Payment of court fees for a non-property claim: what should be changed
An attempt to simplify the rules for paying court fees may lead to a situation of legal uncertainty when there is no regulatory rule in case of filing a lawsuit with several non-property claims.
This was warned by the Committee of the Ukrainian National Bar Association on Civil Law and Procedure following the analysis of the draft Law No. 11368 of 24.06.2024 «On Amendments to Article 6 of the Law of Ukraine «On Court Fee» regarding the payment of court fees for non-property claims».
As of today, pursuant to Part 3 of the said Article, the court fee for filing a claim that is both property and non-property in nature is paid at the rates established for property and non-property claims.
However, if the statement of claim combines two or more non-property claims, the court fee shall be paid for each non-property claim.
And the implementation of this rule leads to confusion in determining the amount of court fees. For example, in cases of eviction of several persons from residential premises, in some cases, the court proceeded from the fact that the court fee is payable as a single non-property claim, and in others - that the eviction of each person specified in the statement of claim is an independent non-property claim, and therefore the court fee must be paid separately for each of such claims (see the resolution of the Joint Chamber of the CCC of the Supreme Court of 18.09.2023 in case No. 758/5118/21).
Therefore, in cases where the plaintiff combines non-property claims against several defendants in one claim, the author of the legislative initiative proposes to replace two paragraphs of Part 3 of Article 6 of the Law with one paragraph as follows:
«For filing a claim that has both property and non-property nature, the court fee shall be paid at the rates established for claims of property and non-property nature (regardless of the number of non-property claims)».
But the UNBA drew attention to the construction of the provisions of Part 3 of Article 6 of the Law. Its first paragraph concerns the combination of property and non-property claims in one statement of claim, while the second paragraph concerns several non-property claims.
Therefore, if the law is implemented in the wording proposed by Draft Law No. 11368, there will be no regulation at all for cases where only non-property claims are combined in a statement of claim.
That is why, in the opinion of the UNBA Committee, it is more appropriate to leave the first paragraph in the current version, and to amend the second one as follows: «If the statement of claim combines two or more non-property claims, the court fee shall be paid in the amount of one non-property claim». In this case, the principle of legal certainty will be respected, as well as the possibilities for protecting civil rights and interests of a person will be expanded.
The full text of the comments and suggestions can be found at the link.
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