A judgment from one court does not enforce itself in another. A creditor holding a foreign court judgment or an arbitral award needs it recognised where the debtor's assets sit before paper becomes payment. SOLUTIO advises on judgment and award enforcement for creditors moving from a ruling to actual recovery across a border.
The file opens with an assessment. We read the judgment or the award, identify the instrument that governs recognition in the country where assets are known or suspected, and set out the realistic sequence of steps before any fee is agreed. The client decides at this point whether to proceed or to stop.
If the client proceeds, an admitted lawyer in the target country files for recognition under the applicable instrument. Once recognition is granted, or in countries where it runs alongside the merits, an application for attachment or seizure follows. At each stage the client decides whether the assets located justify the next filing, and whether to negotiate a settlement once the debtor feels the weight of the process.
Realisation – sale of seized property, garnishment of an account, or collection from a third party who owes the debtor – closes the file. The client receives the proceeds through whichever mechanism the local procedure requires, net of the costs that procedure itself imposes along the way.
Many creditors believe that a judgment is a judgment everywhere, and that once a court has ruled, payment follows as a formality in any country where the debtor happens to hold something of value.
Recognition is a separate legal step, governed by whichever instrument connects the country of judgment and the country of assets, or by domestic law where no instrument applies at all. An arbitral award under a recognised convention often travels more easily than a bare court judgment issued outside a regional framework. The instrument in play, not the strength of the original ruling, decides how the enforcement route unfolds.
The fee for a judgment or award enforcement file is agreed before instruction, once the assessment has set out the assets involved and the enforcement route available. It reflects the number of jurisdictions in play, the instrument that governs recognition between them, and the depth of asset mapping the file requires. The basis is fixed at that point and does not shift once the file is open.
Enforcement work runs under whichever instrument connects the country of judgment to the country of assets. That may be the New York Convention 1958 for arbitral awards, Regulation (EU) 1215/2012 for judgments moving between certain European states, or the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements 2005 and the Hague Judgments Convention 2019 where they apply between the states concerned. Where no instrument connects the two countries, the domestic recognition procedure of the country holding the assets applies instead, and the sequence changes accordingly.
Filing itself is carried out by admitted lawyers and licensed providers in the jurisdiction concerned, never by SOLUTIO directly. Our role is the assessment, the instrument selection, the coordination between jurisdictions when a debtor's assets are spread across more than one, and the negotiation that often closes a file before the last seizure order becomes necessary.
Only where an instrument or a domestic procedure connects the country of judgment to the country of assets. Absent that link, a fresh claim on the merits in the local court is sometimes the only realistic route. We identify which situation applies before any filing is made.
An arbitral award usually travels under a dedicated convention that most trading countries have joined, which tends to shorten the recognition step. A court judgment depends instead on whether the two countries share a regional instrument or a bilateral arrangement, and where none exists the domestic procedure of the asset country governs.
Enforcement without assets is not enforcement, it is paperwork. We map the debtor's known and probable holdings before recommending a filing, and where nothing is found in a given country we say so rather than open a file against nothing.
A judgment or an award that sits unenforced does not gain value with time. Other creditors move first, and assets that were reachable last quarter relocate to a jurisdiction the client has not yet mapped. The ruling itself survives the delay; the window to collect against a specific asset often does not.