Advice for Form E - spreadsheet layout -what to include?

[stormwatcher]

I'm struggling with the layout -what's the best way to show my income needs/expenditure, and do i separate out current from what i may need after the divorce is finalised?
Do i need to include my income as well?I have 0 assets, on benefits, no CM.
I'm planning to have the months of the year in the rows, then use the columns for headings.And do I need to distinguish minor child from 18+siblings?
My brain is fried, if anyone has any simple suggestions, I would be incredibly grateful😅

I had to do this last year. I created simple 2-column tables in MS Word, one column for a description of each expense and the other column for the amount of the expense. I created one table for personal income needs and another table for income needs for the children. I had different rows in this table for different specific expenses for different children, but all of my children appeared in the same table. If your expenses will be different before and after your divorce, the easiest way would probably be just to add an extra column to the table for future expenses.

If you want to PM me I can send you the blank one that my lawyer got me to fill out!! And I can also give you an example of how I filled it out!!!

I put in everything - right down to undies for the kids!!

@stormwatcher -

..1. For your income - there are very clear pages in Form E that list different categories of income - usually for the salary it's not that complicated

..2. For income needs - you can attach a breakdown, in Word or Excel, as the table in the actual Form E is quite basic. You can simply state in that table - See attachment 1 Schedule of Expenditure Needs (for e.g.).

The Court does not need to see your own expenditure breakdown by month - but for you it might be helpful to do it to calculate your annual needs. This it what I did when I was going through it - went through our accounts/credit cards to get an idea what we spent on various categories. And once this was done - I put it into spreadsheet provided by my solicitors. I will try to some snapshots to this post, but if it doesn't work - send me a PM with your email address.
In addition to the spreadsheet - I had a list of Notes explaining how some of the categories were calculated. For eg. - Children's activities £XX (expense line in spreadsheet, had Note 1 next to it. And in separate Word document called "Notes to the List of Expenditures" had - Note 1 - list of actual kid's activities and annual charges. Or - Clothes expenditures - had a rough explanation of how I arrived at projected numbers - winter jackets, etc.

As to kids expenditures - those are for the kids <18yo. If you have 18+ siblings that are in Uni - you can try to add a category of "Roofing expenditures" - for the time they spend with you during uni holidays - but that would only really work if we are talking about high earning spouses.

Other expense categories - as I couldn't post all in one post

Not going to advise on layout etc but just to say in general be realistic in your expectations of outcomes Eg no point stating your income needs are 3k a month and adding in monies for holidays/ luxuries etc if there simply isn’t that available within the marriage.

in general :

assets will try to be split overall 50:50 or a close as possible if they can
both parties will be expected to maximise their income - so you may be on benefits now but expected to work going forward ( unless extreme mitigating circumstances)
spousal maintenance is unlikely unless a very high earner combined with low assets in the marriage ( even then often limited in time) joint lives is very rare but will depend on your circumstances
over 18s won’t factor at all unless significant disabilities meaning they’ll never be independent
both parties will usually be worse off in a divorce
both parties will be expected to cut their cloth

of course these are very general points and will depend on your own specific circumstances and assets available to split

Hi, Form E is horrible isn't it! I've been through this recently so might be able to help.

So the form wants you to show current cost AND estimated future cost in separate columns... basically what you're spending now vs what you think you'll need after everything is finalised (Just be realistic don't undersell yourself). If they're the same just put the same number in both, if they're different (like if you'll need to move or childcare changes) then put the different amounts and you can explain why in the other sections.
You do need to include your income somewhere - that's in Section 2.16 onwards for your benefits its 2.18 etc. The budget bit (Section 3.1) is just your spending side.
For the 18+ child - if they're still dependent on you (like at uni or college) then include them, if they're working and independent then you wouldn't normally.
On the spreadsheet layout - don't do months of the year as rows, the court wants categories instead. So like "Rent", "Council tax", "Food", "Utilities" etc as your rows, then just 2 or 3 columns for "Item", "Current monthly cost", "Future monthly cost". The form itself has a sort of template in Section 3.1 that shows you what they're after and I've seen other in the thread post photos of what it should look like
Hope that helps a bit and good luck!

Big thank you to all of you for your examples and screenshots!!!! I'm almost done, hoping to send to my solicitor next week to see what she thinks-the Notes idea has kept me sane, and I think I was massively over-complicating things.Fingers crossed, I hope the exchange of forms won't take too long, I have no idea what our assets will be- I may need a PODE-did anyone get a mortgage capacity report from a bank (online-basic) or do it through one of the more specialist companies?