Legal Aid in England

[fadeout73]

Can anyone tell me if you are entitled to Legal Aid (with contribution) if you own your house? Husband and wife are both unemployed.

[Ethel]

Unemployment gives you an automatic right to free legal advice for your defence in criminal cases.

For civil matters you can use the eligibility calculator here:
http://www.communitylegaladvice.org.uk/en/lega laid/calculator.jsp

[TCL-MUMPING]

Ethel, it has to be Income Based Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA), the Contributions Based JSA doe not give automatic entitlement.

[TCL-MUMPING]

Also, the fact that someone is unemployed does not mean they are in receipt of JSA in the first place.

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The husband was made redundant in february and is receiving JSA (not sure which one), the wife is on income based JSA and has been for years. They asked at the CAB and got told that because they own their house they would not be entitled to any Legal Aid.

[Mr Veritas]

This:~
http://www.legalservices.gov.uk/public.asp
is the Government Official website for Legal Aid.
Hopefully,it will answer all your questions.

[Ethel]

fadeout - what area of law are they trying to get legal aid for?

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Hi Ethel, It is a family matter about her mother & father's Will, her sister has taken the lot even though she wasn't entitled to it all (there are 4 of them) and they want to contest it. It has now came to light that the sister might not be father's daughter (we all think she might be the lodger's).

[bednobs]

if they are entitled to legal aid and win, and get some money, they will be requested to pay the legal aid money back.
who were the executers of the will? if they have distributed the estate wrongly, it is indeed very serious. Hwever, you use of "contesting" the will seems to imply that it wasn't distributed wrongly, just that your friend dosent agree with what was in the will? You dont have to be a relative to be a beneficiary. there are usually only very few grounds for contestng a will, and it's an expensive business - for example any benefit might be taken up by the solicitors fees. even if legal aid is udesd, as i said if there is money involvd they will usually be asked to pay it back.
What might be an idea is to get a copy of the wil frist and see what it actually says. If it says "all to (sister)" then the dont have much chance