Plain language law

New Zealand law explained for everyone

 Plain Language Law homepage
Back to
281: Waivers and directions
or “The Environment Court can change or waive rules about timing and paperwork to help make the legal process easier and fairer for everyone involved.”
You could also call this:

“The person in charge of court records can let you pay less, pay later, or not pay at all if you can't afford the fee or if it's for something important to everyone.”

You can ask the Registrar to let you pay less, pay later, or not pay at all for any fee that the law says you need to pay to the court. You need to fill out a special form to ask for this. The form might be a specific one that the law says you must use.

The Registrar can only say yes to your request if they’re sure about certain things. They might have to check some rules that the law tells them to use. They need to be sure that either you can’t pay all or part of the fee, or that your case is about something important for everyone (called a “matter of public interest”). For public interest cases, the Registrar also needs to think that your case probably won’t happen if you have to pay the full fee.

This text is automatically generated. It might be out of date or be missing some parts. Find out more about how we do this.

Next up: 281B: Review of exercise of power by Registrar

or “A judge can check and change what a court worker decides if someone asks within 10 work days”
Next

Part 11 Environment Court
Procedure and powers

281ARegistrar may waive, reduce, or postpone payment of fee

  1. A person may apply to the Registrar for a waiver, reduction, or postponement of the payment to the court of any fee prescribed by regulations made under this Act.

  2. The application must be made in the prescribed form (if any).

  3. The Registrar may waive, reduce, or postpone the payment of the fee only if the Registrar is satisfied, after applying any prescribed criteria, that—

  4. the person responsible for paying the fee is unable to pay the fee in whole or in part; or
    1. in the case of proceedings concerning a matter of public interest, the proceedings are unlikely to be commenced or continued if the powers are not exercised.

      Notes
      • Section 281A: replaced, on , by section 107 of the Resource Legislation Amendment Act 2017 (2017 No 15).