Jurisdictional assistance

When you can't afford a lawyer ?

Financial problems, solutions to find a lawyer.

If you do not have the possibility of financially ensuring the court fees and in particular the fees of a lawyer to represent you in front of the court or during the negotiations, you are not alone.

Ask the jurisdictional assistance or a so called “Court Appointed” lawyer.

In many fields, for example in the event of divorce, more than 60% involve at least a side without lawyer.

There are, however, some solutions to find an inexpensive or free legal aid.

Jurisdictional assistance

The coverage of your transaction or costs of proceedings

If you hesitate to take advantage of your rights in justice because your resources are insufficient, you can profit from the jurisdictional assistance.

Financial aid : the State covers the totality or part of the expenses of your procedure or transaction (lawyer fees, remuneration of bailiff, consultancy fees.) This help depends on your incomes. It will be drafted to the representatives of justice (lawyer, bailiff.) who will assist you.

In front of which jurisdiction?

In front of all the legal jurisdictions:

court of first instance, District Court, Arbitration Court, Trade court, Court of appeals, supreme court.

And all administrative jurisdictions :

administrative court, administrative court of appeals, State Council.

In the event of friendly transaction apart from a lawsuit, whatever is the exit (failure or success), only the lawyer fees are then dealt with by the State.

The intervention of a lawyer can be covered by the State and granted to the people who meet the conditions of the jurisdictional assistance for a penal mediation, a penal composition, a measure or activity of assistance or repair pronounced towards a minor delinquent (article 12-1 of the ordinance of February 2nd, 1945 relating to delinquent childhood).

Who can benefit from it ?

You can benefit from it if :

• you are of French nationality ;
• or of foreign nationality :
  • o citizen of the one of the Member States of the European Union ;
  • o or citizen of a State having established an international convention with France ;
  • or usually residing in France in regular situation.

However, this condition of residence is not required in particular if you are minor, assisted witness, put in examination, defendant, defendant, is not condemned or not left civil.

The jurisdictional assistance can be granted in exceptional circumstances to moral persons (association, trade union…) provided that they :

• are of nonlucrative goal ;
• have their headquarters in France ;
• do not have sufficient resources.

What are the conditions of resources ?

The monthly average of your resources perceived between January 1st and December 31st of the year preceding the request, without taking account of the family and social allowances, must be lower than a level of resources fixed by decree and revalued each year.

The resources include :

• those of your spouse, partner, of your non emancipated minors and the people usually living with in your home

In the event of divergence of interest or if the procedure opposes between them the couple or partners or the people usually living at home, their resources will not be taken into account.

It is held account :

• salaries ;
• and of all other resources (rents, revenues, retirements, alimonies…) ;
• of the whole of your goods (movable and real…).

Are exempted to justify their resources :

• recipients of the RMI or the National Solidarity or Insertion Fund. Just provide your certificate ;
• people formulating a request on the base of the code of the military pensions of disability and the victims of the war ;
• victims of the most serious crimes of the attacks (of voluntary attacks to the life or the integrity of the person).

The jurisdictional assistance is also granted without condition of resources :

• with the person held, for a procedure before the Disciplinary commission of the penal establishment ;
• to the person in judicial custody, whose intervention of an court-appointed lawyer to discuss with him, is necessary.

The calculation of the resources

For 2007, the monthly average of the incomes perceived in 2006 must be :

• lower or equal to 874 euros, for the total jurisdictional assistance ;
• ranging between 875 and 1311 euros, for the partial jurisdictional assistance.

To these amounts, 157 euros for each of the first two people living to the residence of the applicant are added (ex: children, united, boyfriend or partner of a civil pact of solidarity) and 99 euros starting from the third.

Ceilings of the resources not to exceed to obtain the jurisdictional assistance
(figures applicable to January 1st, 2007)

If you do not meet these conditions of resources, the jurisdictional assistance can nevertheless be to you granted in exceptional circumstances, if your situation appears particularly worthy of interest in comparison with the object of the business or the foreseeable loads of the lawsuit.

You can also consult the practical Card of the ministry for Justice on the “Request for jurisdictional assistance”. The latter will help you in your step.

Information can be obtained from the courts, houses of justice and the right, town halls, associations, social welfare, access points to the right, free permanent lawyers…

The request for jurisdictional assistance

The form of request for jurisdictional assistance for the procedures being held in France is available in the courts, the houses of justice and the right or the town halls.

