When Will a Family Court Protect a Child’s Identity and When Will It Not?

By Raman De Souza

Family court proceedings are generally open to the public. Courtrooms are accessible, and written decisions are often published online. This openness is a fundamental part of our justice system and helps ensure transparency, accountability, and public confidence in judicial decision-making.

However, family law cases are different from most other legal disputes. They often involve deeply personal information about parenting, relationships, and finances, and they frequently affect children who had no choice about being involved in the litigation. For this reason, courts are sometimes asked to protect children’s identities by using initials rather than full names in court decisions.

Whether a court will do so depends on a careful balancing exercise.

The Starting Point: Open Courts

The default position is that court proceedings and decisions are public. Judges do not limit access simply because a case is uncomfortable or emotionally charged. Any restriction on openness must be justified, proportionate, and necessary.

At the same time, courts recognize that children are uniquely vulnerable. Unlike adult litigants, children cannot protect their own privacy, and public exposure of sensitive family disputes may cause harm that lasts long after the case has ended.

The question is not whether privacy is desirable, but whether it is legally required.

When Courts Will Initialize Children’s Names

Courts are most likely to protect children’s identities when public identification creates a real risk of emotional, psychological, or social harm. Judges accept that exposing children’s names in cases involving sensitive facts may subject them to embarrassment, stigma, or unwanted attention in their community or online.

Importantly, courts do not require medical or expert evidence to reach this conclusion. Judges are entitled to rely on common sense and ordinary human experience. They recognize that children may one day encounter these decisions through internet searches or social media, often without the emotional maturity or context to process what they read.

Courts are also more inclined to initiate names when the case involves highly personal allegations, such as family violence, sexual assault, mental health concerns, or serious parenting disputes. In these situations, protecting a child’s dignity and sense of identity is seen as an important public interest.

Using initials rather than full names is generally viewed as a minimal and effective measure. It preserves public access to the court’s reasoning and outcomes while significantly reducing the risk that a child can be easily identified. Because it interferes with openness as little as possible, this approach is frequently approved in family law cases.

Example Case: S.M. v. C.T., 2020 ONSC 4819 :

The Court applied the Dagenais/Mentuck test to determine whether the parties and the children in that case could have their names initialized. For public access to be limited the Court must be convinced that an order in that regard “is necessary in order to prevent a serious risk to the proper administration of justice because reasonably alternative measures will not prevent the risk; and The salutary effects of the publication ban outweigh the deleterious effects on the rights and interests of the parties and the public, including the effects on the right to free expression, the right of the accused to a fair and public trial, and the efficacy of the administration of justice”. Although the open court principle is the presumption, the Court essentially has to conduct a balancing test to determine if more harm would be done than good in not initializing names, taking into account various factors.

In S.M. v. C. T. the Court considered the emotional harm which may be caused to the children if their identities are not protected. The Court considers the harms that may be exerted on children where they discover the details of a high-conflict family law case in an “unsafe” manner before they have the capacity to understand and process the adult information. The Court specifically points to protecting children from trauma arising from their parents’ litigation.

Due to the underlying facts of this case, which included a long-term extramarital affair, and deceptions regarding birth parents the Court found that there was a substantive risk of “stigmatization, ridicule, or ostracization” should the Court not step in to protect the children’s identities. Due to the facts in this case being fairly atypical to the traditional family law case, thereby increasing the risk of harm to the children should information become accessible, the Court ordered the parties and their children’s names initialized.

When Courts Will Not Initialize Names

Despite the importance of children’s privacy, initializing names is not automatic. Courts will refuse to do so when there is no meaningful risk of harm to the child.

If a case involves routine parenting or financial issues, contains no sensitive or personal allegations, and does not raise concerns about a child’s emotional well-being, a court may find that privacy protection is unnecessary. Wanting discretion or feeling uncomfortable about public exposure is not enough. The focus is always on the child’s interests, not the parents’ preferences.

Courts may also decline to initialize names when the request goes further than necessary or would undermine the open courts principle. Judges are required to use the least intrusive measure available. If a party seeks broad restrictions without demonstrating why a narrower approach is insufficient, the court may refuse the request entirely.

In some cases, the public interest in transparency outweighs privacy concerns. This can occur where a case raises important legal issues that require public scrutiny or where openness is necessary to maintain confidence in the justice system. Courts may also decline to protect identities where children are already publicly identifiable, such as in cases that have been widely reported or discussed publicly by the parties themselves. In those circumstances, anonymization may offer little real protection.

Age and maturity can also be relevant. In matters involving older children or young adults, courts may consider whether identification is likely to cause harm. If no such risk is established, the court may determine that privacy protection is not required.

Finally, courts will not grant anonymization where doing so would interfere with fairness, clarity, or the proper administration of justice. Protecting privacy cannot come at the expense of procedural integrity or accountability.

Example Case –Altman v. Altman, 2023 ONSC 3804

In Altman v. Altman the mother sought initialization of the parties and the children’s names. Her concerns centered around a debt she owed to the CRA due to the father’s actions during the marriage. Details of the case becoming public knowledge would endanger her attempts to reduce her debt through the CRA’s Voluntary Disclosure Program, and as such she thought it appropriate to, at a bare minimum, initialize the parties’ names. The Court refused to set aside the open court principle in this case, finding that the balance of public interests did not favour anonymity.

This case speaks to the Courts priorities in exercising their discretion to initialize court proceedings. Where children’s concerns are less flagrant, they are less likely to make such an order. The concerns in this case were less specifically related to the well-being of the children. Instead of the chief concern being prejudice and ridicule faced by the children should the information within the case be released, the concerns rather related to financial harm experienced by the mother should the matter become public knowledge. The harm experienced by the children, a key element of the Courts’ balancing act, is too vague for the open court principle to be limited in this case.

The Court also points to the children’s names already being listed in pre-existing Court materials, signalling that initialization should be sought as soon as possible for such a claim to have legitimacy.

Orders initializing children’s names do not turn family court into a secret system. Hearings remain open, decisions are published, and judges must explain their reasoning. The public continues to have access to the law and the court’s analysis. What is limited is the unnecessary exposure of children to potential harm.

The goal is balance, not secrecy.

Every case is assessed on its own facts. If a parent is concerned about their child’s privacy in a family law matter, the issue should be raised early and supported with clear, child-focused reasons.

Contact Raman De Souza (E:raman@sorbaralaw.com P:519.741.8010 ext. 310), a Family Lawyer practicing out of SorbaraLAW's Waterloo office.