Form D81, line by line: what goes in every box
The short answer
Form D81 is the statement of information you file with a financial consent order. It tells the judge what you each own, owe and earn now, and what that becomes once the order is made. The current version runs to 23 pages and 24 questions. The court fee is £62.
Most of it is arithmetic. The parts that decide whether a judge approves your order are the free-text boxes at questions 12, 13 and 14, where you explain why the split is fair and how you will each live afterwards.
Want to see one filled in first? See a completed example →, a fictional couple walked through section by section, with example figures and the mistakes people make in each one.
Which form you are actually holding
Check the bottom left of the first page. The version this guide walks through is marked D81 (04.25), published on GOV.UK as Statement of information for a consent order in relation to a financial remedy. It is 23 pages. If your PDF has a different code, the question numbers below may not line up, and the GOV.UK page always has the current one.
Two forms get confused with it. Form A is the one-page notice that starts the financial application, and one of you has to file it alongside the D81. Form E is the long disclosure statement used when you cannot agree and the court decides for you. If you are filling in a D81, you have already agreed, and you do not need a Form E.
You are in reasonably crowded company. There were 12,646 financial remedy applications in England and Wales between January and March 2026, and 73% of them were uncontested.
One joint form, or one each?
This is the first question on the form, before you get to question 1, and it is worth two minutes of thought. The form's own wording: parties are encouraged to fill in one joint form unless there is a good reason not to do so. If you file separately, you have to write your reasons in the box.
| One joint form | One each | |
|---|---|---|
| What the form says | The default. "Parties are encouraged to fill in one joint form." | Allowed, but you must give reasons in the box on page one. |
| Extra step | None. You both sign the same document. | Both of you must confirm at questions 23 and 24 that you have read the other's form. |
| Suits you when | You agree on the figures and are willing to see each other's numbers side by side. | You are not in contact directly, or one of you is represented and the other is not. |
| Practical cost | One set of arithmetic, done once. | Two sets, and any difference between them is visible to the judge. |
If you do file separately and your figures disagree, expect that to be noticed. The judge is reading both.
What to have in front of you before you start
The form is much less painful if you do not have to stop halfway through and email a pension provider. You need:
- The date you married or formed your civil partnership, the date you started living together if that was earlier, and the date you separated
- The date of your conditional order or decree nisi
- Property valuations and current mortgage balances, because the form wants the value after deducting the mortgage
- Balances for accounts, savings, ISAs and investments, plus loans, overdrafts and credit card debts
- A cash equivalent value for every pension, including any you had before the marriage
- Your most recent payslip if you are employed, or your most recent HMRC tax statement if you are self-employed. The form's guidance names both.
Start the pension valuations first. Under the Pensions on Divorce etc. (Provision of Information) Regulations 2000, a scheme has up to three months to give you the information, dropping to six weeks if you tell them on the date of your request that you need it for divorce proceedings. So say so in writing, on the day you ask. Nothing else on this form has a three-month lead time.
Questions 1 to 7: dates, children, and how you got here
The easy pages, with one trap in them.
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Questions 1 and 2: marriage and separation
Date of the marriage or civil partnership, and the date you started living together permanently if that was earlier. Then the separation date. The cohabitation date is not filler: for a couple who lived together for years first, it changes how long the relationship counts as being, which is part of how a court reads fairness.
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Question 3: the conditional order date. This is the trap
The date the court granted your conditional order or decree nisi. The form is blunt about what happens without one: if you have no conditional order, no decree of nullity and no judicial separation order, the court cannot make a consent order. The exceptions it lists are interim maintenance, a variation of an existing periodical payments order, and a final order for child maintenance.
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Questions 4 and 5: interim maintenance, and the final order
Question 4 asks whether the order is for interim maintenance. If it is, you are allowed to skip the capital tables and go straight to the income ones. Question 5 asks whether your final order or decree absolute has been granted, and if so, when.
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Question 6: dates of birth
Both of yours, then the full names and dates of birth of any children of the family under 18, or older children still dependent on you. Room for four, then a separate sheet. The form defines a child of the family as a child of both of you, or one you have both treated as your own.
