Family Court Chronology Templates (UK Guide for Litigants in Person)

What is a Family Court chronology?

A chronology is a concise, date-ordered record of events that matter to the proceedings.

Its job is not to tell the whole story. Its job is to identify the significant events in a form that allows the court to understand the procedural or factual sequence quickly.

A useful chronology usually does three things:

1. identifies the date or period;
2. records the significant event neutrally and concisely; and
3. identifies where the supporting material can be found.

What do the current Family Court rules say about chronologies?

Practice Direction 27A was substantially revised with effect from 2 March 2026. The current version contains specific provisions about preliminary documents, including chronologies.

In non-financial family proceedings, including private law children cases, the bundle must include an agreed up-to-date chronology where the hearing is a final hearing or where the case summary is insufficient.

Where practicable:

• each entry should be limited to one sentence;
• the chronology should be cross-referenced to relevant bundle pages;
• at a final hearing it should be one agreed document;
• at other hearings it should also be agreed so far as practicable; and
• where the parties disagree about an entry, the disagreement and their different positions should be recorded appropriately rather than pretending agreement exists.

The current Practice Direction also imposes a general maximum of 10 pages for a chronology unless the court has specifically directed otherwise because a longer document is necessary for the proceedings to be dealt with justly.

Who prepares the chronology?

In non-financial proceedings, the chronology is one of the preliminary documents intended to be agreed between the parties.

Usually the applicant takes the lead in preparing those agreed documents. However, where the applicant is a litigant in person and another party is represented, the represented party must take the lead.

That does not prevent a litigant in person from keeping and preparing their own accurate working chronology throughout the case.

What should go into a Family Court chronology?

The test is significance, not volume.

Before adding an entry, ask whether it helps explain:

• how the proceedings began;
• what orders have been made;
• how arrangements for a child changed;
• a material safeguarding event;
• a relevant professional intervention;
• compliance or non-compliance with an important direction or order;
• a significant change in circumstances;
• the development of a disputed issue;
• a material piece of evidence; or
• why the court is now being asked to make a particular decision.

If an event does not help the judge understand a live issue, it may not belong in the filed chronology.

The minimum useful fields

For your own working chronology, you may also find it useful to record the issue, source, child impact or action required. Those additional columns do not necessarily need to appear in the final chronology filed with the court.

Which event should come first?

A court chronology should ordinarily run in chronological order from the earliest relevant event to the most recent.

This is also the format used in the Judiciary’s current example chronology for litigants in person.

This allows the judge to follow the development of the case in sequence.

Cross-referencing the chronology to evidence

A chronology becomes significantly more useful when the judge can verify an entry immediately.

Compare these two entries:

The second version identifies an event without requiring the chronology itself to decide who is truthful or why the event occurred.

Where a matter is disputed, use language that accurately reflects its evidential status.

Findings already made by the court can, of course, be identified as findings. Allegations that remain disputed should not be silently converted into established facts.

Template 1: Core Family Court chronology

This is the cleanest starting point for most private children cases.

For a filed chronology, aim for short entries. Under PD27A each entry should, where practicable, be limited to one sentence.

Template 2: Issue-focused working chronology

Where proceedings contain several distinct themes, it can be useful during case preparation to create separate working timelines for each issue.

For example:

• contact or time-with arrangements;
• domestic abuse allegations;
• schooling;
• medical issues;
• relocation;
• compliance with orders; or
• professional involvement.

Template 3: Safeguarding evidence timeline

Cases involving domestic abuse, coercive control or safeguarding concerns often require more detailed analysis before a concise court chronology can be produced.

A private working safeguarding timeline can help identify:

• repeated behaviour;
• escalation;
• post-separation conduct;
• professional disclosures;
• police or medical involvement;
• impact on a child;
• protective action; and
• corroborating records.

This fuller table is primarily an analysis tool. The final chronology filed with the court may need to reduce the information to one concise entry with the correct bundle reference.

In private children proceedings involving domestic abuse or risk of harm, Practice Direction 12J may be relevant.

Template 4: Financial chronology

Financial remedy cases use a different bundle structure, but the current PD27A also requires an agreed up-to-date composite chronology as a preliminary document.

