Legal protection insurance
A legal expenses insurance is a private law contract of insurance where the insurer to pay premiums of the policy holder is obliged to provide the services necessary for the legal representation of the insured as agreed. The special rights, duties and obligations of the contracting parties to a legal protection insurance contract are determined by the Insurance Contract Act (VVG) and its contractual agreements, which are regularly concluded in the form of general terms and conditions. The General Association of the German Insurance Industry (GDV) published the General Conditions for Legal Protection Insurance (ARB 2012) for the last time in 2012, updated non-binding model conditions that are frequently used in practice. For certain legal expenses insurance benefits, in addition to general conditions, special conditions are often agreed.
Scope of services
Without a cover limit or up to the amount of cover agreed in the contract (usually € 500,000 per legal protection case), the legal protection insurers assume the following costs:
- the statutory lawyer fees of the lawyer freely chosen by the insured person
- Witness fees / expert fees (not for extrajudicial private opinions)
- Court costs
- Costs of the opponent, insofar as the policyholder has to bear them
- Foreclosure costs
Penalty deposits - usually up to € 50,000 - are also accepted in order to protect the policyholder from imprisonment. Fines and fines are not accepted.
Mostly deductibles are agreed; typical deductibles are € 150 to € 250 per legal protection case. Whether the deductible can be ruled out by a small additional premium should be clarified when the contract is concluded. The clause used by some legal protection insurances, according to which a downgrade to a higher deductible class does not apply if the insured person chooses a lawyer recommended by the insurance company, was ineffective according to a judgment of the Bamberg Higher Regional Court. The BGH did not share this view. A no-claims system with variable excess does not violate the principle of free choice of lawyer if the decision on the choice of lawyer lies with the policyholder and the limit of inadmissible psychological pressure is not exceeded.
The insurance cover is valid throughout Europe and also in the neighboring countries of the Mediterranean, not to include Europe ( Algeria , Morocco , etc.), also on the to Portugal belonging Madeira and the Azores and on to Spain belonging to the Canary Islands . Many companies also offer worldwide insurance cover for stays abroad of six to twelve weeks. In these cases, there is often limited insurance coverage, e.g. B. only your own lawyer fees are covered up to three times the costs of a German lawyer - the sum insured is regularly limited to € 30,000.
Basically: Minor children are also insured. Unmarried children of legal age are also insured if they have not yet taken up a permanent job. For children of legal age, co-insurance with some insurers ends on their 25th or 27th birthday. For children of legal age, however, there is basically no protection as the owner, renter or driver of a motor vehicle (traffic legal protection). Some insurers also include traffic legal protection for children who are co-insured of legal age at no additional cost.
Benefit case
The prerequisite for legal protection insurance to be required is always the existence of a legal protection case. This is understood to mean “the actual or alleged violation of legal obligations”. Therefore z. B. preventive legal advice is not yet covered by the insurance.
In compensation legal protection, the legal protection case is determined after the occurrence of the damaging event, in family and inheritance legal protection according to the event that results in the change in the legal situation, and in criminal law protection according to the time of the allegation.
The insurers also check whether the prosecution offers sufficient prospect of success and whether the insured is not accused of having acted culpably . Usually, as part of a coverage request, it is checked whether the legal dispute is insured.
Types of insurance and benefits
Legal expenses insurance today is usually structured in a modular way. So you can decide whether to insure a complete package that covers all (offered) types of benefits, or to limit yourself to insurance cover for certain areas of life, such as B. on traffic legal protection, labor legal protection or housing and property legal protection. In practice, services are usually combined into higher-level modules and offered in products such as private, professional and traffic legal protection. Depending on the module, the services listed below are then included. However, there are also dependent services that cannot be concluded separately. So z. B. no professional legal protection without a private legal protection. The reason for this lies in the interaction between private and professional life. In other words, the origin of the insured event at work can be in the private sector and vice versa. The specific risks covered by the insurance can be found in the ARB that are enclosed with the insurance policy .
