This form is used to provide financial disclosure which is used as a basis for the negotiation of a financial settlement. You may be asked to complete this form by the court (if you are a litigant in person), by your solicitor or by a mediator.
Notes for guidance
About these notes:
• They explain some of the terms used in Form E that may be unfamiliar to you.
• The most important notes are in bold. Please do not ignore them.
• There is also a checklist in Form E to tell you which documents you will need to attach
to the form.
These notes are only a guide to help you complete Form E. If you require further help you
should speak to a solicitor, Citizens Advice Bureau, legal advice centre or law centre. Public
funding of your legal costs may be available from the Community Legal Service Fund.
Please note, while court staff will help on procedural matters, they cannot offer any
legal advice.
Introduction
If you or your spouse/civil partner apply to the court for a financial order or financial relief,
both you and the other person must complete a separate Form E.
The purpose of the form is to enable you to provide the court with full details of your financial
arrangements.
You must send your completed Form E to the court and a copy to the other party,
no later than 35 days before the date of the First Appointment. The date of the First
Appointment can be found on Form C (Notice of a first appointment) which will be sent to you
by the court.
You should be aware that the court might make an order for costs against you if you do not
follow the deadlines for filing Form E.
If you and the other person have agreed about the financial matters there is no need for
either of you to complete a Form E. Your agreement (sometimes known as a consent
application) should be submitted to the Court prior to the First Appointment.
You should ensure that any documents relevant to this application are attached to Form E.
1 General information
Section 1.6: The court can provide you with these dates if you are unsure. Please quote your case
number when asking for details.
Section 1.11: You only need to provide details if you or your child(ren) are suffering from any form of
physical or mental disability. The court does not need to know about minor ailments.
Section 1.13: You need to supply details of any Child Support Agency assessments, agreements or
court orders in respect of child support.
Also, if an application has been made to the Child Support Agency but not decided let
the court know the result of the application, when it has been decided. If you need help
to complete this section you can contact the National Enquiry Line of the Child Support
Agency (Telephone 0845 7133133).
Section 1.15: You should give details of any other previous or current court cases between you and
the other person. (It would also help the court if you provided brief details about the
nature of these proceedings e.g. residence/contact in respect of the children.)
2 Financial details
Section 2.1: You need to tell the court if you own or part own the family home (or any other
property) and how much you think it is currently worth.
Details of the Land Registry title number and of the balance outstanding on any
mortgage can be obtained by contacting the company with whom you have your
mortgage. You can also obtain your Land Registry Title number from HM Land
Registry, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3PH (Telephone 020 7917 8888).
Section 2.3: Overdrawn bank accounts should be included in this section and not in section 2.9.
Section 2.10: For further information about Capital Gains Tax you can contact the HM Revenue
and Customs who produce a free booklet called ‘Capital Gains Tax – an introduction’.
(Reference number – CGT1). Telephone 0845 9000404. You may want to seek legal
and/or financial advice to answer this question.
Section 2.13: You will need to provide the court with details of all your pension rights, and any
Pension Protection Fund compensation entitlement (whether current or prospective),
including those relating to your present and/or a previous job and/or resulting from
membership of a personal (i.e. privately arranged) pension scheme.
If you have been provided with a valuation of your pension rights or benefits by the
person responsible for your pension scheme you must attach a copy of it to Form E.
(You may only use a valuation if it will not be more than a year old at the date of the
first appointment.) If you do not have this information, or the valuation you have will
be more than a year old, you should write to the person responsible for your pension
scheme and ask them to provide you with an up to date valuation. If the valuation
is not available a copy of your letter requesting the valuation should be attached to
Form E together with any reply from the pension scheme letting you know when this
information will be available. If you have more than one pension plan or scheme you
must provide this information for each one.
The administrators of your scheme will be able to provide the information requested.
It may help to send the administrators a copy of section 2.13 of Form E.
If you have an occupational pension scheme your employer will be able to provide you
with the name and address of your pension administrators.
