For Families
If you are involved in Family Court proceedings and there are disputed allegations of abuse or harm, there is a reasonable chance that the court will order a fact-finding hearing before making any welfare decisions about your child. This is one of the most important stages in many family cases, and it is also one of the least well understood by the families going through it. I have given evidence at many fact-finding hearings over the years, and I want to explain clearly what they involve, why they happen, and what you can expect.
The principle behind a fact-finding hearing is straightforward. When one party makes serious allegations against another, and those allegations are denied, the court cannot simply proceed as though the truth lies somewhere in the middle. It has to decide what actually happened. This matters because everything that follows in the case, including risk assessments, welfare analysis, contact arrangements, and any expert assessments, depends on an accurate factual foundation. You cannot assess whether a child is safe in someone's care if you have not first determined whether the harmful events alleged against that person actually took place. The court needs to resolve the disputed facts before it can make sound welfare decisions. That is the purpose of the fact-finding hearing.
This stage is particularly common in cases involving allegations of domestic abuse, physical harm to a child, sexual abuse, or neglect. If the allegations are admitted, there is no need for a fact-finding hearing because the facts are agreed. It is only when the facts are in dispute that the court must hear evidence and make findings. If you would like a broader overview of how proceedings work, my guide on what to expect from the assessment process covers the wider picture.
Before a fact-finding hearing takes place, the court will usually direct that the allegations be set out in a document called a Scott Schedule. This is a structured table that lists each specific allegation in one column, the other party's response in the next column, and leaves a final column for the court's finding. The purpose is to bring precision and focus to what might otherwise be a sprawling and unmanageable dispute. Rather than one party saying "there was years of domestic abuse" and the other saying "that is not true," the Scott Schedule requires each allegation to be particularised. It might read, for example, "On or around 15 June 2024, the respondent grabbed the applicant by the throat in the kitchen of the family home while the child was upstairs." The other party then responds to that specific allegation. The court considers each allegation on its own merits and records whether it is found proven or not proven.
The Scott Schedule is an important discipline for everyone involved. It forces the party making the allegations to be specific about what they are saying happened, when it happened, and how. It gives the other party a fair opportunity to respond to each allegation individually. And it gives the court a clear, manageable framework for working through the evidence. If your solicitor asks you to help prepare a Scott Schedule, take that process seriously. The specificity of each allegation matters enormously.
A fact-finding hearing is a formal court hearing that operates in a similar way to a trial. The court will have a bundle of documents, which typically includes witness statements from the parties, police disclosure material, medical records, local authority records, and any relevant correspondence or exhibits. Each party will have filed a witness statement setting out their account in advance of the hearing. On the day, the witnesses are called to give oral evidence and are then cross-examined by the other party's legal representative. This is the part that families often find most daunting, and understandably so. Being asked detailed questions about deeply personal and often traumatic events, in a courtroom, under oath, is a profoundly difficult experience.
The judge may also hear evidence from professional witnesses. Social workers, police officers, medical experts, and other professionals may be called to give evidence about what they observed, recorded, or assessed. In my own practice, I have attended fact-finding hearings to give evidence about observations I made during home visits, things that were said to me during interviews, and the professional conclusions I reached in my assessment. As I have written in my article on preparing oral evidence for the Family Court, the quality of written evidence and the clarity with which it is presented orally can make a significant difference to how the court evaluates it.
One of the most important things to understand about a fact-finding hearing is the standard of proof. The Family Court applies the civil standard: the balance of probabilities. This means that the court must decide whether it is more likely than not that the alleged event occurred. This is a lower threshold than the criminal standard of "beyond reasonable doubt." An allegation can be found proven in the Family Court even if it was never prosecuted, or even if the person was acquitted in a criminal trial. The two systems operate independently and apply different standards. The question for the family judge is simply whether, on the evidence presented, it is more probable than not that the event happened.
This standard applies equally to every allegation, regardless of how serious it is. The Supreme Court confirmed this principle clearly: there is no sliding scale. Whether the allegation is of a single slap or of sustained sexual abuse, the test is the same. The court looks at all the available evidence, assesses the credibility and reliability of the witnesses, considers the documentary material, and decides on the balance of probabilities whether each allegation is proven.
Once the judge has heard all the evidence and considered the submissions, they will deliver a judgment setting out which allegations are found proven and which are not. This judgment becomes the factual basis on which the rest of the case proceeds. If the court finds that domestic abuse occurred, every subsequent assessment, welfare analysis, and contact decision must proceed on the basis that those events happened. If an allegation is not found proven, the court cannot treat it as though it did happen. The findings are definitive for the purposes of the proceedings.
This is where the fact-finding hearing connects directly to the welfare stage of the case. Expert assessments, including parenting assessments and risk assessments, are shaped by the court's findings. As a practitioner, when I am instructed to carry out an assessment after a fact-finding hearing, the court's judgment is one of the first documents I read. It tells me what the court has determined to be true, and my analysis must be grounded in those findings. If you want to understand how assessments can be scrutinised after this stage, my article on how to challenge a social work assessment explains the process in detail.
If you are facing a fact-finding hearing, the most important thing I can say is this: prepare thoroughly with your solicitor and be honest. The court is experienced at assessing credibility. Judges hear these cases regularly and they are alert to exaggeration, inconsistency, and evasion. If something happened, say so clearly and without embellishment. If something did not happen, say that clearly too. Do not try to present a version of events that you think sounds better than the truth. The court is far more likely to trust a witness who acknowledges difficult realities honestly than one who presents an implausibly sanitised account.
I would also encourage you to stay focused on your child throughout the process. Fact-finding hearings can feel adversarial, and the emotional intensity is real. It is natural to feel that the process is about you, about your character, about whether you are believed. But the court is not conducting a fact-finding hearing to punish anyone. It is doing so because it needs to understand what happened in order to make the right decisions for your child. That is the lens through which every part of the process should be understood.
Having given evidence at many fact-finding hearings, I have seen how much they matter and how much they cost the families involved, emotionally and practically. They are long, intense, and often deeply distressing for everyone in the courtroom. But they serve a vital function. Without a clear factual foundation, the court cannot make safe, fair decisions about children's lives. The process is designed to be fair to both parties. Each side has the opportunity to put their case, to challenge the other's evidence, and to have the court consider their account carefully. When the process works well, it produces a clear, reasoned judgment that everyone involved can understand, even if they do not agree with every finding.
What I would want any parent approaching a fact-finding hearing to know is that fairness is built into the process. The court does not approach the hearing with a presumption that one party is telling the truth and the other is not. It starts from a neutral position and makes its findings based on the evidence. Your job, with the support of your legal team, is to present your evidence as clearly, honestly, and completely as you can. The court will do the rest.
Last reviewed: March 2026
A hearing where the court determines whether disputed allegations, typically of domestic abuse, neglect, or other harm, are proven on the balance of probabilities. The court hears evidence from both parties and any witnesses before making findings of fact.
A document used in family proceedings that sets out each disputed allegation in a structured format. It lists the allegation, the response from the other party, and a column for the court's finding. It helps the court and parties focus on the specific facts in dispute.
If allegations are found proven, the court proceeds on the basis that those events occurred. This shapes welfare decisions, risk assessments, and any subsequent expert assessments. If allegations are not proven, the court cannot treat them as fact. Either way, the case then moves to the welfare stage.