CIVIL LEGAL ASSISTANCE

You are a 72 year old widow.  Excluding any pension credit you are entitled to, you have a combined state and superannuation pension of £13,500, and disposable capital of £7000.  You live in your own home, and pay council tax of £1,200 pa, and income tax of £670.

Your disposable income of £11,630 would previously have meant you didn’t qualify financially for civil legal aid.

You qualify financially for civil legal aid.

You will have to pay a maximum contribution based on income of £2730.75.  Normally you will pay this in 48 instalments of £56.89

You will not have to pay a contribution from your capital – the amount of savings you have is below £7,504 which is the limit below which no contribution is required.

But – talk to your solicitor – if they think the case will cost less than the maximum contribution we assess you should pay, we may be able to restrict your contribution. (But if the case eventually costs more than they estimated, we may still have to ask you to pay some or all of the rest of the assessed contribution.)

And you may be able to get some or all of your contribution back if

• the court orders your opponent to pay the costs of the case (and your opponent pays these) or
• you pay more in contributions than the cost of the case.