Illegal fee

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