Enforcing judgement options

[car1sberg]

Hello,

I filed a case at small claims court against somebody, they didn't respond, so I was able to request judgement and this was issued a couple of weeks ago and again ignored so I now have enforcement options. I'm finding it all quite confusing and I'm not sure what to choose.

I'm thinking perhaps the ordering the debtor to attend court for questioning regarding their finances? It's £55 or £110 if delivered by a bailiff apparently but if they simply hand him the form is there any point?

To give a background - it's a dog breeder who failed to insure our puppy, who in turn was very poorly soon after we got him. He had promised to reimburse all vets costs but then nothing. We know that the breeder made over £30k from sale of the litter which would obviously be seen if he attended court with all of his financial information.

Can he just ignore this too? Can he just carry on ignoring everything?!

Thanks

I gather there is a month to pay the money before the CCJ stays on file for 6 years.

Never heard of that. Was the judgement to pay forthwith or was he given a day to pay by? If he was ordered to pay in instalments, you do have to wait until he's defaulted before taking any enforcement action. The judgement may get registered at that point.

Apply for a charging order. Assuming your paperwork is in order you will get an interim charging order quickly and a date for a court hearing at which a judge will consider whether to make the charging order final. The rule is that the judge will make it final unless there is a good reason not to, so that really puts the burden on the Defendant. If the Defendant does not attend, you will get a final charging order. If he does, he will have to work hard for it not to be made final. He may say “I had no idea this judgment existed” but if you can show that you sent all the papers to his address etc you should be ok. He may apply to set the judgment aside once he gets the interim charging order, which means really you need to go along to that hearing with all your evidence justifying your claim and argue before a judge that they could have defended in the first place, and even if they had defended they have no real prospect of succeeding in the defence. Whether they will succeed is impossible to know but again, as long as you have the evidence you say you have it sounds like you can make a good job of objecting to the set aside and if the set aside is refused the charging order will be made final.
Once you have the final charging order I would keep the pressure on and apply for possession of his house pretty promptly, after writing him a letter saying that unless he pays you within eg 21 days you will do just that. He will probably just pay you to get rid of you, frankly.
The alternative is to serve a statutory demand and then petition for his bankruptcy but since you have a default judgment he might successfully defend against the petition on the basis it is a disputed debt. If he applies to set aside and that application is refused, however, a bankruptcy petition is very likely to prompt a debtor who owns a house to pay their debt.
So you have options.

@car1sberg fully understand you not wanting to divulge. Glad puppy has recovered to a certain extent and good on you for persevering with him. Although I suspect it was the only thing you could do as it doesn't sound like the breeder offered backup care.

Good luck in rinsing him, hopefully it will make him think twice about using his poor bitch as a money maker

@BunnyRuddington I hadn't either but it seems to be the case?

@NiceTwin thank you. It all seems so daunting at the moment, I'm still unsure which way to go...!

@Delphigirl have PM'd you.