© 2026 JSH Law LtdFamily Court Bundles in 2026: A Practical Guide for Litigants in Person
The Family Court bundle rules changed in March 2026. This practical guide explains the new five-working-day deadline, who prepares the bundle, preliminary documents, digital evidence, e-bundles and how litigants in person should prepare for a hearing.
If your Family Court hearing is approaching and somebody has told you to “prepare the bundle”, do not leave it until the night before. The rules changed significantly in 2026. The main bundle may now need to be agreed, prepared, served and filed considerably earlier than many litigants in person expect.
A court bundle is not simply a folder containing everything that has ever happened in your case.
It is the organised set of documents the judge needs for the hearing.
Getting it right matters because a judge working through hundreds of pages needs to be able to find the relevant order, statement, Cafcass report, chronology or piece of evidence quickly.
The important 2026 change:
For most Family Court hearings covered by PD27A, the parties should seek to agree the bundle contents seven working days before the hearing and the main bundle must ordinarily be served and filed five working days before the hearing.
Family Court bundles: five things to know first
1. The rules changed in March 2026.
A replacement Practice Direction 27A came into force on 2 March 2026 and was further amended later that month.
2. Five working days is now a crucial deadline.
Unless the court has directed otherwise, the main bundle should ordinarily be filed and served five working days before the hearing.
3. Preliminary documents have a different deadline.
If not already filed, preliminary documents must ordinarily be filed and served by 11am on the working day before the hearing.
4. Being the applicant does not always mean you prepare the bundle.
If the applicant is a litigant in person but the respondent is legally represented, the represented respondent normally becomes responsible for preparing, filing and serving it, unless the court directs otherwise.
5. A bundle is about navigation, not volume.
The objective is to put the material the court actually needs into a coherent structure—not to overwhelm the judge with every screenshot, message and document generated since separation.
What is a Family Court bundle?
A court bundle is the organised collection of documents provided for the judge and the parties to use at a hearing.
Depending on the case and the hearing, it might contain:
- the application;
- previous court orders;
- witness statements;
- Cafcass or Cafcass Cymru reports;
- local-authority material;
- expert reports where permitted;
- relevant correspondence;
- important documentary evidence; and
- the preliminary documents used to help the court navigate the case.
The governing rules are principally found in Practice Direction 27A, which supplements Part 27 of the Family Procedure Rules.
The current PD27A applies across the Family Court and Family Division of the High Court in England and Wales and was introduced to create greater consistency in how bundles are prepared and filed.
Think of the bundle as the judge’s working file for the hearing. If an important document cannot be found, is duplicated five times or is buried among hundreds of irrelevant messages, that does not make the evidence stronger.
What changed in the Family Court bundle rules in 2026?
The replacement PD27A came into force on 2 March 2026.
Among the important changes were:
- express recognition of e-bundles as standard practice;
- new structures for bundles in different types of family proceedings;
- revised responsibility rules;
- new provisions governing preliminary documents;
- more consistent formatting requirements; and
- a substantially earlier timetable for preparing and filing the bundle.
The rules were amended again with effect from 24 March 2026, including clarification about which preliminary documents should, where possible, be agreed and which party files them.
For litigants in person, the practical effect is simple:
The bundle process now starts well before the hearing itself.
Who is responsible for preparing the Family Court bundle?
The default position is that the applicant prepares, files and serves the bundle. Where there are cross-applications, this will ordinarily be the party whose application was first in time.
But there is an important exception for litigants in person.
Applicant unrepresented, respondent represented?
If the applicant is a litigant in person but the respondent has legal representation, the represented respondent must ordinarily prepare, file and serve the bundle, subject to any different direction made by the court.
That distinction matters.
A litigant in person should not assume they must construct a professional e-bundle simply because they originally made the C100 application.
Equally, you should not assume somebody else is preparing it without checking.
Read the latest court order first. A case-specific direction can change the default position.
What if nobody has a lawyer?
If all parties are litigants in person, the normal responsibility rules still apply.
Exceptionally, however, where all parties are unrepresented and the court is satisfied that none of them is able to prepare, file and serve a bundle, the court may direct HMCTS to prepare one.
That is an exception—not something to assume will happen automatically.
Family Court bundle deadlines in 2026
Unless the court has made different case-specific directions, the current timetable is:
| Deadline | What should happen? |
|---|---|
| 7 working days before | The parties must seek to agree the contents of the bundle. |
| 5 working days before | The main bundle, apart from preliminary documents that are not yet available, must ordinarily be served and filed. |
| 11am on the working day before | Outstanding preliminary documents must be served on the other parties and filed with the court. |
Working days matter
These are working-day deadlines, not simply calendar days. Weekends and public holidays do not count as working days. Always calculate backwards carefully and check your own order for a different timetable.
