The short answer
Search any legal aid term you have been given and get a plain English explanation of what it means in practice. There are 25 terms here, covering the whole vocabulary you are likely to meet in a family case. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
Definitions, not advice. These explain what the words mean. They are general information about legal aid in England and Wales, and they cannot tell you whether you qualify. Only the Legal Aid Agency, or a provider working under its contract, can decide that.
Capital
Everything you own that could be turned into money: savings, investments, valuable items, and equity in property. Assessed in every legal aid case, whatever benefits you receive. More.
Certificate
The document confirming legal aid has been granted for representation, and setting out exactly what work it covers. Work outside its scope is not funded.
Contribution
Where legal aid pays for your case but you pay part of it yourself. Mediation has never been contributory. The current position.
Controlled work
Work a provider can authorise itself under its contract, without asking the Legal Aid Agency first. Legal Help and family mediation are controlled work, which is why a mediator can usually tell you the answer at the MIAM.
Disposable income
Your income after tax, national insurance, housing costs up to a cap, and fixed allowances for a partner and each dependant. Not what is left in your account at the end of the month.
Disregard
An amount left out of the assessment. The important ones are the £100,000 for assets in dispute, the equity disregard on your home, and the sliding scale for people aged 60 or over.
Domestic abuse gateway
The route back into legal aid for private family cases where abuse can be evidenced. The accepted evidence.
Exceptional Case Funding
Funding for a case that is out of scope, where refusing it would breach your human rights. Rare and hard to obtain, but real.
Family Help (Lower and Higher)
Levels of funding between initial advice and full representation. Lower covers negotiation; Higher covers work within issued proceedings short of a final contested hearing.
FL401
The application form for a non-molestation order or an occupation order. There is no court fee for it.
Help with Family Mediation
Funding for a solicitor to advise alongside mediation and to turn a mediated agreement into a consent order. Requires at least one actual mediation session; a MIAM alone is not enough. More.
Help with Fees
A separate scheme from legal aid that reduces or removes the fee to issue a court application. Different test, different form. More.
LASPO
The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which took most private family law out of scope on 1 April 2013. What it changed.
Legal Aid Agency
The executive agency of the Ministry of Justice that administers legal aid. It replaced the Legal Services Commission in 2013. You never apply to it directly; you apply through a contracted provider.
Legal Help
The lowest level of solicitor funding: initial advice and assistance, letters and negotiation, but no court representation.
Licensed or certificated work
Work the Legal Aid Agency must authorise before it starts, as opposed to controlled work. Full representation is licensed work, which is why it takes longer.
Means test
The financial assessment: gross income, disposable income and capital. All three must be inside the limits. More.
Mediation voucher
A government contribution of up to £500 per family towards mediation about child arrangements. Not means tested. Not legal aid. More.
Merits test
Whether the case is worth funding: prospects of success, and whether what you might gain justifies the cost. More.
MIAM
Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting. The first appointment, where a mediator explains the options and assesses whether mediation is suitable. Is it covered?
Passporting benefit
A benefit that gets you through the income test automatically. In practice now Universal Credit or Pension Credit guarantee credit. It does not passport the capital test. More.
Provider
A firm or service holding a contract with the Legal Aid Agency. Only a provider can take legally aided work.
Scope
Whether your kind of case is one legal aid can pay for at all. A separate question from whether you can afford a lawyer.
SMOD
Subject matter of the dispute. The rule that lets up to £100,000 of an asset you are actually arguing about be ignored in the capital assessment. More.
Statutory charge
How the Legal Aid Agency recovers what it spent, out of money or property you keep at the end of a funded case. It never applies to family mediation. It often does apply to solicitor funding.
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The five that matter most
If you only learn five, learn these, because almost every conversation with a provider turns on them.
- Scope is whether your kind of case can be funded at all.
- Means is whether you can afford to pay for it yourself.
- Merits is whether the case is worth funding.
- A contribution is money you pay while the case runs.
- The statutory charge is money recovered at the end, out of what you keep. It is not the same as a contribution, and it never applies to mediation.
Being refused is always a refusal on one of the first three. Ask which, because the answers are completely different. What to do about each.
Where to go next
- The full terminology page, if you would rather read the list than search it
- Family legal aid: the overview
- Eight things people wrongly believe about legal aid
- All free tools