Seems like a really complex system to get your money. Here in Finland you would just start bankruptcy procedures by filing a claim in the court and with the court order saying they owe you it would go through in a day or two giving the other party 2 weeks time to pay or the court would take over all their assets and get you your money (and sell those assets if they don’t have it in cash)
A single verified unpaid bill is grounds for starting the bankruptcy procedure here so it is actually good tool to force big companies to pay. Though you can say goodbye to any future business relations with them if you do that.
Nope, when a company is struck off (directors given 2 months notice etc) its assets are frozen and passed to The Crown, who appoints an Official Receiver. They liquidate the assets, pay any creditors (pay themselves) and keep anything remaining.
So it's an absolutely nuclear debt collection option, and not fast. But the threat is real if the debtor can't argue the debt away.
I think the parent means that a system in which anyone can delay the payment of otherwise legitimate financial claims through an extremely protracted legal process is generally not very business-friendly. Of course, it is friendly to businesses that do not want to pay their liabilities, but on the cost of all the others. What good is a legal system if a company cannot enforce its rights in practice?
In Sweden you can actually do that before you’ve won the court case. If a lower court rules that you have a legal right to payment, then you can collect on that even if the other party appeals to a higher court. (They can then of course do the same to you if they win the appeal.)
But this is taking it a bit far IMHO. It’s confusing to me at least that a court order is not final (“has not yet won legal power” as we say in Sweden), but can still be used to force payment through the authorities (Kronofogdemyndigheten).
Getting though it however, and actually getting paid is a long and arduous process. That’s what the poster was up against.
It’s not THAT uncommon for some folks to just say ‘oh yeah, make me’, and while there are (usually) methods of doing it without their co-operation, it’s never easy.
If you are the only debtor and they have the money (no need to sell anything) then it is actually really fast. The court just takes over the bank accounts and sends you the money.
The real slowness of the process kicks in when there are multiple parties claiming their money and there isn’t enough assets to pay everyone.
Took me 17 days last time. A couple days for the claim to go trough the court and 14 days of time for them to pay. After that as they did not during the next bank day the court took control of their bank account and wired me the money. This was for unpaid wages but the same applies to any unpaid bill.
As I said it really only gets slow if the party does not have the money (as in they are bankrupt for real instead of just refusing to pay) and there are multiple parties claiming it. At that point it slows down to figure out how to split the assets.
There really isn’t any way to avoid this outside shutting down the company and moving the money out of the accounts but that will just dig the hole deeper as now they are not only contempt of court (not paying as ordered to when they are capable of) but they are also actively stealing/hiding someone else’s money.
Unpaid wages are usually treated very different from most claims, at least here, and do get handled in a very expeditious manner (labor commissioner in some places with literally raid workplaces sometimes).
Secured debt (pay me or I get this property - in the contract), can often get similar expedited treatment here in CA.
unpaid improvements (mechanics liens) on real or personal can get handled in a month or two here, but actually getting liquidated damages out of it can take a long time.
Other claims (general vendor bills, liquidated settlements), often meh.
A single verified unpaid bill is grounds for starting the bankruptcy procedure here so it is actually good tool to force big companies to pay. Though you can say goodbye to any future business relations with them if you do that.