What To Do If Somebody Owes You Money

Let’s suppose someone owes you money and despite many attempts you just can’t get them to pay you back. They keep promising to do so but nothing happens. What is the next step? An often effective opening move is to get a lawyer to send a letter of demand. Normally, it will give the debtor 7 days to arrange to pay otherwise legal proceedings will be commenced. It’s an inexpensive way of possibly achieving a favourable result. If that doesn’t work, you should immediately initiate legal action. If the amount is $100,000.00 or less, proceedings are commenced in the Local Court. Over that amount and up to $750,000.00 it’s a District Court matter and the Supreme Court of NSW is the appropriate jurisdiction for claims over $750,000.00. Cases are commenced by the filing of a Statement of Claim in a Court which sets out the legal basis of your claim. Once the Statement of Claim is served on the debtor they have 28 days to file a Defence otherwise you can apply for a default judgment shortly afterwards and then you can enforce the judgment by a number of means. If a Defence is filed then the proceedings are contested and that’s when things can take up a whole lot of time and become expensive. But always remember, if you do nothing, you’ll get nothing!

January 2019