3rd Party Debt Orders and a CCJ

Thegardner

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has used a 3rd Party debt order to enforce their County court judgment. Has it worked? What problems have you encountered? Anything I need to know? Thanks

fatbelly

They're pretty rare. In fact I've yet to come across one being used.

In theory you can use them to access a debtor's bank account but you would need to know bank, sort code, account number... and that they have a positive balance sufficient to pay the debt!

You can force the debtor to reveal this info through an order for information. But that only has to be true on the day the information is given. There's nothing to stop him/her from moving monies to a different account the following day.

Thegardner

Thanks Fatbelly. Although it would help to know bank account number/sort code the 3 rd party debt application form allows you to aplly when only knowing the bank's head office. The bank then searches for all accounts held by the debtor. The bank charges the debtor for this.

There's not much information out there on the pitfalls of using 3rd party debt orders though. Might have to pop down to the citizens advice bureau.

penguin83

Hi The gardner - we get a fair few of them nowadays usually used by the CSA and for businesses. You dont need to know the account number or sort code, just the bank that they are with, the court will serve the bank 1 week before the debtor is served which allows the bank to freeze the account before the debtor becomes aware of the order.

As fatbelly says if the account is overdrawn or empty then the order cant be finalised. The court fee is £100.00 which gets added onto the judgment debt.