If you have a personal pension scheme (i.e. privately arranged) you should contact the
administrators directly. If you are unsure of the details of your pension scheme you can
contact:
The Pensions Schemes Registry
PO Box 1NN
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE99 1NN
You should obtain a valuation of your additional state pension by requesting form BR20
from the address or telephone number below. You may also find it useful to request a
forecast of the benefit to be paid by filling in form BR19 which you can also get from
the address or phone number below or from any social security office.
Future Pensions Centre
The Pension Service
Tyneview Park
Whitley Road
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE98 1BA
Telephone number: 0845 3000168
If you have any entitlement to PPF compensation you should obtain a valuation for
each separate compensation entitlement from the PPF Board at the address below.
Attn: Compensation Team
The Pension Protection Fund
Knollys House
17 Addiscombe Road
Croydon
Surrey
CR0 6SR
Note: Please make certain that you provide the court with your National Insurance
Number. If the Form E that you are using does not include a box for this, please
write this information in below the ‘Name and Address of your pension scheme,
plan or policy’.
Section 2.14: ‘Unrealisable assets’ are those which cannot be easily converted into cash.
A solicitor will be able to advise you whether an asset is realisable or not. If in doubt,
the asset should be mentioned in this section and the judge will decide.
Section 2.20 This is a summary of the information you have provided previously in Parts 1-10 of
Form E. To complete it, you will need to refer back to each section again and only note
the figure in the box with an alphabetical reference number next to it. For example, you
will find the figure for (A) on page 4, in section 2.1.
3 Financial requirements
Section 3.1: In the box headed ‘Income needs of yourself’ you need to add the weekly, monthly or
annual cost of each item. It should include, for example, finance payments where a
car or household goods are being purchased on credit. (If you run out of space when
completing this section, please continue on a separate sheet of paper and attach to
Form E, clearly numbering the section they refer to e.g. section 2.3 cont.)
Section 3.2: You should also include in this section details of any items you hope to buy in the near
future. For example, the reasonable cost of buying a new car or house.
4 Other information
Section 4.2: The term ‘standard of living’ invites you to express your own view or opinion. Try to
give details of the kind of lifestyle you and the family enjoyed during your marriage or civil
partnership. For example, the number of holidays you took over the course of a year.
Section 4.3: The term ‘contribution’ does not refer solely to financial contributions and you can
include the fact that you looked after the family home and cared for the family unit.
Section 4.6: If you have remarried or subsequently formed a civil partnership (or intend to) or are
living with another person (or intend to) you will need to complete this section. It is
important that the court making the decision has as complete a picture of the available
finances as possible.
5 Order sought
You may wish to seek legal advice to answer the questions in this part of Form E. Public funding
of your legal costs may be available from the Community Legal Service Fund.
Section 5.3: An ‘Avoidance of Disposition Order’ is an order that the court can make to set aside or
overturn a transaction that has already taken place (or that you believe is about to take
place) e.g. a sale/mortgage of land or other asset. You might consider this transaction
to be a step intended by the other party to deprive you of the benefit of sharing in it, or
may have the effect of reducing the assets available for distribution between you.
Schedule of documents to accompany Form E
Now that you have completed Form E please ensure that copies of the items listed in the checklist,
relevant to your application, are attached.
You should not attach original documents but keep them available for inspection by the other
party and the Court.
If you are unable to attach any copy documents to Form E when you file it you must add a
short note to Form E explaining why you were unable to attach the copy document.
Please note – any copy documents that you wish to attach to Form E will need to be verified
as an exhibit or attachment to Form E.
Sworn confirmation of the information you have provided in Form E is true
This section must be completed. You have to confirm either by swearing on oath or by affirming
that the information you have provided is a full, frank, clear and accurate disclosure of your
financial and other relevant circumstances
http://hmctsformfinder.justice.gov.uk/courtfinder/forms/form-e-eng.pdf
