The Family Procedure Rules Committee (FPRC) has published the below forms.
Financial Remedy: H forms
The FPRC established a judicially-led working group to undertake a review in relation to the functioning of the current costs regime in financial remedies cases.
The working group recommended that a consultation should take place to seek views from stakeholders.
One of the recommendations from this exercise was to bring in new rules for providing estimates of legal costs to the court ahead of hearings in financial disputes (for example on divorce), and a requirement to exchange open settlement offers earlier than is currently required.
The outcome sought through this change was to encourage parties to settle early and avoid substantial, and perhaps disproportionately large, legal bills accruing.
As a result an amendment to Practice Direction 9A was made by the president of the Family Division and signed off by Minister Morton and the Practice Direction came into force on 13 February 2020.
In order to facilitate this change, the FPRC decided that modifications to form H and form H1 would be the best course of action, particularly given these are widely used forms that courts and practitioners are familiar with.
The amendments to these costs forms have now been completed, and the revised versions will come into use from 6 July 2020 onwards.
Do not use the below forms until 6 July 2020.
Download form H in Welsh (PDF 168 KB)
Download form H1 in Welsh (PDF 198 KB)
Adoption
The amended forms and guidance notes relating to adoption were published after the amendment in the Family Procedure (Amendment No 3) Rules 2016. This amendment resulted in prospective adopters being automatically assigned a serial number in adoption and related applications to preserve their confidentiality.
Download and view the adoption forms
Declarations of parentage
Forms C63, C64 and C65 include provision for the applicant to provide details of email addresses for themselves, respondents and other parties.
The guidance notes have also been amended to:
- make it clearer to court users that HM Courts & Tribunals Service staff cannot provide legal advice
- attempt to clarify what may fall within the remit of legal advice
Download and view the Children Act forms
Enforcement
Forms FE6, FE7, FE15, FE16 and FE17 relate to the attachment of earnings orders and charging orders.
Download and view the enforcement forms
Protective orders
The Family Procedure (Amendment) Rules 2017 clarify that an individual applicant must not serve the application and/or order on the person they’re seeking protection from.
The following forms and leaflets have been amended to reflect this change and to make it clearer to litigants in person which form needs to be completed where a court bailiff is required:
- FL700
- FL701
- FL401
- FL401A
- FL403
- FL403A
- FL415
- FGM001
- FGM003
- FGM700
Download and view the protective order forms
Find out more about the FL700 protection order
Download and view the FL701 protection order
Find out more about the FGM700 protection order
Requesting a bailiff
Court users needing a bailiff to serve paperwork on another party in the proceedings will need to complete the D89 form.
The form needs to be completed before the papers are served to allow the bailiffs to assess the risk involved. Court staff will not be able to accept requests for a bailiff to serve unless it’s accompanied by this form.