Obtaining an Enforceable Title in Debt Collection Cases

Abstract

If a creditor does not succeed in the extrajudicial collection of his money claim, in the Netherlands the debt is normally recovered by initiating ordinary court proceedings. This is necessary in order to obtain an enforceable title, which enables a creditor to enforce his claim. Research has shown that many judgments rendered by the court of first instance are default judgments. Although an enforceable title can be obtained relatively quickly in a default procedure, all formalities of the summons procedure have to be fulfilled. Additionally, the party initiating the procedure incurs costs, including court fees, bailiff’s fees and, where necessary, lawyer’s fees and other legal costs. This research aims to analyse other ways of debt collection that also result in an enforceable title, other than by means of a summons procedure resulting in a default judgment. For this purpose normative, empirical and comparative research has been conducted. The sub-questions concern the possibilities of judicial processing of debt collection cases; to what extent it is possible to make the European order for payment procedure available in domestic cases; what the possibilities for extrajudicial debt collection and to obtain an enforceable title in such an extrajudicial scheme are; what the characteristics of a debt collection case in the debt collection process are; and what the costs and benefits of debt collection cases are in the current default procedure for the judiciary, the creditor and the debtor, as compared with possible alternatives.

This research was conducted on request of the Research and Documentation Centre of the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice.

Keywords: debt collection, European order for payment, access to justice, Dutch debt collection market

JEL Classification: K40, K41, K49, K20, K12