Legal costs aid (“Prozesskostenhilfe”, short: “PKH”)
If you have no legal insurance but have low income (minimum wage) and you can not cover the legal costs yourself and you do not expect to become rich in the next 4 years, then you can apply for “legal aid” from the state. Before filing a lawsuit you can calculate online if you qualify for “legal costs aid”: “PKH Rechner“.
As thumb of rule you can ask yourself these questions if you want to know if you would get legal aid:
- Do you have much more then
- minimum wage income?
- 1.500 euro per month income?
- 2.500 Euro lying around somewhere?
- If your answers to these questions are “NO”, then you should get legal aid.
If you get legal aid from the state, then the state will ask you every year for 4 years if you did become rich in the meantime so you can pay back (at least some of) the money. “Rich” means: an answer to one of the questions above is YES.
If you cancel your lawsuit before the first court hearing, then you dont have to pay any court costs. Cost will be reduced as well if you reach an agreement with your boss before the end of the second court hearing, meaning before the courts ruling.
With legal costs aid you can choose your lawyer freely.
Templates, Formulars and explanations
Application template
- Deutsch
- English
Info sheet for legal aid application
Attachment formular for application (“declaration of personal and economic circumstances”)
Fill-in help for the attachment of the application
Together with or after sending the application for legal aid to court you have to send the filled out attachment with proofs for each relevant income / expense. If you have any questions check out the “fill-in help” and get help. Lawyers can help with it as well.
Below you can see how the legal aid application looks like.
