Is legal aid a loan that has to be re-paid?

Hi,
Can anyone tell me if legal aid/public funding is a loan that has to be paid back or depending on circumstances is it just ongoing and you will never have to pay back any of the costs?

Just wondering as we are self repping against an ex that gets legal aid and currently it just seems to serve as a tool for her to continually harrass us... is this costing her any money or is it just a totally free way to be a complete pain in the a*rse - she is unemployed and a full range of benefits?

Thanks

Its a contact order case in which my partner is the applicant, she is the Respondant reciving legal aid.

Is legal aid in contact cases free? or does it have to be repaid?

LA is repayable from financial settlement received which obviously does not apply in contact cases. Unfortunately it appears that some people can have unlimited LA to play their "games". If there is a legal means to prevent such, I too would be interested to know!

E

Me too Elle if you are against a legally aided person you are in for a long ride as there are those out there that exploit the system out of revenge and bitterness!!!

Tell me about it! My ex was on legal aid. His bill was 20k. Mine (paying privately) was nearly £30k. I have been told that you need to multiply the legal aid bill by 3 to get an approximation of what it would have cost privately .. so in "real life" his bill was 60k!! He has had to have it as a charge against his property - and last time I looked interest was running at 8%...

TBH I really doin't know whether this was all because of him ... or whether he was being "encouraged" by his solicitor who seemed to be much more unpleasant than necessary ... although to be fair to her I guess all she knew about me was what he had told her

Hadenoughnow

SOunds like she can keep abusing the system then in the case of a contact order as there is no financial settlement, I understand that the LA may only be awarded if she say adheres to the CAFCASS recomendations for example, however that still doesn't stop her sending a letter a week/month from her solicitor about rubbish... 'you haven't fed him properly', 'you were rude to me when you picked him up', 'his coat got wet in the rain', 'you have bent his glasses'... the list goes on and on and on!!!!!

It doesnt' seem fair that she can keep doing this courtesy of the good tax payer! All my partner and I was is to see his son, we are good people and he enjoys his time with us... whoever could have thought it could be this difficult!!!!

My partners ex solicitor has applied for the Consent Order to state that the legal aid funding not be repaid as it will go towards the cost of her to buy a house. She is claiming 7,000 equity on the old FH which did NOT have her name on the mortgage and has run up 8,000 in bills to final hearing, which she wants him to pay, plus she has savings of about 4,000 already. How can her solicitor get away with this?