Requesting judgement at small claims

[car1sberg]

Hello

Sorry if this has been asked before, I can't seem to find it.

I have just requested judgement at small claims court online as the defendants did not respond to my claim. Does anybody know how long this typically takes to approve and then what the process is to retrieve the money back?

Thanks

The defendant should simply pay once you've got judgement. If they don't, you have to go back to court to get the judgement enforced.

@prh47bridge
Do you know how long they get to pay? I can see the judgement was issued yesterday. Thanks

There is no time limit as such. However, if they pay within one calendar month the judgement won't appear on their credit record, so there is a strong incentive to pay within that time. If they don't, you can consider taking enforcement action. Before going down that route, you need to be sure that they are able to pay. If they don't have the cash to pay or anything of sufficient value that could be sold to pay, enforcement action would be a waste of time and money.

Thank you. I have no doubt they have the money to pay.

@prh47bridge the paperwork I received from small claims to say judgement has been entered was very(!) brief, that's literally all it said. Will the defendants get the same letter, or do they get told they need to pay X amount by a certain date etc?

Thanks

There should be an order specifying how much they must pay. This will usually say it must be paid within 14 days.

@prh47bridge
Okay, thank you. I must say, considering it cost £185 to file the claim, the small claims process isn't very user friendly if you haven't done this before. I didn't get any paperwork at all when I first filed, nothing until this judgement issued paperwork. No post, no emails. No clear explanation for the way it works.
I also gather that it changes once the amount is over £5k, it's only just gone over this due to the interest that's accumulated. As I had no idea they needed to respond within 14 days I was waiting almost 3 months until I finally emailed and got a response to say I could request judgement. Not as straightforward as I'd assumed it would be!