ENGLAND & WALES Law and Practice Contributed by: Alex Carruthers, Oliver Heeks and Sian Brooks, Hughes Fowler Carruthers
informed of any material change after initial dis - closure was given. Disclosure is evidenced through a document called Form E. In Form E, parties state their assets and income and append documentary evidence to the form. Foreign assets and income must still be declared on Form E. The procedure for financial disclosure is set out in the “Statement on the Efficient Conduct of Financial Remedy Hearings Proceeding in the Financial Remedies Court Below High Court Judge Level”. This streamlined process is designed to improve efficiency in financial pro - ceedings. Once Form A – which is the form used to start a request for a financial order in proceedings for divorce or ending a civil partnership – is filed, the first appointment will be listed 12—16 weeks after Form A is issued. Parties are required to file Form E 35 days before the first appointment. Not less than 14 days before the first appoint - ment, each party must file with the court and serve on the other party: • a concise statement of issues; • a chronology; • a questionnaire on the other party’s disclo - sure; and • a notice stating whether the party is in a posi - tion to use the first appointment as an FDR hearing. At this point, the parties must also file a joint market appraisal in respect of each property cur - rently used as a family home. If obtaining such evidence jointly has proved impossible, the par - ties should each file a market appraisal for each property and must be prepared to explain the
reason for the impossibility to the court. Parties are also required to file brief indicative material as to their respective borrowing capacities and to file no more than three sets of property par - ticulars as to what their case for themselves and the other party is likely to be on housing. The purpose of the questionnaire is to flush out any issues of non-disclosure in the other party’s Form E. The questionnaire should not exceed four pages of A4 in length (using not smaller than a 12-point font with 1.5 spacing). This is to ensure questions asked are proportionate. These processes allow the identification of mat - rimonial assets and information on the parties’ income. The day before the first appointment, the appli - cant must file with the court: • a composite case summary using the Case Summary Template ES1; and • a composite schedule of assets and income, based on the figures in the parties’ Forms E, using – unless wholly impractical – the Assets and Income Template ES2, on which any una - greed items must be clearly denoted. Therefore, by the time of the first appointment, the court will have an asset schedule and be able to identify the key assets in the case. At the first appointment, the court will make numerous directions, including for formal valuations to be provided where appropriate and for replies to questionnaires to be filed. Through this ongoing process, the court is able to ultimately produce an asset schedule for the final hearing, which – owing to the disclosure directions given by the court – will be more accurate than the one at the first appointment.
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