The Legal Aid Charge
An important element of Legal Aid is that if you have won your case, you may have to pay the cost back to the State. Most people understand that, but the rules (as one might expect!) are not so simple.
For compensation cases, it's fairly easy to understand. In most cases your solicitor will negotiate a settlement that requires the other party's insurer to pay the legal costs on top. For all sorts of reasons, it may be that the insurer doesn't have to pay all the costs (such as a specialist report that wasn't helpful) and you will have to meet that out of what was paid. If the other party wasn't insured, then you will have to meet all your costs out of what was recovered, and take action to recover them from the opponent.
It is in family cases that the Charge particularly bites. If there was a dispute over the house, even whether it should be sold now or later; if a lump sum order is made or division of house sale proceeds; or if other assets, such as life policies are either transferred or preserved - then the Charge applies.
In family cases only, the Commission has the power not to require the costs to be paid back immediately, if satisfied that it would cause hardship and that the property was the client's home or money recovered would be used to provide a new home. The Charge will then be registered against the home or new home until it is sold in the future. It will carry interest at 1 per cent over base rate, so most people aim to repay it by instalments.