A judgment is granted by the court when legal summons is issued and you fail to defend the summons or make payment of the amount claimed. A judgment remains on your credit record for 5 years or until it is paid in full or a rescission is granted by the courts.
A court judgment, for example – where a court issues an instruction to you to pay an outstanding amount – will remain on your credit report for five years.
But after a judgement ruling, the creditor can take steps to seize part of your salary, freeze your bank account, or even haul away your belongings. It can also charge interest at a court-approved rate, typically in the range of 5 percent to 10 percent, until you pay up.
For that purpose the judgment debtor should approach the plaintiff/judgment creditor or his/her/its attorney to obtain the written consent to rescission of judgment. There is however no requirement in law that obliges a plaintiff/judgment creditor to give a consent to rescission of judgment.
How long does a judgment stay on your credit report? A judgment usually stays on your credit report for a period of 5 years. However, once the judgment has been paid up it can be removed from the consumer's credit report.
South Africa has different laws which specify prescription periods, for example, the Prescription Act says that contractual and delictual debts extinguish after three years from the date when it became payable (due).
A judgement will state that you have not paid your debt and it will reflect on your credit record for 5 years. When a judgement is granted, a creditor can apply for a warrant where the sheriff can attach goods such as your furniture and sell these to pay your debt.
A judgment remains on your credit record for 5 years or until it is paid in full or a rescission is granted by the courts. Although not always the case, in general a consumer is listed as defaulting before a credit provider applies for a judgment.
Limitation period. Three years after a judgment expires, no writ of execution can be issued unless the debtor consents or unless the judgment is revived by the court on notice to the debtor (in which case no new proof of the debt is required) (Rule 66, Uniform Rules of Court).
Once a court has granted judgment in a civil matter, there will be an accompanying court order which will be signed and stamped by either a magistrate, judge or registrar depending on where the matter was heard and the nature of how the matter was heard.
If the defendant fails to serve and file a Notice of Intention to Defend after 10 (ten) court days, the plaintiff is entitled to submit a request for default judgment to the clerk of the court.
Judgments don't appear on your credit report and don't affect your credit score. But judgments may impact your ability to qualify for credit since lenders can still search for judgments via public records.
The modern approach appears to be that a trial court has a general discretion to permit a party to reopen his case after having closed it (S v Christie 1982 (1) SA 464 (A) at 476) and to lead late evidence at any time before judgment is given (Hoffmann and Zeffertt The South African Law of Evidence 4 ed 476-477; O'Dowd ...
Unpaid credit card debt will drop off an individual's credit report after 7 years, meaning late payments associated with the unpaid debt will no longer affect the person's credit score.
Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, debts can appear on your credit report generally for seven years and in a few cases, longer than that. Under state laws, if you are sued about a debt, and the debt is too old, you may have a defense to the lawsuit.
The simplest way to clear your name from the credit bureau is to pay off the debt. According to TransUnion, one of South Africa' biggest credit bureaus, this will usually result in your name being removed from the blacklist within 7 – 20 days.
A final protection order in South Africa remains valid until it is set aside or cancelled by court.
A motion to recuse is a legal motion filed in court that says a judge should be disqualified, or removed, from a legal case for a reason listed within CCP 170.1. The motion can be brought by either a prosecutor or a defense attorney. And, a motion to recuse can be filed in either a civil suit or in a criminal trial.
1.2 Statute of Limitations
Section 18 of the CPA provides that the right to prosecute any offence will lapse after the expiry of a period of 20 years from the time when the offence was committed, except for certain specific offences such as murder, rape or treason.
At the point of receiving a Summons, you should have already received a letter of demand for the debt. The process works as follows: A Section 129-Letter of Demand must be sent to you by the creditor. This letter gives you 10 [Ten] working days to either pay the indebtedness or to defend the matter.
The main ways to erase items in your credit history are filing a credit dispute, requesting a goodwill adjustment, negotiating pay for delete, or hiring a credit repair company. You can also stop using credit and wait for your credit history to be wiped clean automatically, which will usually happen after 7–10 years.
You cannot go to jail for not paying your debts when there is a judgment against you. You can, however, be liquidated, sequestrated, an emoluments attachment order placed on your salary or your assets attached.
A debt collector is not allowed to:
Use force or threaten to use force against you or your family. Physically threaten you or your family. Give, or threaten to give, information to the consumer's employer that may affect their opportunities as an employee. Serve any false legal documents.
What Happens To Your Debt When You Leave South Africa? You will not lose any debt, technically speaking, when you leave the country. your debt is still yours, and you will still have to deal with creditors and collectors as long as they try to get you to pay it back.
In most cases, the statute of limitations for a debt will have passed after 10 years. This means a debt collector may still attempt to pursue it (and you technically do still owe it), but they can't typically take legal action against you.