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Question 7: how you reached the agreement
Four tick boxes: discussion between the parties, negotiations through solicitors, out-of-court dispute resolution such as mediation, or other, with a box to explain. Tick the truthful one. An agreement reached over the kitchen table is a legitimate answer and thousands of people give it.
Question 8: what you own now
A table with a column each for the applicant, the respondent and, if relevant, the children. The applicant is whoever files the Form A. Read down the rows and fill in every one, including the zeroes.
| Row | What goes in it | Where people slip |
|---|---|---|
| A | Property 1 and property 2, valued after deducting any mortgage. Addresses go underneath. | Putting in the asking price. Use a realistic value and the actual redemption figure. More than two properties go on a separate sheet. |
| B | Other capital: bank accounts, savings, investments, ISAs. | Forgetting the small accounts. The statement of truth covers all of it, not the tidy parts. |
| C | Gross capital total. A plus B. | Arithmetic. Check it twice, because the judge will. |
| D | Liabilities: loans, overdrafts, credit cards. Not the mortgages you already took off at row A. | Deducting the mortgage twice, which flatters the debt side of your picture. |
| E | Net capital total, excluding pensions and Pension Protection Fund compensation. C minus D. | Slipping pensions in here. They have their own row. |
| F | Pensions valuation, cash equivalent. | Guessing. If your valuation is on a different basis, the form tells you to explain that at question 12. |
| G | Pension Protection Fund compensation valuation. | Almost always zero. It applies if a scheme has gone into the PPF. |
| H | Total capital. E plus F plus G. | This is the number the judge weighs the deal against. |
Two instructions on this page are easy to miss. Jointly owned capital is split according to the shares in which it is currently held, and if you have not agreed those shares, you split it equally. And the figures should be correct as at the date you sign, stated before the order is implemented. This is a photograph of today, not of the day you separated.
There is a notes box underneath. Use it. If one of the numbers needs a sentence of explanation, that sentence is cheaper than a query from the court.
Question 9: what you earn now
Total net monthly income from all sources, in the same three columns, in rows A to M. Net and monthly. Not gross, not annual. Your payslip and your head both work in different units from this table, so convert before you write anything down.
| Rows | What they want |
|---|---|
| A to E | Earned income after tax and National Insurance, state benefits including child benefit, pension and PPF compensation income, bank interest, and anything else such as trust or investment income. |
| F | Sub-total of A to E. |
| G and H | Child maintenance and spousal maintenance paid between the two of you. Add it to the receiver's column, and show it as a minus in the payer's column. |
| I | Sub-total of G and H. |
| J and K | Maintenance flowing to or from someone who is not part of these proceedings, such as an earlier ex-partner. Payments out are shown as a minus. The form asks you to say whether the arrangement is formal or informal. |
| L and M | Sub-total of J and K, then the grand total: F plus I plus L. |
The form's own guidance page tells you where the numbers come from: your most recent payslip if you are employed, or a monthly average worked out from your most recent HMRC tax statement if you are self-employed. It also points out that most state benefits are tax-free and links to the GOV.UK list.
Questions 10 and 11: the same tables, after the order
Questions 10 and 11 repeat questions 8 and 9 exactly, but showing the position if the judge makes the order you are asking for. The house transferred. The pension shared. The lump sum paid. They are easy to skim as a repeat and copy across. Do that and the judge is looking at the wrong picture.
The judge is looking across the two sets of tables to see the before and the after, and to decide whether the after is fair. If your two capital tables are identical, you have either agreed an order that changes nothing, or you have filled in the second pair wrong.
The form lets you attach a net effect calculation from a spreadsheet on a separate sheet. If your split is at all complicated, that one page of your own working does more to explain the deal than anything you can squeeze into the boxes.
Questions 12, 13 and 14: the boxes that decide it
Three free-text questions, and the rest of the form is context for them.
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Question 12: anything else the court should know
Yes or no, then room to explain. The form suggests medical conditions, a change of employment, any significant change in circumstances, and any agreement you have already made such as a pre-nuptial, post-nuptial or separation agreement. It is also where a pension valuation that differs from the cash equivalent goes, and where you set out your expected state pension entitlement if it is not yet in payment.
