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Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-12-127

Pauper's oath

Applied in 6 court decisions — leading case Patterson v. Tennessee Department of Labor & Workforce Development (2001)

Most recently applied in Nathan E.Brooks v. Board of Professional Responsibility (May 2019)

Code 1858, § 3192 (deriv

How often courts cite this section

1981199020002010201910
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

(1) Any civil action may be commenced by a resident of this state without giving security as required by law for costs and without the payment of litigation taxes due by: Filing the following oath of poverty: I,, do solemnly swear under penalties of perjury, that owing to my poverty, I am not able to bear the expense of the action which I am about to commence, and that I am justly entitled to the relief sought, to the best of my belief; and

(2) Filing an accompanying affidavit of indigency as prescribed by court rule.

(3) The filing of a civil action without paying the costs or taxes or giving security for the costs or taxes does not relieve the person filing the action from responsibility for the costs or taxes but suspends their collection until taxed by the court.

Current official text: Tennessee Code (LexisNexis). Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Tennessee statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.