Rule 6.Court files; confidentiality; access; proceedings

Orders and indices are public records. Everything else in a court file — pleadings, recordings, exhibits, transcripts, other documents — is confidential and not available for public inspection.

Confidential does not mean closed to the people in the case. Unless the file is sealed or access is barred by order, any document in it is available for inspection and copying by the parties, attorneys of record, guardians ad litem, designees a party authorises in writing, and anyone with standing to modify or enforce a support order. A family court or circuit judge may open and inspect the entire file in a case pending before that judge's court. Where sensitive information has come out in a hearing, pleading or filing, the court may order it sealed, and a sealed file opens only by order. Family court proceedings themselves are not open to the public.

Someone outside that list can still ask. On written motion and for good cause shown, the court may permit examination or copying — but the order must set out specific findings showing why the interests of justice require it, and must specify which documents and on what arrangements.

The last subdivision closes a route around all of this. Confidential records about a person cannot be reached by subpoena unless that person waives confidentiality in writing; they come only by court order and on full compliance with statutory and case law requirements. The list given is expressly not exhaustive, and covers medical and educational records, records of the state human-resources department and its social and economic services offices, the child support enforcement agency, juvenile court proceedings, mental health treatment and counselling, substance abuse treatment, and domestic violence shelters.