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Question 13: why you are dividing it this way
"Please explain concisely the main reasons" for the division. The form's own examples are meeting a housing need, dividing equally, dividing unequally for a particular reason, or an assessment of higher or lower earning capacity. If you are offsetting a pension against other assets, meaning one of you keeps the pension and the other keeps more of everything else, it asks you to explain briefly how you reached that.
Concise does not mean thin. A 60/40 split with no stated reason leaves a judge nothing to weigh it against. A 60/40 split because one of you needs a deposit for a home the children can stay in, and the other keeps the larger pension, reads as a decision rather than a guess.
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Question 14: if it is a clean break, how you will each live
If the order dismisses maintenance claims, explain briefly how each of you will support yourselves. Two salaries and no dependants is a short answer. If one of you has been out of work raising children, this box is doing serious work, and it is the point at which a second opinion earns its fee. Our guide to spousal maintenance covers what a clean break actually gives up.
Questions 15 and 16: where you will live, and who with
Question 15 is a small table: the address each of you will live at, the address for the children, and the basis of occupation for each, such as owner or tenant. If the children split their time equally, the form says to state that in the address column rather than pick one home.
Question 16 is a set of tick boxes for each of you: no present intention to remarry or cohabit, currently cohabiting, remarried or formed a civil partnership on a date, intending to remarry, or intending to cohabit. It is asked because a new partner changes the financial picture the judge is approving. Ticking the wrong box to keep the peace is a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth.
Questions 17 to 22: mortgage lenders and pensions
Skippable for a lot of couples, unskippable for the rest.
- Question 17 asks whether the order transfers a property. If it does, 17.1 asks whether the mortgage lender has been served with notice of the application, and 17.2 whether any lender objected within 14 days. Nothing else in the process prompts you to tell the lender, so this question is often the first reminder.
- Question 18 asks whether you are applying for a pension order. If not, you go straight to question 23 and the pension pages do not apply to you.
- Questions 19 and 20 cover pension attachment orders: whether notice was served on everyone responsible for the pension arrangement, or the Pension Protection Fund Board, under rules 9.33(1), 9.34, 9.42 and 9.43 of the Family Procedure Rules 2010, and whether anyone objected within 21 days.
- Questions 21 and 21.1 cover pension sharing: whether the scheme has provided the information required by regulation 4 of the Pensions on Divorce etc. (Provision of Information) Regulations 2000, and whether that information shows there is power to make a pension sharing order.
- Questions 22 and 22.1 are the same pair for Pension Protection Fund compensation sharing, under the 2011 regulations.
If questions 19 to 22 read like a foreign language, that is a signal rather than a failing. Pension sharing is the part of a financial order where the drafting has to be exactly right, and where our honest view is that most people should pay someone. More on that below.
Questions 23 and 24, and the two statements of truth
Question 23 is the applicant's full name and signature, confirming they have read the respondent's completed statement of information. Question 24 is the mirror image for the respondent. If you filed a joint form, you are both signing the same document anyway.
Then, on separate pages, you each sign a statement of truth. The wording is not decorative:
“I understand that proceedings for contempt of court may be brought against anyone who makes, or causes to be made, a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth without an honest belief in its truth.”
You are also confirming that you have made full disclosure of all relevant facts. A forgotten savings account is a poor trade against an order that can be reopened later. A solicitor or litigation friend can sign on your behalf, and there is space for the firm's name if they do.
What to send, where, and what it costs
The D81 never travels alone. The form's back page lists what goes with it: a completed Form A, unless one of you has already sent one; the consent order itself; and any pension sharing, pension attachment or compensation sharing annex. GOV.UK adds that the draft order should be signed, with two photocopies.
£62The court fee, whichever route you take. GOV.UK, checked 17 August 2026.
- The fee is £62, according to GOV.UK on 17 August 2026. You may be able to get help with court fees if you are on benefits or a low income.
- If you are divorcing and acting for yourselves, post everything to HMCTS Financial Remedy, PO Box 12746, Harlow, CM20 9QZ. Keep your own copies.