The following packages are often offered:
- Section 21 (3) ARB traffic legal protection for one or more vehicles (license plate number must be specified)
- Section 21 (11) of the ARB traffic legal protection for all vehicles of the family
- § 22 ARB driver legal protection (for drivers of other vehicles)
- § 23 ARB private legal protection for the self-employed
- § 24 ARB professional legal protection for the self-employed, legal protection for companies and associations
- § 25 ARB private and professional legal protection for the self-employed
- § 26 ARB private, occupational and traffic legal protection for non-self-employed
- § 27 ARB agricultural and traffic legal protection
- § 28 ARB private, professional and traffic legal protection for the self-employed
- § 29 ARB legal protection for property and rent
Based on the current ARB 2002 insurance conditions, the following types of benefits are offered in the various packages:
Legal protection for damages
Only the assertion of claims for damages is insured. The defense is partly covered by liability insurance.
- Examples
- traffic accident
- Fall in the supermarket
- Wrong advice when buying shares
- Compensation for insult
Legal protection at work
Disputes arising from existing employment and service relationships are covered.
- Examples
- Termination by the policyholder
- Incorrectly (or not at all) issued job reference
- Failure to pay wages / salaries
- Aid dispute by an official
- Company pension disputes
Housing and property legal protection
First of all, the property in question must be insured according to its type of use - is it a rented apartment, a condominium, an owner-occupied single-family house or a rented / leased unit?
Only this risk is then also covered, for example, if only tenant legal protection has been taken out, then a dispute with your own subtenant from the sublease contract is not insured.
As part of this type of benefit, individual garages, jetties or long-term campsites can also be secured.
- Examples
- Termination of personal use by the landlord
- Rent reduction due to defects
- Disputes with the homeowners association about the housing benefit bill
- Disputes with neighbors about border planting
- but also disputes with the city / municipality
Legal protection in contract and property law
Disputes arising from contracts and from legal obligations as well as from real rights to movable property are covered here.
- Examples of contractual disputes
- Warranty claims from sales contracts
- Loan disputes
- Disputes with the cell phone provider about the bill
- Examples of disputes arising from legal obligations
- GoA - management without a mandate (you have the neighbor's car towed to save it from the flood, he does not pay the towing costs)
- unjustified enrichment (you accidentally transfer money to the wrong account, the recipient of the payment does not repay)
- Examples of disputes arising from rights in rem
- Surrender of your property (the 5-year-old son gives away his bike, the recipient does not take it out)
Legal tax protection before courts
Only the action before a German tax court or administrative court is covered here. There is just as little insurance cover for the regularly necessary prior objection as for an action before a foreign court.
- Examples
- Business expenses are not recognized in the income tax return
- the community increased the cost of sanitation
- the customs authorities levy import duties
Social court legal protection
Here, too, insurance cover only exists for legal proceedings before German social courts.
- Examples
- Disputes from the statutory social insurance - the disability pension is not recognized, the unemployment benefit II ( Hartz IV ) is incorrectly calculated, the DRV Bund or a regional carrier of the DRV does not take over a rehabilitation measure; the entry of marks or the increase in the degree of disability is not recognized for the severely disabled
Administrative legal protection in traffic matters
Everything to do with driving licenses - issue, withdrawal, restrictions, requirements, etc.
- Important
- If the driver's license is withdrawn or a driving ban is imposed in the context of criminal or regulatory offense proceedings, it is a dispute arising from criminal legal protection or administrative offense legal protection.
For insurance contracts based on older insurance conditions, d. H. ARB before 1994, there is regularly only one s. G. Driving license legal protection. Only disputes due to the re-issuance, withdrawal and limitation of the driving license are insured here. The requirement to keep a logbook is here z. B. not insured.
Disciplinary and professional legal protection
If disciplinary regulations (e.g. civil servants, soldiers) or professional ethics (e.g. doctors, pharmacists, lawyers) apply to the policyholder, the relevant procedures are insured under this type of benefit.
- Examples
- A police officer may be disciplined for an offense in his spare time.
- After a complaint from a client, the lawyer’s license should be withdrawn.
Criminal legal protection
Defense in criminal proceedings is only insured to a limited extent. A distinction is made here between traffic law and non-traffic law offenses.