You can to also get it you on Internet while clicking here

Your request must specify the object of the procedure for which you claim the jurisdictional assistance. She will be refused to you if your resources and those of the people usually living with your hearth exceed the ceilings envisaged by the law or if your action appears obviously inadmissible or without base. In the event of urgency or, when the lawsuit puts in danger your living conditions (seized, expulsion), you can request the provisional admission from the jurisdictional assistance.

The jurisdictional assistance can also be required by any person usually residing, or having domiciled in a Member State of the European Union (except Denmark), like by any person nonamenable to a Member State of the Union but lying regularly or having domiciled and in regular situation in one of these countries, for a civil or commercial litigation which proceeds in France.

In addition, any person residing in France can ask to profit from the legal aid for a civil or commercial litigation which takes place in a Member State of the European Union other than Denmark.

For these litigations, the request for assistance must be formalized using a specific printed paper form available on line to the following address:
http://www.ccbe.org/doc/Fr

The file

Supplement, date and sign the file, by uniting the supporting documents indicated in the form. You must fill a printed paper form for each business for which you ask for the jurisdictional assistance.

Deposit it or send itto the office of jurisdictional assistance of the Court of Bankruptcy of your residence or place of lodging except if your business must be carried in front of one of the jurisdictions below appearing in the table :

The file can be deposited or sent according to the cases :

If you do not have a residence, you can address your request to the office of jurisdictional assistance established with the Court of Bankruptcy on which the organization depends on reception that you chose to domicile you.

Any inaccurate or incomplete declaration exposes the informant to criminal prosecutions. Moreover, you can be condemned to refund totality or part of the expenses dealt with by the State if the judge estimates that your request was abusive or dilatory; it was in particular intended to delay the moment when you were to carry out your obligations.

Which are the decisions ?

Once your file deposited, the office of jurisdictional assistance examines your request. It returns a decision :

• maybe of admission to the total or partial jurisdictional assistance
• maybe of rejection.

The decision is notified to you by mail.

In the event of decision of admission

The field of application of the jurisdictional assistance

The jurisdictional assistance can be to you granted

• for all the legal procedure ;
• for part of the legal procedure ;
• to make carry out a legal decision ;
• for a transaction apart from a lawsuit (honorary of lawyer) whatever is the exit .

It opens right to you to the assistance of a lawyer and to all the other auxiliaries of justice necessary (acknowledged, bailiff…) during the various stages of your procedure.

You can choose them freely. At the time of the deposit of your request, you must indicate the name of the professionals whom you met. In this case, it is necessary to join to your request a written certificate of their acceptance.

You lose the benefit of the jurisdictional assistance if the procedure were not committed in the year which follows the notification of the decision of admission to the jurisdictional assistance.

Extended from the assistance, at the time of the lawsuit

• If you profit from the total jurisdictional assistance, no expenses falls to you.
• If you profit from the partial jurisdictional assistance, the State deals with only part of the fees and the remuneration (emoluments) of the auxiliaries of justice.

The State will pay with the professional a lump sum fixed by decree and inversely proportional to your resources.

You must pour :

With lawyer : a complementary fee whose amount will be to fix freely with him beforehand in an agreement in writing. If you do not manage to put agreement to you on the amount, you can address to the barristers president about lawyers

With the other auxiliaries of justice (acknowledged, bailiff…) : a complementary fee whose amount is calculated on the basis of a tariff and your resources.

Extended from the assistance, after the procedure

You gain the lawsuit

The jurisdictional assistance will also apply to the procedures, acts or measurements of execution of the legal decision (seized for example).

If the amount of the judgment pronounced with your profit gets resources to you such as if they had existed at the day of the request for jurisdictional assistance, this one would not have been granted to you even partially :

• the jurisdictional assistance can be to you withdrawn;
• in the event of withdrawal, the lawyer can ask you for fees.

You lose the lawsuit

You are condemned at the expense (you must pay the expenses of the lawsuit). You are then held to refund with your adversary the expenses which it will have paid, except for the lawyer fees, except if the court deciSome Lawyersome differently.

You can also be condemned to refund to him a sum determined under the expenses (not understood in the costs), that it will have engaged. In the event of partial jurisdictional assistance, and if you were petitioning with the procedure, the judge can also put at your load the refunding of part of the expenses advanced by the State: appraise, social investigation, etc.

In the event of rejection of the decision of attribution

You have one month as from the notification of the decision of the office of jurisdictional assistance to exert a recourse.

In your declaration, you must indicate :

• facts and reasons for your recourse ;
• to join the justifying documents and information. For more information, address you to the office of the jurisdictional assistance on the steps to carry out. http://www.vos-droits.justice.gouv.fr/
  
  
  
  

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