Where to file your Parental Order application, and what happens next

Form C51 ends with one of the least helpful instructions in English family procedure:

"Take or send this form to the court with a copy for service on each of the respondent(s)."

Which court? It does not say. Nor does the form tell you the fee. For a process with a hard six-month deadline, that is a surprising amount left to guesswork — and it is why families lose days at exactly the point they can least afford to.

This page covers the mechanics: where the application goes, what you send with it, what it costs, and what "issued" means. Guidance only, not legal advice.

Which court

A Parental Order application is made to the Family Court in England and Wales. There is a single Family Court, sitting in centres across the country, so the question is really which centre.

In practice you file at the Family Court serving the area where you live. Court centres are grouped into Designated Family Judge (DFJ) areas, and your case will normally be managed within yours. The court's own listing of centres and their addresses is on GOV.UK under "Find a court or tribunal" — search for your postcode and filter for family cases.

Two points worth knowing before you choose:

Some cases get transferred up. A straightforward, uncontested application stays in the Family Court before a judge of district judge level. Where there is a real legal difficulty — consent that cannot be obtained, payments that go beyond reasonable expenses, an application outside the six-month window — the case may be transferred to a High Court judge. You do not need to decide this yourself; the court will.
Scotland and Northern Ireland are different systems. Scotland's applications go to the Sheriff Court or the Court of Session; Northern Ireland's to the relevant court there. The forms and the witnessing rules differ. This page is England and Wales.

What you actually send

You are not filing one document. A Parental Order application is a small bundle even at the filing stage:

Form C51, completed and signed by both applicants (or by you alone under s.54A).
A copy of C51 for each respondent. Your surrogate is a respondent; so is her spouse or civil partner, if she has one and their consent is needed. The court does not photocopy for you.
The child's birth certificate — the full version, not the short form. For an overseas birth, the original plus a certified English translation where it is not in English.
Your marriage or civil partnership certificate, if you are applying as a couple who are married or in a civil partnership.
The fee, or a Help with Fees reference.

You do not need the surrogate's signed consent to file. That is the single most expensive misunderstanding in this process — see the A101A guide — because consent is normally taken by the Cafcass reporter after your application is issued, and waiting for it is how families burn the six-month window.

What it costs

The court fee for a Parental Order application is £270 — fee code FEE0275, "Application for a parental order", in the Family Proceedings Fees Order schedule published in leaflet EX50A.

If paying that would be difficult, Help with Fees can reduce or remove it. You apply on form EX160 (or online), based on your income, your savings and any benefits you receive. Apply for the remission before or at the same time as filing — the C51 has a field for the Help with Fees reference number, and producing it afterwards is more awkward than producing it at the time.

Budget separately for the things the court fee does not cover: certified translations of overseas documents, notarisation and legalisation abroad, and postage or courier costs for wet-ink originals. Those are frequently larger than the fee itself.

Filing, issue, and why the difference matters

Sending your application to the court is filing. The court then issues it — stamps it with a case number and a date, and returns sealed copies to you.

That gap matters more than it sounds, for two reasons.

The six-month deadline runs to filing, not to issue. Section 54(3) requires the application to be made within six months of the birth. You are not penalised for the court's processing time. But you are entirely exposed to your own: a C51 returned to you for an error has to be corrected and re-sent, and if that round trip crosses the six-month line you have a problem the court did not create.

Issue is what starts everything else. Under Family Procedure Rule 13.5, the court appoints your parental order reporter — the Cafcass officer — when the application is issued. Nothing in the Cafcass process begins before that. So the date you file is not just a deadline question; it is the date the eight-to-twelve-week Cafcass assessment clock can finally start.

What happens in the first few weeks

Once your application is issued, the sequence is fairly predictable:

The court issues and returns your sealed copies, with a first hearing date.
You serve the respondents. You must serve the sealed application, Form C52 (acknowledgement of service) and the notice of proceedings on each respondent at least 14 days before the first directions hearing, and they must file the acknowledgement within 7 days of being served (FPR 13.6–13.7). For a self-managed application this is the duty most often missed, because nothing prompts you to do it.
Cafcass is appointed and the reporter makes contact to arrange the visit.
The first directions hearing takes place — see what happens at the hearings.

The practical advice

File early, not on time. The six-month rule is unforgiving in principle and the court has no obligation to rescue you from your own timetable — though if you have already passed it, the position is less hopeless than GOV.UK makes it sound.

Aim to file by month four or five. That leaves room for a returned application, a missing translation, or the fortnight it takes to get an original document couriered back from another continent — all of which are ordinary, and none of which is survivable in week 25.

The free two-minute check tells you whether your case looks straightforward or whether it needs a specialist, before you give us an email address. PO Navigator tracks your six-month deadline and walks you through C51, C52 and A101A in the order they are actually needed.

Sources: Form C51; HFEA 2008 s.54; Family Procedure Rules Part 13; court fee £270, code FEE0275, EX50A. Positions stated here are as at September 2026. General information about the law of England and Wales, not legal advice.