In the context of this type of service, the allegation made by the investigating authorities is decisive. In the case of traffic law allegations, insurance cover exists if the policyholder is not convicted of an intentional criminal offense. The insurer pays the fees and advances incurred during the procedure. If the policyholder then z. B. convicted of having willfully committed an accident escape , he is obliged to repay everything to the insurer. An assault on the road (is typical of the so-called tailgaters case on the highway with tailgating) is regarded as traffic law offenses, even if coercion may be committed outside of road transport. On the other hand, an insult following a traffic law offense would be a separate criminal offense that is not directly related to road traffic and is therefore not covered by traffic legal protection.
In the case of accusations that are not related to traffic law, insurance cover is only provided for offenses that are also punished if they are committed negligently. If an act is accused, which according to the Criminal Code is only punished with willful commission, or if a crime is accused, there is no insurance cover. The insurer does not check whether the act was committed. The outcome of the proceedings does not change the decision either. If, for example, the criminal proceedings are discontinued because of insult , there is still no insurance cover.
- Examples of insured allegations
- negligent assault
- many offenses of the Narcotics Act and the Weapons Act
- Examples of uninsured allegations
- intentional injury
- insult
- theft
- murder
- homicide
- coercion
- Reenactment
Special criminal legal protection
The special criminal legal protection is designed by the legal protection insurers in order to achieve an early and final termination of criminal proceedings.
The special criminal legal protection therefore offers the financial means to:
- to commission specialized lawyers with the comprehensive defense,
- to include criminal charges of intentional offenses as long as there is no final conviction for intent,
- to finance expert opinions that were not initiated by a court, but by the defense in advance.
The difference between special criminal legal protection and general criminal legal protection is that the latter is usually only covered if the policyholder is accused of a negligently committed criminal offense in the form of an offense.
Administrative offense legal protection
The costs of the defense in the administrative offense or fine proceedings are covered. There is even legal protection for intentional acts.
- Examples
- Speeding
- Red light violation
- Noise pollution
- Seat belt compulsory
- exception
- Proceedings due to stopping and parking violations are not insured (risk exclusion).
Advisory legal protection
If the legal situation of the insured changes in the area of family law, civil partnership law or inheritance law, the costs of legal advice will be covered.
There is usually no legal protection for extrajudicial or judicial activity. Often, legal protection for advice that has already been given is no longer applicable if the lawyer continues to act.
- Examples
- Separation / divorce
- birth of a child
- Death of a relative
The regulation of one's own inheritance, i.e. the creation of a will, is not insured in the absence of any change in the legal situation. Likewise, there is no cost protection if the insured person wants advice on whether the rich heirloom may change his will while he is still alive. So first you have to wait for the death.
Victims legal protection
Legal protection exists here for the active prosecution of offenders. In the insurance conditions , the criminal offenses that the perpetrator must be accused of are precisely described.
Often there is insurance cover for an accessory action . Here the policyholder can, so to speak, join an indictment by the public prosecutor and contribute to the punishment of the offender himself.
The victim is also insured under the perpetrator-victim compensation scheme. The perpetrator is trying to make amends for the crime.
The costs of assistance to the injured are also covered.
Legal protection in maintenance matters
In the case of disputed maintenance, e.g. B. in the case of alleged paternity, if a German family court has jurisdiction, the insurer will cover the costs for lawyers and courts up to a certain amount (€ 30,000). Deductible here 500 €, waiting time one year.
Legal protection in matrimonial matters
The protection of legal interests is insured. B. because of divorce or divorce cases before a German family court. Both the policyholder and his / her spouse receive insurance coverage. Deductible here € 500, a maximum of € 30,000 insured sum per legal protection case, three years waiting period.
In contrast to Germany, in Austria divorce cases and disputes that are causally related as well as legal disputes between parents and illegitimate children are not insured if the insured event occurs within one year of the dissolution of the household.
Exclusions from benefits
Legal protection insurance does not cover the cost of all disputes.
