A creditor holding a foreign judgment against a debtor based in Georgia faces a second proceeding before any payment materialises. Judgment enforcement in Georgia rarely starts from the original ruling. It starts from a recognition step that a Georgian court has to grant first, and that step is where most claims either move forward or stop.
The sequence begins with an application to a Georgian court asking it to recognise the foreign judgment. The court examines whether the debtor was properly served in the original proceeding, whether the ruling is final in the country where it was issued, and whether recognition would conflict with local public policy. Only once recognition is granted does the file move into an enforcement proceeding proper, where a local enforcement body identifies and seizes assets belonging to the debtor. Coordinating this route is part of our cross-border judgment enforcement work across the jurisdictions where our clients hold judgments.
Nothing in this sequence is automatic. A judgment that reads as final and enforceable at home can still be refused recognition in Georgia if the underlying service was defective or if the debtor was denied a genuine opportunity to defend the original claim.
Three things carry the file. First, the paper trail of service: how the debtor was notified of the original proceeding, and whether that notification meets the standard the Georgian court will apply. Second, the authenticity chain of the judgment itself – certified copies, translation and any authentication the court expects before it will even open the file. Third, and often decisive, whether the debtor holds identifiable assets inside Georgia at all. A judgment with no asset behind it in Georgia produces a recognition order and nothing else.
Recognition and enforcement acts before a Georgian court are performed by lawyers admitted in Georgia, not by a foreign firm instructing from abroad. SOLUTIO does not file the recognition application itself and does not carry out enforcement acts on the ground. The value we add sits upstream of that filing: assessing whether the judgment is a realistic candidate for recognition before anyone pays for the local proceeding, and structuring the file so the local lawyer receives a clean instruction rather than a partial one.
Our part is assessment, file preparation and coordination across the two proceedings the creditor is really running – the one that produced the judgment and the one in Georgia that has to recognise it. The part performed by admitted lawyers and licensed providers in Georgia is the recognition filing, the enforcement application and any asset search conducted through the local register system. Georgian counterparties and their assets are the recurring pattern in this cluster, which is why we keep a current Georgia country profile alongside the enforcement work itself.
The fee basis for this coordination is agreed with the client before instruction, once the assessment stage has confirmed there is a file worth running. We do not propose a fee that consists solely of a share of whatever is eventually recovered.
No. A Georgian court has to recognise the judgment first. Only after recognition can an enforcement proceeding follow the assets. A judgment that skips this step has no standing before a Georgian enforcement body.
The timeline depends on how contested the recognition step becomes and on how quickly assets can be located once it is granted. We do not publish a fixed figure because it varies with the file, not with the jurisdiction.
Recognition can still be granted, but it produces a paper result with nothing behind it. We flag this outcome at the assessment stage, before any local filing cost is incurred.
A judgment sitting unenforced in Georgia is not a static asset. Other creditors of the same debtor can file first, assets can move to a jurisdiction with a weaker enforcement route, and the window in which recognition still matches an available asset narrows with every quarter that passes. We treat the assessment of that window as the first step, not an afterthought to the filing.