Illegal fee

From Kompas

Last June my family went to the Central Jakarta Religious Court Office at Tanah Abang to draw up a will. In the process we came across some rather puzzling facts.

To begin with, upon registration (at table 1) we were asked to pay the administration cost of Rp 2,500 without any receipt. When paying the cost of the court session we were obliged to pay an additional fee almost twice the official cost printed on the receipt, i.e. Rp 70,000, and this additional payment was made without being mentioned on the receipt.

When the will had been completed we wanted to make copies of the documents, which later had to be legalized by the Religious Court Office. But we canceled it because we were informed that the cost for legalizing them was very high, i.e. Rp 15,000 for each document.

We were wondering whether the practice of taking illegal fees happens daily. It was true that they did not force clients to pay the illegal fees but they made a forceful appeal to which the clients could not possibly object.

Name and address

withheld