On the one hand, the dispute must be able to be assigned to one of the insured types of benefits. If this is not possible, there is no legal protection (example: dispute arising from school law). In addition, a number of risk exclusions are mentioned in § 3 ARB.
Here are just a few of the most common exclusions:
- Defense against claims for damages is just as uninsured as active criminal prosecution (exception: the aforementioned victim legal protection).
- Disputes with your own legal protection insurer are just as excluded as lawsuits before the constitutional court or international courts of law.
- Disputes that are causally related to gaming (on this: LG Karlsruhe, judgment of April 28, 2006, Az. 9 S 374/05 ) or betting contracts, profit commitments, forward or comparable speculative transactions as well as the purchase, sale, administration of Securities (e.g. shares, bonds, fund shares), value rights that are equivalent to securities, participations (e.g. in capital investment models, silent companies, cooperatives) and their financing are, according to § 3 para. 2 lit. f ARB 2010 not covered.
- As a rule, the construction risk exclusion applies (Section 3 (1) lit. d ARB). Put simply, everything that is related to a construction project is excluded. Examples: building a new house (dispute with neighbors, craftsmen, city), buying a new condominium (dispute with property developer or broker), renovation measures (dispute over building permit), financing (dispute with banks, building society).
- Exclusion of benefits for costs that arose in connection with an amicable settlement, insofar as they do not correspond to the ratio of the result sought by the policyholder to the result achieved ( AG Wiesbaden, judgment of 16 December 2010, Az. 93 C 4000/10 ).
The case law has opposed some exclusion clauses and limited them:
- an exclusion of benefits when asserted for the first time more than three years after termination of the insurance contract is only effective if the policyholder is not to blame for the failure to meet the deadline
The question of which disputes are covered by the generally abstractly formulated exclusions from benefits and which are not regularly preoccupies the courts. The magazine Finanztest of Stiftung Warentest examined 156 published court cases between 2012 and 2017 between consumers with legal protection insurance and legal protection insurers. The interpretation of such exclusion clauses was disputed in 32 of the 156 lawsuits. The customer won 19 times and the insurer 13 times.
A coverage process, i.e. a lawsuit against your own legal protection insurance, is risky for the policyholder. Because the cover suit is not part of the scope of legal protection insurance. The customer therefore bears the risk of having to bear the court and legal fees themselves in the event of a defeat. This means that he has a risk of litigation costs that he actually wanted to avoid by taking out legal protection insurance. The Stiftung Warentest advises those insured against legal protection who shy away from this risk and still want to take action against the rejection of their insurance cover to complain to the arbitration board Versicherungsombudsmann e. V. in Berlin. The arbitration procedure is free of charge for consumers. The arbitrator can oblige the legal protection insurance to cover.
waiting period
Insurance companies generally also require a waiting period, as special dangerous circumstances as well as a hidden risk can arise. In principle, there is a period of three months after the conclusion of the contract. The scope of benefits does not include legal disputes that occurred before the commencement of insurance. A three-month period applies to the following areas of law:
- Employment Law
- Tax law
- Social law
- Contract law
- Tenancy law
In the case of prior insurance and in the area of criminal and traffic law, there is usually no waiting time.
The following service modules of legal protection insurance can be taken out without waiting:
- Criminal justice protection
- Legal protection for damages
- Administrative offense legal protection
- Professional and disciplinary legal protection
- Advisory legal protection for inheritance law, family law and civil partnership law
Legal bases
Legal protection insurance is based on the General Legal Protection Conditions (ARB). The General Association of the German Insurance Industry publishes sample terms and conditions that are usually adopted by the member companies.
Due to legal requirements, no legal expenses insurer may simultaneously be active in another (insurance) line of business. The background is on the one hand the exclusion in the ARB that no insurance cover is granted against the legal expenses insurer and on the other hand that no mixed calculation may be carried out between the individual divisions. Even if large legal protection companies appear on the market under the same name as the life and composite insurers belonging to the group, or offer their tariff on the same policy with household insurance, legal protection insurance is still a legally independent company.
