Legal insurance

In short: The costs for lawsuits (in the first instance) can be up to 1.000 Euro.
1.000 Euro!?! How am I supposed to pay this? No problem! Please continue reading …

► Informations on legal costs.

Main ways to cover legal costs

There are three main ways to get your legal costs covered:

  1. unions,
  2. private legal insurances,
  3. “Legal aid” by the state.

1. UNIONs

  • Union members get legal insurance through their union. Often you have to be a member for at least three months before you can apply to get legal costs covered.
  • On top of that your lawsuits should not be caused before you were a member. So better join a union now!
  • Unions normally take 1% of your income as a membership fee.
  • Most union do not only cover the legal costs but actually do most of the paperwork for you. So you dont have do to everything on your own.
  • Most unions do only work together with their own lawyers. So you can not choose freely which lawyers you want.

► More informations on unions

2. PRIVATE LEGAL INSURANCES

  • Similar to unions you can join a private legal insurance. Again: its common that you have to be a member for at least three months before you can apply to get legal costs covered.
  • On top of that your lawsuits should not be caused before you were a member.
  • Private legal insurances wont help with the paperwork. But if they cover your lawyer costs then the lawyers should do most of the stuff for you anyway.
  • Normally you can choose your lawyer freely
  • Often private insurances require that part (100 to 300 Euro) of the costs are covered by yourself. This is called “cost sharing” (“Selbstbehalt”)

3. STATE Legal 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, then you can apply for “legal aid” from the state. Before filing a lawsuit you can calculate online if you qualify for “legal 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?
      • 3.000 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.
  • With legal aid you can choose your lawyer freely.

► More informations on legal aid.