Summary

According to valid procedural legislation, distribution and determination of procedural expenses generally takes place in two stages in civil court. According to § 173 of the Code of Civil Procedure (CCP), the court which adjudicates a matter shall set out the division of the procedural expenses between the participants in the ruling on termination of the proceeding (what part of the procedural expenses must be paid by which party of the proceeding). A court shall not state the expenses in money in the ruling on termination of the proceeding (except the exception in CCP § 1741). According to subsection 174 (1) of the CCP, a participant in a proceeding has the right to demand that the court determine the procedural expenses in money only after the court decision concerning the division of costs enters into force.

Matters concerning procedural costs, especially the extrajudicial representation costs, have recently come under the intense scrutiny of the Supreme Court and the legislator. So, the Supreme Court has made several principal decisions on the procedure of compensating procedural costs and the legislator has initiated a draft Act that extensively amends the valid procedure for compensating procedural costs. The article views three decisions of the Supreme Court, the first of which changed the procedure for determination of representative costs in matters on petition, the second explained the matters regarding admission and verifying of representative costs, and the third one stated that determination of representative costs is administration of justice in its nature. The article also views the bottlenecks that may occur in relation to the amendments to the procedure of determination of procedural costs.