Confidential trust information and court proceedings: can privacy be maintained?

Abstract

Abstract Trust litigation often involves highly confidential information, and it is common for all concerned to want any proceedings kept as confidential as possible. In this article, we explore four different ways in which such information might nonetheless be sought by, or become available to, a wider audience, namely through: (i) the publication of trusts judgments pursuant to the principle of open justice, (ii) applications to lift the confidentiality attaching to documents disclosed in Beddoe proceedings, (iii) the cross-examination of the trust’s own lawyers on a witness summons and (iv) the deployment of letters of request (formerly “rogatory”) against an overseas trustee.