Bring a Debtor before the Court.
Debtors are people that owe money. Period.
At National Inquiry Agency, we help locate people that owe money by skip tracing: the art of locating someone. As private investigators, we can track down the whereabouts of the Debtor and then serve legal papers on them to drag them before the Courts. Insolvency or Commercial Lawyers are the lawyers responsible for drafting the Statements of Claim, Examination Notices, and eventually, the Examination Orders notifying a Debtor to attend the Examination Hearing. This Examination Hearing is held within a Local Court.
The Debtors are notified of their need to attend Court when National Inquiry Agency operatives process serve or hand the legal papers to the Debtor at the address found through the skip trace. It’s either served at a residential or employment address.
When we serve the Examination Order, this is the last step to place the Debtor on notice to produce financial documentation at the Hearing to reveal their financial position to the creditor at a date specified on the documents in the near future. We then draft an Affidavit of Service confirming that the Debtor has received a copy of the legal documents. The law firm and commercial agents rely on this document to show the Court that the Debtor is legally required to attend the Hearing unless there are exceptional circumstances.
With process servers nationwide, we can have mercantile agents attend the Hearing date as an agent for the law firm to collate and review the financial documentation, discuss reasons behind the nil payment of the valid debt, and other factors. If the Debtor does not turn up to the Hearing, our commercial agents can request a Notice of Motion to be filed, allowing the creditor’s legal representatives to seek an arrest warrant.
This type of strategy may be conducive to getting a result: a payment arrangement, unveiling the liquidity of a corporate or individual Debtor, or bringing them into legal trouble for non-compliance.
Here is a Case Study
A Melbourne law firm engaged National Inquiry Agency to undertake a skip trace and locate a Debtor that had failed to pay rent to the landlord of a property based in Sydney. Our Sydney Private Investigators launched various database searches and discreet inquiries to confirm that the Debtor had house-hopped several times between various private rentals in the same locale. We followed a few leads, and BANG! We located him. We then obtained a filed Statement of Claim from the client lodged with the Local Court of New South Wales, and we served the Debtor, now Defendant, with a copy of the legal documents by leaving it with another male. He was the Debtor’s roommate, and he was also over the age of 16 years and could confirm that the Defendant resided there.
A few months later, the Defendant knew we were onto him and did not want to pay the debt. Surprise, surprise, after Default Judgment was entered and an Examination Notice was issued, we returned to the same residential address – alas, he was gone! He had moved out. The client then ordered a secondary skip trace. We then located another address and served the Defendant with copies of the Examination Notice and later Examination Order on other occupants that resided with the Defendant to progress to the Examination Hearing a few weeks later.
One of our process servers based in Sydney, holding the debt collection licence class attending the listed Examination Hearing, found the Defendant seated outside the CallOver room. The Defendant had a folder full of paperwork containing copies of bank statements, MyGov records, Centrelink payments, and other information.
The financial position of the Defendant was bleak and was not in a position to even pay essential bills. He possessed no assets, no motor vehicle, no registrations in his name, had personal loans, and received unemployment benefits from Centrelink.
Due to the Debtor’s financial position, the client realised that a long-term payment plan was the only option in recovering the money owed, rather than the pursuit of Bankruptcy proceedings.
The example shows the use of all three services, skip tracing, process serving in Sydney, and then attending the Examination Hearing on behalf of the Solicitors based in Melbourne.
Please get in touch with our team if you need to locate and serve someone in order to get them before the Courts for a debt.
