Have you lent money and never received it back?

Through this article, I aimed to help you and briefly explain how you could recover your outstanding amounts from bad-paying debtors.

We have all encountered this situation at least once in our lives and yet we still tend to repeat the same mistakes.

What is a loan agreement?

According to The Civil Code, the loan can be categorized as a loan for use (commodity contract) and a consumer loan. To answer your question in the title of the article, today we will strictly limit ourselves to the definition and characteristics of the consumer loan.

So, consumer loan is the contract by which the lender remits to the borrower a sum of money or other fungible/consumable goods (grains, fuel, etc.) by their nature, and the borrower undertakes to return them back after a certain period of time.

How is a loan agreement concluded?

When a friend asks you to lend them money, your first instinct is to help them, without getting into the trouble of drafting documents/contracts to certify the existence of this loan, but this very issue may be a problem for you later.

The loan agreement can be concluded both under written form (authentic or under private signature), but also ? (in the situation mentioned in the previous paragraph).

How can you recover the borrowed money?

First of all, before proceeding with any of the options I am about to present to you, it is necessary to analyze the existing supporting documents for the loan.

In order for the procedure to be as easy as possible, whether we are talking about a trial in court or discussing resolving the dispute through any other existing means, it is essential to have evidence that the loan was indeed concluded.

Even if you don't have a written and signed contract at the time of the loan, it is enough to prove that you gave the money to that person, and the latter agreed to return it to you later.

What evidence could you use to prove the existence of a verbal contract ? ?

In the event that there is no contract concluded between you, as the lender, and the borrower, the existence of the loan can be demonstrated through receipts/receipts confirmed by the debtor, through messages, bank transfers, photographs, recordings or any other evidence that could help you demonstrate the contractual relationship between you and the debtor - a written acknowledgement of the loan through messages can be used by the court to potentially win your case.

What is the procedure for recovering the borrowed amount?

First, before filing a lawsuit in court, you must request the debtor, through an official notification, to pay the amount within a certain period. In practice, this way, the debtor is considered to have been put in default.

In the event that the debtor does not understand how to pay his debt and does not want to resolve the dispute amicably, we can further discuss filing an action in court.

As existing options, depending on the evidence you have (if you only have documents/if the evidence is clear, etc.) or depending on the value of the debt owed, you can opt for the following ways to recover the borrowed amount:

1. Low value request – it is a special, fast procedure, used in the situation where the borrowed amount does not exceed 50,000 lei
2. Ordonanța de plată – if we are discussing a certain, liquid and due claim, or if there is clear evidence represented by documents, this option can be used in order to obtain an enforceable title as quickly as possible.
3. The action in claims, based on contractual civil liability, in general – this is the slightly longer trial version, where the debt is usually contested, the evidence is not certain, requiring the administration of additional evidence.
4. Forced execution – if the loan agreement was concluded in authentic form, at a notary, or if you obtained a decision that gives you victory following the filing of one of the aforementioned actions, you can proceed to forced execution in order to obtain the remaining debt.

IMPORTANT!

It is very important to take into account the 3-year statute of limitations, which generally begins to run from the moment the loan had to be repaid to the lender or, as the case may be, in the event that the loan agreement does not have a certain date, from the moment the lender expressly requests the return of the loan (through messages, notification, subpoena, etc.).

Conclusion

Being a fairly common situation in our society, it is important to know what your legal options are to recover the outstanding debt. So, if you have lent money to someone and the latter refuses to repay you in a proper manner, contact me to analyze which would be the best option for your situation!