Electronic collection of debts15/08/08 / cata_legal-tax-update

From the beginning of July, creditors receive a more comfortable and perhaps faster possibility on how to collect their monetary receivables. Act No. 123/2008, Coll., introduces an electronic payment order into the Code of Civil Procedure.

It is specific to this institute of shortened proceedings that it be filed only via electronic mail with a guaranteed signature but that the manner of issue be performed automatically by a software application without the judge’s right to intervene, i.e. without reviewing the rightfulness of the claim. The defendant may be defended in a later stage when he or she files a remedy – an opposition against the issued payment order or objections, in the case of a receivable under a promissory note. Use of an electronic payment order is admissible up to the requested performance of a maximum CZK one million. The prerequisite of success of such instrument is – as in the case of a standard payment order – its delivery to the defendant’s own hands. If it cannot be delivered in this manner, the standard proceedings follow with an ordered hearing. Therefore, on similar grounds, no type of payment order is admissible in the event of delivery to a foreign country.

Further the amendment brings significant relief to parties of civil court proceedings. Pursuant to the provisions of Section 42 of the Code of Civil Procedure, it is no longer necessary to supplement filings in electronic form with a guaranteed signature by submission of the original.