How can I handle forms authentication timeout exceptions in ASP.NET?

This is why many systems include timers on the page to give approximate timeout times. This is tough with interactive pages. You really need to hook ajax functions and look at the return status code, which is a bit difficult.
One alternative is to use code based on the following which runs early in the page lifecycle and perform an ajax redirect to a login page. Otherwise you are stuck trying to intercept the return code from ajax and in asp.net where the ajax is done ‘for you’ (ie not a more manual method like jQuery) you lose this ease of detection.

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/tutorials/aspnet/7262426f-3c65-4c90-b49c-106470f1d22a/build-an-aspnet-session-timeout-redirect-control.aspx

for a quick hack you can try it directly in pre_init
http://forums.asp.net/t/1193501.aspx

Edit
what is wanted are for forms auth timeouts, not session timeouts. Forms auth timeouts operate on a different scale than session timeouts. Session timeouts update with every request. Forms auth tickets aren’t actually updated until half of the time goes by. So if you have timeouts set to an hour and send in one request 25 minutes into it, the session is reset to an hour timeout, the forms auth ticket isnt touched and expires in 35 minutes! To work around this, sync up the session timeout and the forms auth ticket. This way you can still just check session timeouts. If you don’t like this then still – do the below and sync up the timeouts and then parse the auth ticket and read its timeout. You can do that using FormsAuthentication.Decrypt – see:

Read form authentication cookie from asp.net code behind

Note that this code requires that upon login you set some session value – in this case its “UniqueUserId”. Also change the login page path below to fit yours.

protected void Application_PreRequestHandlerExecute(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            //Only access session state if it is available
            if (Context.Handler is IRequiresSessionState || Context.Handler is IReadOnlySessionState)
            {
                //If we are authenticated AND we dont have a session here.. redirect to login page.
                HttpCookie authenticationCookie = Request.Cookies[FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName];
                if (authenticationCookie != null)
                {
                    FormsAuthenticationTicket authenticationTicket = FormsAuthentication.Decrypt(authenticationCookie.Value);
                    if (!authenticationTicket.Expired)
                    {
                        if (Session["UniqueUserId"] == null)
                        {
                            //This means for some reason the session expired before the authentication ticket. Force a login.
                            FormsAuthentication.SignOut();
                            Response.Redirect("Login.aspx", true);
                            return;
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }