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Comment by doikor | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a really complex system to get your money. Here in Finland you would just start bankruptcy procedures by filing a claim in the court and with the court order saying they owe you it would go through in a day or two giving the other party 2 weeks time to pay or the court would take over all their assets and get you your money (and sell those assets if they don’t have it in cash)

A single verified unpaid bill is grounds for starting the bankruptcy procedure here so it is actually good tool to force big companies to pay. Though you can say goodbye to any future business relations with them if you do that.

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It's the same in the UK:

https://www.gov.uk/wind-up-a-company-that-owes-you-money

"To wind up a company you must:

* be owed £750 or more * be able to prove that the company cannot pay you "

That's it.

How do you prove they cannot pay you - show an unpaid invoice?

I only ever threatened it once so didn't go to the expense of filing.

In practice, yes an unpaid invoice, plus proof of delivery /service. Alternatively, a judgment from a court ordering them to pay.

The trouble is the actual collection, which as far as I know is still left as an exercise for the person owed.

Nope, when a company is struck off (directors given 2 months notice etc) its assets are frozen and passed to The Crown, who appoints an Official Receiver. They liquidate the assets, pay any creditors (pay themselves) and keep anything remaining.

So it's an absolutely nuclear debt collection option, and not fast. But the threat is real if the debtor can't argue the debt away.

Japan is similar. I keep marveling at the stories about the US system and wonder how it is supposed to be considered friendly for businesses...

Does the example not make it obvious? Imagine your business doesn’t want to pay a bill from some douchebag business you hate.

I think the parent means that a system in which anyone can delay the payment of otherwise legitimate financial claims through an extremely protracted legal process is generally not very business-friendly. Of course, it is friendly to businesses that do not want to pay their liabilities, but on the cost of all the others. What good is a legal system if a company cannot enforce its rights in practice?

The same way any human system works: people mostly want to do the right thing, so they do.

It’s not a case of a simple disagreement though. In this situation there’s a court order requiring you to pay the bill. Not wanting to doesn’t cut it.

You’d be amazed how long someone can go in open defiance of a court order before something concrete actually happens.

It usually requires going back to court for the concrete thing to actually happen too; and it’s rarely all that catastrophic.

Judges are surprisingly willing to give folks more rope to hang themselves with later.

In Sweden you can actually do that before you’ve won the court case. If a lower court rules that you have a legal right to payment, then you can collect on that even if the other party appeals to a higher court. (They can then of course do the same to you if they win the appeal.)

But this is taking it a bit far IMHO. It’s confusing to me at least that a court order is not final (“has not yet won legal power” as we say in Sweden), but can still be used to force payment through the authorities (Kronofogdemyndigheten).

Getting though it however, and actually getting paid is a long and arduous process. That’s what the poster was up against.

It’s not THAT uncommon for some folks to just say ‘oh yeah, make me’, and while there are (usually) methods of doing it without their co-operation, it’s never easy.

If you are the only debtor and they have the money (no need to sell anything) then it is actually really fast. The court just takes over the bank accounts and sends you the money.

The real slowness of the process kicks in when there are multiple parties claiming their money and there isn’t enough assets to pay everyone.

By ‘really fast’, I’d wager 6 months to a year, no?

You’d have to show all that was the case for instance, which if they ignored you and generally were unco-operative would take awhile.

Took me 17 days last time. A couple days for the claim to go trough the court and 14 days of time for them to pay. After that as they did not during the next bank day the court took control of their bank account and wired me the money. This was for unpaid wages but the same applies to any unpaid bill.

As I said it really only gets slow if the party does not have the money (as in they are bankrupt for real instead of just refusing to pay) and there are multiple parties claiming it. At that point it slows down to figure out how to split the assets.

There really isn’t any way to avoid this outside shutting down the company and moving the money out of the accounts but that will just dig the hole deeper as now they are not only contempt of court (not paying as ordered to when they are capable of) but they are also actively stealing/hiding someone else’s money.

Which jurisdiction?

Unpaid wages are usually treated very different from most claims, at least here, and do get handled in a very expeditious manner (labor commissioner in some places with literally raid workplaces sometimes).

Secured debt (pay me or I get this property - in the contract), can often get similar expedited treatment here in CA.

unpaid improvements (mechanics liens) on real or personal can get handled in a month or two here, but actually getting liquidated damages out of it can take a long time.

Other claims (general vendor bills, liquidated settlements), often meh.

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