Form E, explained

woman in a yellow jumper completing form E at a laptop as part of divorce proceedings

Form E is the financial statement you fill in when the money side of a divorce is being sorted out properly. It is twenty-eight pages long, it asks for twelve months of statements from every account you hold, and it ends with you signing a declaration that a false answer could be contempt of court.

It is, for most people, the single most daunting document in the whole divorce. It is also the one that does the most work, because everything that follows, the negotiation, the settlement, the consent order, is built on what both of you put in it.

This page walks through what it actually asks for, in order, and what to start first.

Curious about the costs? Read our guide to how much divorce costs here.

Do you have to fill it in?

There are two routes to Form E.

  • Court-ordered. If either of you has applied to the court for a financial order - that's Form A, £321 - the court will direct you both to complete Form E and exchange it by a set date. At that point it isn't optional.

  • Voluntary. If you're negotiating through mediation or solicitors and haven't gone to court, you can both agree to fill one in anyway. Most people in that position do, because you cannot sensibly divide money that neither of you has properly listed.

The difference in practice: a voluntary exchange usually stops at section 3.1. The narrative sections after that, such as contributions, conduct and what order you're asking for only really come into play once there are proceedings.

What it asks for, section by section

Section 1: General information

The easy part, but it is still longer than you’d expect it to be. Names, dates of the marriage and separation, details of any children, your health, your education and employment history, whether there's child maintenance in place, any other court cases between you, and who currently lives in the family home.

Nothing here is difficult to fill in, it's just long - so make sure you allow plenty of time and have the information you need at hand.

Section 2: Financial details

This is the crux of the form, and will take you the most amount of time to fill in. To complete your Form E you need to have information on:

  1. Property and personal assets — the family home, anything else you own, bank and building society accounts, investments, life insurance, money owed to you, cash, and personal belongings worth over £500

  2. Liabilities and capital gains tax — every debt, and any CGT that would fall due if assets were sold

  3. Business assets and directorships — anything you own or run

  4. Pensions — every scheme, including old ones from jobs you left decades ago

  5. Other assets — the catch-all

  6. Income from employment

  7. Income from self-employment or a partnership

  8. Investment income

  9. State benefits

  10. Any other income

Then summaries totting up your capital and your income.

The two that catch people out often are pensions - because almost nobody can name every scheme they've ever paid into - and bank accounts, because the form means every account, not the main ones. Make sure you have all the information you need.

Section 3: Financial requirements

This section details what you need to live on, and it’s split into income needs and capital needs.

This is the section people tend to find difficult, and not because of the maths. It asks you to write down what your life costs, in detail, at a point when you have no idea where you'll be living or what your life is going to look like. Most people either wildly under-estimate, because they're being reasonable, or inflate it, because someone told them to.

Neither helps. A realistic figure, with the assumptions written down, is worth more than a strategic one. Take time to work this out.

Section 4: Other information

This is the narrative section. Any significant changes to your assets or income, the standard of living during the marriage, contributions each of you made - financial and otherwise - anything about conduct, any other circumstances you want the court to know, and details of a new partner if you have one.

Conduct is worth understanding before you write anything here. The bar is very high: it has to be conduct it would be "inequitable to disregard," which in practice means violence, abuse or serious financial misconduct rather than an affair. Filling this box with grievances is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes made on this form, so don’t fall into that trap.

Section 5: The order you want

What you're asking the court to do. On a voluntary exchange you usually won't reach this.

What you have to attach

This is the part that takes weeks, and the reason to start today rather than the week before the deadline.

  • Property valuations for the family home and any other property, dated within the last six months

  • Mortgage statements for every mortgage

  • Twelve months of statements for every bank, building society and savings account in your name or held jointly - including the dormant one, the one from the old job, and the one you opened for the holiday fund

  • Statements or dividend counterfoils for investments

  • Surrender valuations for any life insurance policy

  • Two years of accounts for any business, plus anything you have on its valuation

  • A cash equivalent value statement for every pension

  • Your P60 for the last financial year

  • Your last three payslips

  • Your P11D, if you get one

  • Tax assessments or a letter from your accountant if you're self-employed, and management accounts if your income has changed significantly

Gather these in a single folder as you go, named clearly. You will be asked for several of them again later.

Start with the pensions. Today.

This is the most important part, so if you’re feeling overwhelmed and not sure where to begin, start here.

Pension providers can take up to three months to produce a cash equivalent value, and missing the Form E deadline because a pension scheme was slow is the most common reason people miss it at all. Some schemes will do it faster for a fee - the NHS scheme, for example, quotes three months as standard or six weeks if you pay - but you can't rely on that, and you can't chase a scheme into moving quicker than its process.

So: before you fill in anything, write to every pension provider you've ever had and request a cash equivalent value for divorce purposes. Then start the form.

If you can't remember every scheme, the government's Pension Tracing Service will help you find old ones. That also takes time, which is a further argument for doing it first.

What you're actually signing

At the end of Form E there's a statement of truth. It reads, in part, that the information you've given is "a full, frank, clear and accurate disclosure of my financial and other relevant circumstances."

Underneath it is a warning that proceedings for contempt of court may be brought against anyone who makes a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth, and that deliberate untruthfulness can lead to criminal proceedings for fraud under the Fraud Act 2006..

What happens if you don't disclose properly

Three things, in rising order of seriousness.

  • The court draws adverse inferences. If your disclosure is incomplete, a judge is entitled to assume the missing thing exists and to work on that basis. In practice this often produces a worse outcome than honest disclosure would have.

  • Costs orders. Incomplete disclosure creates work for the other side, and the court can make you pay for it.

  • The order gets set aside. If undisclosed assets surface later - and they surface more often than people expect, through a house sale, an inheritance, a company filing - a financial order can be reopened years after it was made. The settlement you thought was finished stops being finished.

The flip side is worth saying too: if you suspect your husband, wife or spouse isn't disclosing fully, that's a conversation to have with a solicitor rather than something to handle yourself. There are established routes, and they work better than confrontation does.

The deadline

If you're in court proceedings, Form E must be filed at court and exchanged with the other side not less than 35 days before the First Directions Appointment - the first hearing, usually listed twelve to sixteen weeks after the Form A application.

The court will tell you the exact date. The court will not chase you for it.

Missing it can mean a costs order, an adjourned hearing that pushes everything back by months, and a judge who starts your case with a slightly worse impression of you than you'd like.

Realistically, how long does it take?

Assembling the documents: four to twelve weeks, almost entirely dictated by how fast your pension providers move.

Filling in the form once you have everything: a long weekend, or a few evenings. It isn't intellectually hard. It's just long, and it asks you to look squarely at a set of numbers most people have been avoiding.

Do it in sittings rather than one go. Start with section 2, which is the bulk, and leave section 3 for a day when you can think clearly about what your life is going to cost.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Form E is used in England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate systems with different forms and different processes for financial disclosure.

Last reviewed: September 2026. This page explains what Form E asks for - it isn't legal advice about how to complete yours or what to seek. For anything turning on your particular circumstances, take advice from someone qualified who knows your case.

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