedings resulted.
The well-established starting point is that because the proceedings were brought under the Children Act 1989, S.12(1) of the Administration of Justice Act 1960 prevents the publication of any information relating to the proceedings.
In addition, S.97(2) of the Children Act 1989 prevents the publication of any information which is likely to identify the child or children involved in the proceedings.
However, if the court so authorises, the provisions described above can be dispensed with by the Court. In deciding whether to disapply the prohibitions, the Court needs to carry out a balancing act between the Article 8 privacy rights of those involved, and the Article 10 right to freedom of expression of the media, with an intense focus on the justification for interfering with those rights.
As Judge Hess wrote in his judgment in this case: “The question to be asked is: Are the best interests of the children involved weighty enough to justify maintaining the statutory fetter?”
In most cases the answer to that question is likely to be “yes”, and any Final Transparency Order is likely to preserve the anonymity of the parties, at the very least.
But, not in this case. Judge Hess ruled that the case could be reported in its entirety, save for addresses and bank details of the parties, and photographs of the children’s faces.
Ms Goodman argued that the judgment should be anonymised and redacted to protect the privacy of the children, and that consideration should “dominate all other considerations”.
However, representatives of the press, along with Mr Walker, argued that the interests of the press and open justice should prevail and the press should be allowed to scrutinise the operation of the family courts.
Judge Hess recognised that it was a rare thing for a Judge in the family courts to dispense with the automatic reporting prohibitions almost in their entirety, but he was persuaded by the press’ arguments that:
The parties are well-known celebrities whose dispute has been widely reported;
Much of the information which is in the public domain about the dispute has been published by the parties themselves;
Ms Goodman has repeatedly published photos, videos and audio of the children on social media, along with statements about Mr Walker and her feelings about him and his marriage;
It was therefore artificial to anonymise the parties and any Article 8 rights are of limited weight in the proceedings, so there “is no reason to suppose that the reporting of these financial remedy proceedings will cause further detriment to the welfare of the parties’ children”.
Judge Hess went on to say that to try and redact or anonymise the judgment would “open the court to ridicule”. In coming to this conclusion it was noted that there were hundreds of articles already published about the matters concerned.
In addition, Ms Goodman had taken payment from the press to visit the European Championships with her son dressed in an England kit, with “Daddy” on the back, and was “willingly photographed doing this to provide journalistic fodder which the newspapers were only too happy to use”.
With the children’s names already so widely known and available online, the court saw no benefit in imposing restrictions on them, either.
The takeaway from this? Well, whilst this is undoubtedly an exceptional case because of the salacious details, fame and fortunes of those involved, it does demonstrate that in some cases the family court is willing to be as open and transparent as possible.
Not only that, it sets a useful precedent to make similar arguments in exceptional cases in the future.