The Ministry of Justice Data First family court dataset provides data on cases heard by the family court in England and Wales, and the people involved, from 2011, and has been extracted from the FamilyMan management information system, used by His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) to manage cases within the family courts (County Courts). Information is included on individual divorce and Family Law Act, adoption, private and public law cases, the people involved as parties to the case (their role and characteristics), key case dates, processes and outcomes. There are three tables for cases, people and events, which can be joined together. A case will usually have multiple people involved (for example an applicant and respondent) and may have many events, (for example hearings, applications and orders made by the court) which are each included as a separate record. These depend on the type of case and its progress. As part of Data First, records have been deidentified and deduplicated, using our probabilistic record linkage package, Splink, so that a unique identifier is assigned to all records believed to relate to the same person, allowing for longitudinal analysis and investigation of repeat appearances. This opens up the potential to address questions on, for example, common transitions between family law case types and patterns associated with repeat use of the family court system. The Ministry of Justice Data First linking dataset can be used in combination with this and other Data First datasets to join up administrative records about people from across justice services to increase understanding around users’ interactions, pathways and outcomes.