From custody battles to hidden assets, emerging neurotechnology could transform how family courts uncover truth: Madhavi Kabra & Harry Lambert report
- Consumer neurotechnology could soon introduce time-stamped, physiological evidence into family proceedings, potentially replacing subjective testimony with objective indicators of memory, recognition, emotional state, and behaviour.
- However, its use raises major legal and ethical challenges, particularly around mental privacy, evidentiary admissibility, and the need for expert interpretation of complex neural data.
As consumer neurotechnology embeds itself in domestic life, the family justice system faces a profound transformation. The growing ubiquity of wearable devices and brain-computer interfaces is poised to introduce an entirely new class of evidence into family proceedings.
For centuries, the family justice system has operated on the shifting sands of human memory. In assessing credibility and drawing inferences, judges have long been forced to rely on looking a witness in the ‘whites of their eyes’ to determine if they are fully disclosing their assets, or to wade through CAFCASS reports to imperfectly discern what a child truly wants.
However,
