Family Search Tips

On these pages there is a link to a list of all family judgments, and information to help you find judgments and information relevant to criminal matters.  It contains some common keywords that you can use to help with your search and practical hints for quickly finding what you are looking for.

Browsing

The following link will open a list of all of the family related judgments available on this database. The list has the most recently published judments at the top.

• All Family Judgments.

Judgments on family matters that are heard in the District Court are each given a Medium Neutral Citation (MNC) — this includes the year that the matter was heard, a court identifier, a unique number and the names of the parties to the case. Family decisions appear in the following format on this website - Gremmle v Gray [2016] NZFC 1234.

Key words

The family keyword list contains keywords - words, phrases and legislation commonly referred to in family judgements on this site.  To find a family judgment:

1. Find a word, phrase or legislation title and/or section number relating to the matter you want to search on from the keyword list.
2. Enter a keyword or phrase into the search box.
3. Select Family from the Filter Search dropdown.
4. Press enter.

To limit the number of search results returned you can also filter by the year and full date that the judgment was published on this site.

• Family Keyword List.

Anonymisation

Searching by party name is not recommended for Family Court judgments.

Content or names within judgments in this database may be suppressed because of a statutory provision, a suppression order of the court, or an order made in the course of delivering judgment.

Some published judgments may contain banners noting that a statutory suppression order applies or a court order may be noted in the judgment, these decisions are only published after the names have been changed and and any identifying details of the protected person have been redacted.

Judgments in this database may have been anonymised — real names are replaced with pseudonyms and, where it is appropriate by editing and removing information that would allow the protected parties to be identified.

In Youth Court and some types of Family Court judgments real names are also replaced with initials.

Identifying information or information within a judgment wthat has been removed to comply with legal requirements is identified by [ ] for example, [address deleted].

For more information on statutory prohibitions see:

• Statutory Prohibitions on Publication.