Opinion ID: 2541631
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The In Forma Pauperis Statute

Text: Kentucky has long recognized that poor persons may be allowed to prosecute a civil action without paying costs or fees and with the assistance of appointed counsel. As originally enacted in 1798, the in forma pauperis statute provided that every poor person who shall have cause of action against any person within this Commonwealth, shall have, by the discretion of the court before whom he would sue, writ or writs original, and writs of subpoena, according to the nature of his cause, nothing paying for the same; and that the said court shall direct their clerk to issue the necessary process, shall assign to him counsel learned in the laws, and appoint all other officers requisite and necessary to be had for the speed of the said suit to be had and made, who shall do their duties without any reward for their counsels, help and business in the same. Act approved January 30, 17982 Litt. 39. The direct predecessor of our current in forma pauperis statute, extending the status to defendants, was enacted at least as early as the 1850s, and appears at page 286 in the 1860 edition of the Revised Statutes for the Commonwealth compiled by Richard H. Stanton: [A] poor person residing in this state may be allowed by a court to sue or defend a suit therein, without paying fees or cost, whereupon he shall have any counsel that the court may assign him, and from all officers all needful services and process, without any fees to them therefor, except what may be included in the costs recovered from the opposite party. This statute became section 884 of Carroll's Kentucky Statutes (1894), which in turn, upon the 1942 adoption of the Kentucky Revised Statutes, became our current in forma pauperis statute, KRS 453.190. The statute now provides in relevant part that [a] court shall allow a poor person residing in this state to file or defend any action or appeal therein without paying costs.