There is another important rule:
Once the bundle has been filed, it should not simply be altered before the hearing.
PD27A provides that the filed bundle must not be amended before the hearing without the court’s prior agreement. That may be given, for example, to correct an accepted error or permit additional documents by way of a supplemental bundle.
What should go into a Family Court bundle?
This is where litigants in person can understandably get into difficulty.
When a case involves domestic abuse, disputed contact, allegations about parenting, school concerns, police involvement and years of messages, it can feel as though everything matters.
But a court bundle is not an archive.
The question is not:
“How do I put all my evidence in?”
A better question is:
“What does the judge need for this hearing, and where will the judge find the evidence relevant to each issue?”
That requires some discipline.
A 600-page WhatsApp export may contain evidence. That does not mean the judge needs 600 pages of WhatsApp.
A photograph may matter. Twenty near-identical photographs may not.
A five-year email history may contain one crucial admission. The task is to identify it without destroying the context in which it was made.
What are preliminary documents?
Preliminary documents are the documents that help the court understand and navigate the case before getting into the underlying evidence.
Exactly what is required depends on the proceedings and the hearing, but documents addressed by PD27A can include matters such as:
- a case summary;
- a statement of issues;
- a chronology;
- a position statement;
- a reading list;
- a list of essential documents; and
- other documents required by the relevant proceedings or court direction.
Some preliminary documents are intended to be agreed where practicable. Others reflect each party’s individual position.
That distinction is important.
“Agreed” does not mean surrendering a disputed fact. Where the rules envisage a joint document and the parties disagree, the disagreement and differing positions can be identified rather than disguising the dispute.
The chronology may be one of the most useful documents in the bundle
In a complex children case, a good chronology gives the judge a route through the evidence.
It should usually identify:
- the date;
- the relevant event;
- the source document or evidence;
- important court or professional involvement; and
- where necessary, whether an event is agreed or disputed.
It should not become a witness statement written in table form.
In cases involving coercive or controlling behaviour, however, excessive compression can create a different problem: it can strip events of the pattern and context that gives them meaning.
The objective is focused context, not context-free brevity.
What about WhatsApp messages, screenshots, photographs and recordings?
Digital evidence creates a particular bundle problem because modern family life produces enormous quantities of it.
The Family Procedure Rules contain specific provisions governing evidence, including photographs and similar material. Evidence must also comply with any directions made in the individual case.
Before putting digital material into a bundle, ask:
- What proposition does this prove?
- Is the date and source clear?
- Is enough context included to understand it fairly?
- Is the original preserved?
- Is authenticity likely to be disputed?
- Has it been served or filed in accordance with the applicable rules and directions?
- Does the judge actually need it for this hearing?
A cropped screenshot can sometimes remove the very context required to understand the conversation.
Where authenticity matters, preserve the original device, file or message history rather than relying exclusively on a reformatted copy.
What about secret recordings?
Do not assume that because a recording exists it should automatically be placed in the bundle.
The Family Justice Council has issued specific guidance for professionals and litigants in person about covert recordings in children proceedings.
The court may need to consider matters including:
- relevance;
- authenticity;
- completeness;
- probative value;
- privacy;
- the circumstances in which the recording was made; and
- potential harm, particularly where a child has been recorded.
Safeguarding caution: secretly recording a child can itself raise significant welfare and privacy issues. Do not treat covert recording as a routine evidence-gathering technique simply because smartphones make it easy.
Example: 400 pages of messages or four pages of useful evidence?
Imagine the issue is whether one parent repeatedly frustrated telephone contact.
The phone contains thousands of messages.
A poor approach is to export the entire conversation and expect the judge to locate the relevant exchanges.
A more useful evidential structure might identify:
Issue: Whether calls were repeatedly prevented between January and March.
Chronology: Identify the scheduled calls and what happened on each relevant date.
Evidence: Include the specific message sequences necessary to establish what was proposed, refused, rearranged or missed.
Context: Include enough of the surrounding conversation to avoid presenting a misleading extract.
Original: Preserve the complete message history in case authenticity or context later becomes disputed.
What if an important document arrives after the bundle has been filed?
Do not simply insert it into the filed bundle and resend a different version as though nothing has happened.
The current PD27A specifically restricts amendment of a bundle once filed.
Depending on the circumstances, the appropriate course may involve seeking agreement or permission for a correction or a supplemental bundle.
The exact step depends on the order, the significance of the document and how close the case is to the hearing.
If the document is genuinely important, deal with the issue promptly rather than arriving at court with a new pile of papers and assuming the judge will read them.
What if it is unsafe to communicate with the other party about the bundle?
This matters particularly in cases involving domestic abuse, coercive control, stalking or post-separation abuse.
