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Third party disclosure order: Need trumps confidentiality arguments

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By Clarissa Coleman & Imogen Jones

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Published 22 September 2025

Overview

In September 2025, judgment was handed down in the High Court by Mr Justice Francis in an application for non-party disclosure against a company (Z limited) as part of a claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 (AB v B and others [2025] EWHC 1891 (Fam) ("Inheritance Act").

DAC Beachcroft (instructing Penelope Reed KC and William East of 5 Stone Buildings) acted for the claimant in the underlying proceedings. The claimant brought the claim under the Inheritance Act for provision to be made out of her deceased husband's estate for herself.

 

The application

The non-party disclosure application was brought in order to obtain information that would enable the estate's shareholding to be valued. The application was brought in 2023 by the first defendant to the claim, the administrator and trustee of the deceased's estate, against Z limited, of which 50% of the shareholding was held in the deceased's estate. The claimant and the second defendant both supported the first defendant's application.

Z limited contested the application on the basis that the disclosure was highly sensitive and confidential information.

 

The decision

Mr Justice Francis found in the applicant's favour and affirmed the importance of the court's ability to consider "the size and nature of the net estate of the deceased" under section 3 (1) (e) of the 1975 Act. The decision also emphasises the court's power to use all tools available to it to balance confidentiality with other legal remedies and to facilitate the fair disposal of proceedings.

Mr Justice Francis found that the threshold for disclosure in CPR 31.17 had been met and that the applicant had taken steps to facilitate and short circuit the disclosure process to reduce costs. In relation to the confidentiality concerns, Mr Justice Francis concluded that “The family division frequently deals with matters of intense confidentiality. For example, the court is often invested with information that could, quite literally, affect the share price of a publicly quoted company. The court frequently has to deal with circumstances where there is an imminent IPO [initial public offering], where disclosure of information could wreck the IPO completely, alternatively artificially inflate or reduce the price of shares.

"The court is used to having sensitive information and to dealing with it. It seems to me that it would be plainly wrong to allow the confidentiality issue to interrupt the court’s statutory requirement to carry out a computational enquiry and I am not prepared to allow it to do so in this case.”

You can read the full judgment here.1

 

[1] AB v B & Anor [2025] EWHC 1891 (Fam) (04 July 2025)

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