Financial Remedies Court issues ES2 update

As part of the broader initiative to modernise and streamline financial remedy proceedings, the Financial Remedies Court has published an updated version of the ES2 template, designed to improve usability and efficiency for both practitioners and litigants.

The ES2 form was first introduced in 2022 to provide a clear and neutral means of recording the assets, liabilities, and income of each party in financial remedy cases. It is formatted in Microsoft Excel and presented in such a way as to enable any differences in the values asserted by the parties to be highlighted and identified easily by the court.

Immediately upon its introduction, litigants in matrimonial finance proceedings went from almost never lodging a consolidated asset schedule to (almost) always lodging one.

While the form primarily fulfilled its purpose, it was produced in short order so that it could be published alongside the 'efficient conduct' statement made at the time. As a result, the form contained several technical issues and formatting inconsistencies that affected its ease of use.

On 7 July 2025, the Financial Remedies Court released an improved version of the ES2 form, featuring a number of functional and design enhancements such as:

1. Consistent font usage throughout

2. Correction of various formatting glitches

3. A permanently visible, auto-updating 'grand total' box

4. An integrated currency conversion tool

5. And, perhaps most noticeably: "no more beige"

We at Parsonage & Co welcome these updates and remain hopeful that the continued development of digitised court forms will contribute to a more efficient, accessible, and less stressful experience for all parties involved in financial remedy proceedings.