The official guidance for litigants in person recognises that steps involving agreement with another party must be approached with safety in mind.
A procedural requirement to seek agreement about documents is not a licence for harassment or unsafe direct contact.
If direct communication creates a safeguarding problem, consider the arrangements already made by the court, whether communication can safely take place through representatives or another permitted channel, and whether a direction from the court is needed.
Also check whether your contact details are protected.
Hearing approaching and the evidence is still a mess?
JSH Law can help litigants in person organise the documents that matter, build a usable chronology, prepare position statements and other hearing documents, identify evidential gaps and prepare for the hearing itself.
This is particularly useful where you have accumulated hundreds of emails, screenshots, Cafcass documents, orders or agency records and are struggling to turn them into a coherent case.
Can AI help prepare a Family Court bundle?
AI can be useful for organisation. It should not be trusted as an unsupervised evidence editor.
Used carefully, digital tools may help with:
- sorting documents by date;
- identifying duplicate documents;
- building a first-pass chronology;
- locating names, dates or recurring events across a large file;
- comparing versions of documents;
- creating an index;
- identifying references to a particular allegation or incident; and
- checking whether a chronology points to the correct source document.
But there are serious limits.
AI can invent information. It can misread dates, attribute words to the wrong person or summarise an exchange inaccurately.
AI-generated summaries are not substitutes for the source evidence.
Confidentiality matters. Family Court documents can contain highly sensitive information about children, health, domestic abuse and safeguarding. Do not upload material into an external AI system without understanding how the information will be handled.
Use AI to help find the evidence.
Do not let AI decide what the evidence says.
The JSH Law Six-Question Check for bundle evidence
Before adding an important document, ask:
Where did this information come from?
Is it allegation, evidence, opinion or finding?
What needs to sit around it to understand it fairly?
Who has and has not been heard?
Why does this matter to the child or issue?
Who can actually resolve or address it?
That exercise often exposes the difference between important evidence and material that simply adds pages.
Family Court hearing approaching? Use this bundle checklist
1. Read the latest sealed order
Check the hearing date, hearing type, bundle directions and every case-specific deadline.
2. Work out who is responsible for the bundle
Do not assume. Check PD27A and the order.
3. Calculate the deadlines backwards
Mark the seven-working-day, five-working-day and 11am deadlines in your calendar.
4. Identify the issues for this hearing
A directions hearing and a final hearing do not necessarily require the same material.
5. Build or update the chronology
Link important events to their source evidence.
6. Check the evidence
Remove unnecessary duplication and make sure extracts retain sufficient context.
7. Prepare your position statement
Tell the court concisely what has happened, what remains disputed and what orders or directions you seek.
8. Check the index and pagination
The judge should be able to move from the index to the correct document without hunting for it.
9. Do not silently alter a filed bundle
If something important changes, deal with it through the proper route.
10. Prepare to use the bundle at the hearing
Knowing that a document exists is not enough. Know where the important documents are and why they matter.
A well-organised bundle is part of advocacy
For a litigant in person, preparing a bundle can feel like an administrative task imposed by the court.
It is more important than that.
A good bundle creates the map through which the judge understands the case.
The strongest case is not necessarily the one with the most paper.
It is the one in which the important propositions can be connected clearly to reliable evidence.
What is the issue? What proves it? Where is it in the bundle? Why does it matter? What do you want the court to do?
That is the discipline that turns a file into a case.
Need help getting your Family Court papers hearing-ready?
JSH Law provides practical litigation support for people representing themselves in private Family Court proceedings.
We can help with:
- evidence organisation and document audits;
- chronologies;
- position statements;
- witness statements;
- Cafcass and Child Impact Report responses;
- schedules of issues or allegations;
- urgent hearing documents;
- identifying gaps in police, school, medical or local-authority evidence;
- appeal paperwork and document organisation where appropriate;
- hearing preparation; and
- McKenzie Friend and hearing support where available.
If your hearing is approaching, getting the structure right before the deadline is usually much easier than trying to repair the papers at court.
Related JSH Law guides
- The JSH Law Six-Question Check
- Family Court Filing & Service: What the Words Actually Mean
- How to Write a Family Court Witness Statement
- After a Family Court Hearing: Orders, Deadlines & Next Steps
- Participation Directions & Special Measures in Family Court
- Child Impact Reports and Child Focused Courts
Primary and official sources
- Practice Direction 27A – Family Proceedings: Court Bundles
- Judiciary – Preparing Court Bundles for Family Proceedings: Guide for Litigants in Person
- Family Procedure Rules Part 22 – Evidence
- Family Procedure Rules Part 23 – Miscellaneous Rules About Evidence
- Family Justice Council – Covert Recordings in Family Law Proceedings Concerning Children
© 2026 JSH Law Ltd. All rights reserved.