Legal expenses insurance in the test
In the test of legal protection packages for non-self-employed (November 2014) the Stiftung Warentest came to the result that 22 of the 55 tested packages were "good". It assumes that legal protection offers will remain attractive to customers in view of the increased remuneration for lawyers in 2013 due to changes in the Lawyers' Remuneration Act . To the apparently still widespread error that a legal protection policy would pay for all conceivable disputes, Stiftung Warentest reacted by publishing an overview of the so-called basic protection. This shows which disputes are insured in individual areas of life and which are not. In addition, a few months later, typical excuses from insurers who want to refuse protection, as well as the possibilities of reacting to them, were published.
In its study in January 2012, Stiftung Warentest, when comparing combined insurances for private , occupational and traffic legal protection, including rental legal protection, came to the conclusion that insurers would offer more good legal protection rates, but that even the best offers do not help with every dispute. The insurance conditions are peppered with exclusions from benefits. The best insurance packages cost between around € 350 and € 400 a year, but there are also much cheaper offers for less than € 250 a year that are hardly worse. Traffic legal protection and rental legal protection are often available individually for less than € 100 per year. Compared to the previous test in 2009, the Stiftung Warentest 2012 found more tariffs in which at least some of the legal and court costs of disputes relating to investments were insured. The offer that insurers pay for mediation was described as relatively new . A mediator helps as a neutral person to settle a dispute without a court.
history
Legal protection insurance is still a young branch of private insurance. However, there were first forerunners as early as the Middle Ages in the form of cooperative legal proceedings by guilds and guilds.
In the 19th century, interest groups and protection associations (e.g. trade unions, employers' associations, farmers' associations, credit protection associations, house and landowners' associations) emerged. Among other things, their range of services included providing members with legal advice or legal assistance and offering members to conduct correspondence or negotiations.
After the Second World War, legal expenses insurance increased by leaps and bounds. The legislature has contributed to this by, on the one hand, with the Legal Advice Act, the associations' options for legal advice were restricted and, from 1952, so-called active damage compensation legal protection was insurable and criminal law protection was introduced.
An important milestone was the liberalization of the insurance market in 1994. In that year new legal protection conditions (ARB 94) came onto the market and the prior approval of the ARB by the supervisory authority was no longer required .
See also
literature
- Günther Bauer: Obligations of the policyholder in legal protection insurance . In: New legal weekly . Issue 10, 2011, pp. 646 .
- Harbauer: Legal protection insurance. ARB comment . 8th edition. Verlag CH Beck , Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-58528-9 .
- Helmut Plote: Legal protection insurance . 2nd Edition. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-57615-7 .
- Klaus Schneider: Legal protection insurance for beginners . 1st edition. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-60445-4 .
- Christian Völker: The case law on legal protection insurance in 2017 . In: BRAK-Mitteilungen . Issue 1, 2018, p. 11 to 19 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b General Conditions for Legal Protection Insurance (ARB 2012) ( Memento of the original from November 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ OLG Bamberg, Az .: 3 U 236/11
- ↑ BGH, judgment of December 4, 2013 - file number IV ZR 215/12
- ↑ Legal protection insurance portal: module private legal protection & professional legal protection
- ↑ BGH, judgment of 27.09.2017 - IV ZR 385/15 Rn 15; Judgment of April 15, 1992 - IV ZR 198/91 Rn 19; Christian Völker in: BRAK-Mitteilungen 1/2018, p. 12
- ^ Stiftung Warentest: Legal protection insurance in the test In: test.de from July 17, 2018
- ↑ a b Stiftung Warentest: How to defend yourself against the excuses of insurers In: test.de from February 3, 2015
- ↑ Waiting times after signing the contract
- ↑ Service modules of a legal protection insurance without waiting time ( memento of the original from October 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Legal protection insurance: family policies put to the test. In: test.de , November 18, 2014, accessed on November 20, 2014
- ↑ Protection with gaps. In: test.de , November 18, 2014, accessed on November 20, 2014
- ^ Stiftung Warentest: Legal protection insurance. In: Finanztest 1/2012, pp. 14–22.
- ↑ Stiftung Warentest: Legal protection insurance - eight offer "good" help. In: test.de , accessed on February 15, 2013
