The form is C100. Before the family court will read a word of your application for a child arrangements order, you have to prove you attended a meeting first — and the £270 fee, the amount on the family court fees list (EX50) updated 13 July 2026, comes after that, not before.
This is the part nobody warns you about. You have decided, after months of trying everything else, that a court needs to set out when your child sees which parent. You sit down to make it official. And the system’s opening instruction is, in effect: not yet. First, a conversation about not doing this.
It sounds like an obstacle thrown in your path. It isn’t, quite. The meeting is a MIAM — a Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting — and it is a legal step, not a suggestion. The Children and Families Act 2014 put it there, ahead of the application, unless one of the exemptions applies. A single accredited mediator sees you, usually separately from the other parent, explains how mediation works, and assesses whether your dispute is suitable for it. If it is, and you both agree, you may never need the C100 at all. Cheaper. Faster. And it leaves the decision about your child’s week at a table with you, rather than waiting on a hearing to decide it for you.
There is money on the table for this, too. The Family Mediation Voucher Scheme puts up to £500 — the cap as of 13 July 2026 — toward mediation where there is a dispute about a child. It is not means-tested; what you earn or hold is irrelevant. One voucher per family, and an accredited mediator applies for it, not you. You can find one through the Family Mediation Council, and if you want the plain-English version of any of this before you commit, GOV.UK and Citizens Advice have it for free.
But mediation only works when two people will sit down. Sometimes the other parent won’t engage. Sometimes there are safety reasons it would be wrong to try — and the exemptions exist precisely for those: evidence of domestic abuse, a child-protection concern, genuine urgency, or a MIAM you already attended in the last four months. There is a companion form, the C1A, for setting out allegations of harm alongside your application. When mediation is closed to you, the MIAM’s job shrinks to one thing: the mediator confirms you came, and the gate opens.
Now the form itself. The C100 is longer than it looks, and it is exact. It wants the children’s full names and dates of birth. It wants everyone with parental responsibility, and everyone the children currently live with. It wants the order you are actually asking for — a child arrangements order is what most people come for, but the same form also produces prohibited steps orders (to stop the other parent doing something, like taking the child abroad) and specific issue orders (to settle one disputed question, like which school). They are all section 8 orders under the Children Act 1989, and naming the wrong one is easy. It wants the mediator’s details, or your exemption, in the right box, on the right page — or it is sent straight back.
And that is the real antagonist here. Not the other parent. Not the court. The return-to-sender. The application that comes back because the MIAM section was left blank. The weeks — actual weeks of a child’s actual life — lost because “specific issue order” was written where “prohibited steps” belonged, and nobody caught it until the envelope arrived home again.
This is where it helps to have something that has read the form before. Chris — eLitigant’s technology, not a person and not a helpline — walks the C100 with you a question at a time. It knows the MIAM comes first, and asks where you are with it before anything else. It knows the difference between a prohibited steps order and a specific issue order, and helps you name the one you actually mean. It fills the fields in your own words, checks that nothing you have written contradicts itself, and hands you the completed application to read, sign and submit yourself. It does not go to court for you. It does not give you legal advice, and it does not take your side. It gets the document right so the process can’t send it back over a blank box.
You still have to attend the MIAM. You still have to decide. But once you are through the gate, the form waiting on the other side is one you can finish tonight, correctly, and be done with.
Ask Chris
The form will still be here when you’re ready. So will we.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
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