False allegations can have serious consequences in family proceedings. If left unaddressed, they may affect contact arrangements, safeguarding assessments and financial settlement discussions.
At Birketts, we provide specialist advice to help you respond quickly and effectively when your reputation is at risk.
Defamation often arises in sensitive family law matters, such as divorce or child arrangements, where false statements or harmful allegations increase. In an era where information spreads rapidly and reputation matters, false statements can cause immediate and lasting harm.
Defamatory comments can appear in many contexts: on social media, in WhatsApp messages, at work, or through community or professional channels. If you are made aware of or see any defamation, it’s important to capture the evidence and track where the statements were made.
Our specialist family law and reputational protection solicitors can help you assess the seriousness and impact of the comments, remove defamatory content online, secure retractions if they are false, avoid escalation or retaliation, and mitigate and protect you from the impact of these allegations within family law proceedings.
If you are unsure whether you have a claim, our team will help you determine whether the statement is defamatory, whether it refers to you, whether it is false, and whether it meets the serious harm threshold under the Defamation Act 2013. If you see defamatory comments about yourself, it is very important to contact us promptly to understand your rights and protect your reputation.
To understand more about what defamation is, the legal test to prove defamation, and what immediate steps to take if you are being defamed, check out our guide.
Contact us today for a confidential consultation. Our defamation lawyers are here to help you protect your reputation and move forward with confidence.
Our Experience
Allegations affecting child arrangements
In private child arrangements proceedings, one parent makes serious but unsubstantiated allegations to a child’s school, local authority and mutual acquaintances that the other parent poses a safeguarding risk. The allegations begin to influence professional enquiries, disrupt contact arrangements and escalate conflict between the parties.
Birketts works closely with the affected parent to secure and preserve evidence of what has been said, ensure the allegations are promptly raised and properly tested within the family proceedings, and issue clear correspondence requiring the allegations to cease while setting out their lack of foundation. We engage constructively with the school and relevant professionals to ensure that decisions are made on balanced information, consider injunctive relief where appropriate, and invite the court to consider measures to prevent repetition.
With a proactive and coordinated approach, the court would ultimately find the allegations to be unfounded. This can impact the credibility of the accusing party and inform the court’s assessment of their ability to support a child-focused co-parenting relationship. Contact arrangements would then stabilise or progress, inappropriate conduct would be curtailed, and the client’s position within the wider school community would recover.
Social media posts during financial remedy proceedings
During financial remedy proceedings, one party publishes a series of allegations on social media concerning the other’s honesty and financial conduct. The posts are visible to professional contacts and extended family, creating reputational risk, emotional strain and potential complications in ongoing negotiations.
Birketts advises on a joined-up strategy combining family and reputational expertise. This may include securing contemporaneous evidence such as screenshots and metadata, issuing a formal letter before action seeking removal of the material and appropriate undertakings, and considering injunctive relief or contempt issues where confidential information has entered the public domain. At the same time, we manage how the issue is addressed within the financial proceedings to safeguard the client’s position without inflaming tensions.
Through early and proportionate intervention, the material will be removed swiftly, and assurances will be obtained to prevent further publication. This enables the parties to refocus on resolving financial issues constructively and supports a settlement without the need for separate reputational litigation.
Allegations raised within the extended family and community
Following separation, one party becomes aware that the other has been making untrue and damaging statements about them within extended family circles, among mutual acquaintances and across a close-knit community. Although largely communicated verbally, the allegations risk spreading widely and affecting both personal and professional relationships.
Birketts assists in identifying, as far as possible, the content of the statements and the audience to whom they have been communicated, in order to assess whether the legal threshold for defamation may be met. Recognising the evidential challenges inherent in informal, spoken communications, we deliver a proportionate but firm response aimed at halting further dissemination, while also advising on a careful communication strategy to avoid escalation.
As a result, the other party will agree to cease repeating the allegations, limiting further spread and allowing the client to protect key relationships. This demonstrates the importance of early intervention, particularly where informal allegations can be difficult to evidence but nonetheless carry significant reputational risk.