- If you are dissolving a civil partnership or legally separating, GOV.UK says to send it to the court dealing with your paperwork rather than the Harlow address.
- Solicitors file online through the MyHMCTS financial remedy consent order service, which is why a represented friend's experience of this will sound nothing like yours.
Timing matters as much as the paperwork. GOV.UK says the court cannot approve a consent order before your conditional order, and it is usually simpler to apply before your final order because applying afterwards can have financial consequences, particularly for pensions. There is usually no hearing. A judge approves the order if they think it is fair, and if they do not, they can ask you to change it.
The form itself recommends drafting the order from Standard Orders Volume 1 (Financial and Enforcement Orders) rather than from scratch. A perfect D81 attached to a vague order still gets queried, because the order is the document that has to work for the next thirty years. Our consent order guide covers what each drafting route costs.
When paying for advice is worth it
We are a publisher, not a law firm, and we do not earn anything from telling you to hire someone. So here is the honest line, in both directions.
Filling it in yourselves is realistic when
- You agree on the numbers and can both see the same figures without a row
- The assets are a house, some savings and two similar pensions
- Neither of you is giving up a maintenance claim you might genuinely need
- Nobody is self-employed with income that is hard to pin to a monthly figure
Pay someone when
- A pension is being shared or offset. Questions 18 to 22 exist because this goes wrong.
- One of you gave up earnings to raise children, so question 14 is a real question
- There is a business, a trust, or assets outside the UK
- You are agreeing to something you privately think is unfair to you. A sealed order is final, and the form you sign is the evidence the judge relied on.
A fixed-fee review of a completed D81 and draft order is a different purchase from a full retainer, and it is the one most people in the second column actually need. If you want to sanity-check the split before you commit to it, our fair-split calculator gives you a picture to take with you.
Common questions
Do we both have to fill in a D81?
You both have to be on one. The form encourages a single joint D81 signed by both of you, and allows separate forms if you give your reasons. If you file separately, questions 23 and 24 require each of you to confirm you have read the other's form, so there is no version of this where you keep your figures private from each other.
Is Form D81 the same as Form E?
No. Form E is the long financial statement used when you cannot agree and the court decides how to divide things. The D81 is the short summary you file when you have already agreed and are asking a judge to approve the deal. Filling in a D81 does not mean you also need a Form E.
What if our figures change before the judge sees it?
The form asks for figures that are correct, so far as possible, at the time the statement is signed, and stated before the order is implemented. Question 12 is where a significant change in circumstances goes. If something material shifts after you have filed, such as a job loss or a sale falling through, take advice rather than leaving the court with a picture you know is out of date.
What happens if we get something wrong?
An honest arithmetic slip is usually a query and a delay, not a disaster: GOV.UK says a judge who does not think the order is fair can ask you to change it. Leaving an asset out is different. Both statements of truth carry a contempt of court warning and a confirmation that you have made full disclosure.
Sources
Everything above leans on these. Primary sources where they exist.
- GOV.UK: Form D81, statement of information for a consent order. Every question number, row letter and quoted instruction above was read off the PDF published there, version D81 (04.25), 23 pages. GOV.UK page last updated 16 July 2026. Checked 17 August 2026.
- GOV.UK: Money and property when you divorce or separate: if you agree. The £62 fee, the signed draft order plus two photocopies, the Harlow address, the conditional order and final order timing, and the fact that there is usually no hearing. Checked 17 August 2026.
- The Pensions on Divorce etc. (Provision of Information) Regulations 2000, regulation 2. The three-month and six-week deadlines for a scheme to provide pension information. Checked 17 August 2026.
- Ministry of Justice: Family Court Statistics Quarterly, January to March 2026. 12,646 financial remedy applications, 73% uncontested. Checked 17 August 2026.
- GOV.UK: Get help paying court and tribunal fees. The Help with Fees scheme referred to from the consent order page. Checked 17 August 2026.
- Citizens Advice: Dividing up money and belongings when you separate and MoneyHelper: How to sort out your money on divorce or dissolution. Both good on the wider process and neither walks through the form, which is why this guide exists. Checked 17 August 2026.