I have received judgement in my favour in Ontario Superior Court for a civil lawsuit against me. I would like to know, if I use a collection agency, can I sue the Debtor in small claims court for the fees I have to pay the agency.

excon

Hello hobbs:

No. It's just the cost of doing business. They're not forcing you to use a collection agency, so it's not their responsibility to pay for one.

excon

Fr_Chuck

No, and since you already have a judgement why would you want to use a collection agency now, if after the judgement they still don't pay, you take them back to court again to try and garnish pay, or attach bank accounts.

hobbstesp

Hi excon you are the second person to tell me this, maybe my info wasn't clear. This is not a matter of business this was a family dispute concerning property owned as tenants in common. In essence, thru correspondence they have refused all attempts to settle this judgement in full, funds are limited to pursue this in the courts and any advice would be much appreciated. The way I see it, they are forcing me to spend money to collect monies owed to me no matter which way I go. Collection agencies are expensive and if I can't recover my costs it would be a tragedy, the judgement was for 35,000.

Thanks for your input

hobbstesp

Thanks for the reply Chuck!
Without the knowledge of a lawyer this seems to be a daunting task. I don't know if you live in the States or Canada but here in Ontario it is very time consuming to try to collect, because I am not a business my options are limited. I represented myself in court and won this judgement and after dealing with this, I find myself lost in legal jargon. Continuing in the courts is expensive and I would win the costs of pursuing payment but I would like to know if I could sue for costs of the collection agency to collect the judgement and where is it written that I can or cannot. Your advice will be helpfull.

Hobbs

ScottGem

You are running up against the Catch 22 of judgements. Its often easy to obtain a judgement, but the courts don't give much help in collecting. I'm not sure how Canadian courts work, but you may have a few options. First, you do not have to "continue with the courts". The ONLY involvement the courts should have at this point is to issue attachment orders.

In US courts, you can get a judge to issue a financial assets questionnaire. The debtor is required to fill that out truthfully or be cited for contempt of court or perjury. If you cannot get that, then you have to find their assets yourself. Once you find the assets, it should be a simple matter to go back to the court for a garnishment order.

So your involvment backj with the courts should not be expensive. The hardest part is going to be tyo find attachable assets.

As excon noted, you aren't required to use a collection agency, so such costs would not be added to the debt.