Enforcement Proceedings Assistance

Obtaining money from an unscrupulous contractor is a tedious process. It consists of several stages:

• mediation (complaint procedure);
• achieving debt collection in court;
• enforcement proceedings.

Many citizens and company presidents believe that if efforts to reach an agreement with a debtor have failed, they will surely be able to collect the debt by going to court. Thus, upon achieving the long-awaited ruling after lengthy court proceedings, the collectors are overjoyed. What they forget, however, is that this ruling still has to be enforced, since often times a contractor is in no hurry to pay even after the court hearing.

This is the stage where the issue of enforcement proceedings arises. How is a court’s ruling enforced? How does one actually collect the money from the debtor?

This process is complex and labor-intensive. It takes just as long, sometimes even longer, than the immediate court proceedings themselves do.

Enforcement proceedings are governed by a special law: the Federal Law “On enforcement proceedings” as of 10/2/2007. After the court's ruling goes into effect, the writ of enforcement must be obtained to collect the debt.

Then the issue arises of where to submit the writ of enforcement. The law envisages the opportunity to file the document with the court enforcement officer that initiates the enforcement proceedings.

And it would seem that a person specially authorized by law will certainly be able to get your money back that the debtor is hesitant to pay. However, things aren't that simple.

By law, a court enforcement officer has a broad range of powers: he can obtain information from banks, from tax offices, from notaries, from the Pension Fund, from the Russian State Register, from practically any resources, and can also seize and sell the debtor's property.

In practice, however, institutions don’t always respond to court enforcement officers’ questions in a timely fashion. In fact, they might not even answer at all. However, if they do obtain the answers to the questions they're asking for, that also doesn't guarantee that you will get your money from them, since a court enforcement officer must issue the corresponding orders and send them to the necessary organizations. Taking into account the workload that court enforcement officers have, they may simply stop at just the request sending stage. Over that time, the debtor may just withdraw all of their money from their bank accounts and then there will be nothing to collect.

In addition to consulting the court enforcement officer, you have the ability to contact a bank directly with the writ of enforcement where the debtor has a bank account. This option doesn't guarantee that you’ll get your money, since the debtor might have withdrawn their money from their bank account or close it altogether by the time you contact their bank.

Considering all the circumstances we’ve just discussed, you can see how lengthy and difficult the debt collection process is and the serious time expenditures and labor-intensive work that it requires.

Word & Law’s (Pravo i Slovo’s) specialists will handle all of these issues for you, provide you a consultation, and recommend to you the most suitable method to collect your debt. We will help you at every stage of your debt collection.

You will always be kept in the know of what’s going on, obtaining an exhaustive report of the work that’s been performed.Give us a call and we will be happy to answer any questions you're concerned about!