Family President allows woman access to adoption records for father in 1930s

The President of the Family Division has given a woman permission to examine records concerning her father’s adoption in 1930, in a case which the judge said broke new ground.

Litigant Y wanted to see the order made under which her father, referred to as X, was adopted by Mr and Mrs C when he was two months old.

In his judgment, Sir James Munby said there was  “almost astonishingly” no direct authority on the question of whether Y should be allowed access to the court file.

Y, a litigant in person, said she wanted to “know who my dad was, who his mother was, where he was born, and who I am, my sister, my brother, my children and grandchildren”.

She also wanted to see if anything in the papers had a bearing on a disability found in the family.

Sir James allowed the order without restriction as to Y’s use of what she found, noting “I am content to leave that to her good sense and discretion”.

He reached his decision for reasons including that X, his adoptive parents and in all probability X’s birth mother were dead, that the matter arose 84 years ago and that Y’s reasons for wanting access were “entirely genuine and understandable” [while] “any upset that might be caused to any of X’s birth mother’s surviving relatives is no more than speculative”.

Mark Smulian