A working financial chronology may record events such as:

• purchase or sale of property;
• significant transfers;
• inheritance;
• business transactions;
• retirement or pension events;
• separation;
• issue of proceedings;
• Form E disclosure;
• questionnaires and replies; and
• material changes in income or assets.

The chronology itself should not decide whether a transaction amounted to non-disclosure, dissipation or misconduct. Those are conclusions requiring proper legal and evidential analysis.

Chronologies, patterns and coercive control

Chronologies can be particularly important where the significance lies not in one isolated incident but in a pattern of behaviour over time.

That is relevant in many domestic abuse and coercive-control cases.

A message, cancelled handover, financial restriction or communication incident may look relatively minor when read alone. A properly constructed timeline may show repetition, escalation, timing or a relationship between events that is difficult to see from hundreds of separate documents.

But the chronology still needs discipline.

Do not turn every unpleasant interaction into a chronology entry merely to create volume. The question is whether the event contributes materially to a live issue or evidenced pattern.

A chronology should reveal the pattern by organising the evidence — not manufacture a pattern by overloading the timeline.

The JSH Six-Question Check for chronology evidence

Before keeping an entry in your chronology, test it against six questions.

Using AI safely to build a Family Court chronology

Chronology work is one area where AI can be genuinely useful — but also where errors can be dangerous.

AI can help with tasks such as:

• sorting a list of confirmed events by date;
• standardising date formats;
• shortening long descriptions;
• identifying possible duplicate entries;
• grouping events by issue for analysis;
• checking whether evidence references are missing; and
• turning a detailed working chronology into a shorter draft for human review.

Every final chronology entry should be checked against the original source.

If the source says “approximately March”, do not allow AI to turn that into “12 March”. If the source records that an allegation was made, do not allow AI to rewrite the allegation as a finding.

Be equally careful about confidentiality. Family Court documents often contain children’s information, medical material, addresses and sensitive allegations. Understand how an AI service processes information before uploading case documents to it.

Common chronology mistakes

1. Including everything. A chronology should contain significant events, not every email and disagreement.
2. Writing submissions inside the event column. Record what happened. Save argument for the appropriate document or oral submission.
3. Presenting allegations as findings. Preserve the evidential status of disputed material.
4. Using inflammatory adjectives. “Outrageous”, “malicious”, “disgusting” and similar language rarely improve a chronology.
5. Failing to cross-reference evidence. A chronology is much less useful if the judge cannot locate the source.
6. Using the wrong date order. A court chronology should ordinarily proceed from earlier events to later events unless the court directs otherwise.
7. Confusing the date of the event with the date of the document. An event on 1 May may be recorded in a professional report dated 20 May.
8. Leaving obsolete bundle references. Page references must be checked when the bundle changes.
9. Using an issue-analysis table as though it were automatically the chronology required by the court. Working documents and preliminary court documents perform different functions.
10. Ignoring the latest court order. Case-specific directions take priority over a general template.

How to maintain a chronology during proceedings

The easiest chronology to prepare for a final hearing is the one that has been maintained throughout the case.

Useful points at which to update your private working chronology include:

• after a hearing;
• when a new order arrives;
• when Cafcass or another professional files a report;
• after significant disclosure is received;
• following a material safeguarding event;
• when arrangements materially change; and
• when new evidence alters your understanding of an earlier event.

Keep the source document beside the entry. Do not rely on memory months later.

Before a hearing

Check:

• the date order;
• spelling of names;
• court and case number;
• dates of orders;
• bundle references;
• whether disputed matters are labelled accurately;
• whether superseded entries need removal; and
• whether the chronology complies with the latest order and page limit.

Turning a messy case history into a usable chronology

Imagine you have 18 months of messages, six court orders, two Cafcass reports and several school emails.

Do not start by trying to write the court chronology.

A better process is:

1. Create a detailed working chronology from the source material.
2. Record the source beside every entry.
3. Identify the live issues in the proceedings.
4. Remove events that do not materially assist with those issues.
5. Combine repetitive entries where this can be done accurately.
6. Reduce descriptions to factual sentences.
7. Add the final bundle references.
8. Check the result against the latest order and PD27A.

This is evidence organisation before it is advocacy.

Once the evidence is properly organised, the advocacy usually becomes clearer.