People arrive at this with the two questions that feel important — how much is owed, and how obviously they are in the right. Neither is the first question the law asks. The first question is what you hold in writing. On a cheque, a promissory note, a written contract or a guarantee, Order XXXVII of the Code of Civil Procedure opens a door where the person who owes you has no right to defend and must ask the court’s permission to try. Without such a document you are in an ordinary suit, which is a different life. And running underneath all of it is a three-year clock that most people discover far too late — together with the one provision, Section 18 of the Limitation Act, that can start it again.
Almost every recovery matter that goes badly went badly before a single paper was filed, and for one of two reasons: the claim was left too long, or the wrong proceeding was chosen because it looked cheaper. Both are avoidable in an afternoon.
The document you hold, not the amount, decides which procedure is open — and Order XXXVII opens one in which the defendant has no right to defend. The limitation period is ordinarily three years, and a written signed acknowledgment made before it expires starts a fresh one. A cheque gives you two proceedings and most people run only one. And a decree is not money: execution can only reach assets that exist, so ask that question first.
This is the table to read before anything else on the page. Find the row that describes your papers.
| What you hold | What it opens | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| A cheque that has bounced | A summary suit and a complaint under Section 138 | Two proceedings from one piece of paper. Most people run only the criminal one |
| A promissory note or bill of exchange | Summary suit under Order XXXVII | The strongest civil position available to a lender |
| A written contract, or a guarantee | Summary suit, where the claim is a debt or a liquidated demand in money | “Liquidated” matters — a fixed sum, not damages to be assessed |
| An invoice accepted in writing, or a signed account | Often a summary suit; sometimes an ordinary one | Depends on whether the liability and the sum are admitted in writing |
| Messages admitting the debt, but no contract | An ordinary suit — and possibly a fresh limitation period | Weaker procedure, but the acknowledgment may be what keeps the claim alive |
| Only a bank transfer | An ordinary suit | The payment is provable; the terms are the fight |
| Nothing at all | An ordinary suit, on oral evidence | Hard, and honest advice costs less than a year of it. Try for an acknowledgment first |
| A contract with an arbitration clause | Arbitration, not the civil court | Filing a suit anyway usually ends in being referred to arbitration |
| A commercial contract above the Specified Value | The Commercial Courts Act track — with mandatory mediation first | Filing without that mediation can get the suit rejected |
Notice what is not in the table: how much is owed, how long you have known the person, and how badly you have been treated. Those matter to you and they matter to the eventual outcome, but they do not choose your procedure. The paper does.
Order XXXVII of the Code of Civil Procedure is the most useful thing a creditor can know about, and it is almost never explained to people in plain terms. Here it is.
In an ordinary civil suit the defendant is entitled to defend. He files a written statement, the court frames issues, evidence is led, and the case takes the time such cases take. The whole of that apparatus exists because the law assumes there is something genuinely in dispute.
Order XXXVII proceeds from the opposite assumption. Where the claim rests on a bill of exchange, a hundi or a promissory note — or is a suit to recover a debt or liquidated demand in money, with or without interest, arising on a written contract, on an enactment where the sum sought is a fixed sum of money, or on a guarantee in respect of such a debt — the defendant has no right to defend. He may defend only with the leave of the court, which he has to ask for, and which he does not always get.
Two words in that carry weight. Liquidated means a sum already fixed or arithmetically ascertainable — not damages a court has to assess. And written means exactly that, which is the whole argument of this page reduced to one adjective.
| Stage | What happens | The consequence of missing it |
|---|---|---|
| Suit filed, summons served | The summons tells the defendant this is a summary suit | — |
| Appearance — ten days | The defendant must enter an appearance within ten days of service | If he does not, the plaintiff becomes entitled to a decree |
| Summons for judgment | The plaintiff applies, with an affidavit verifying the claim | — |
| Leave to defend — ten days | The defendant applies within ten days of service of the summons for judgment, on affidavit stating his defence | If he does not, the plaintiff is entitled to judgment |
| The court decides on leave | Unconditional leave, conditional leave, or refusal | Refusal means a decree without a trial |
Read the right-hand column again. In a procedure like this, the defendant’s ordinary tactics — adjournments, silence, waiting for the plaintiff to lose interest — are not available in the same way, because the timelines are attached to consequences. That is why a creditor with the right document is in a materially different position from one without.
It follows that the papers have to be right on day one. A summary suit is unforgiving of a plaint that has not annexed the instrument, an affidavit that does not verify the claim properly, or a prayer that mixes a liquidated demand with unliquidated damages. This is one of the few places where drafting quality changes the procedure you get.
The question a summary suit turns on is what the court does with the application for leave to defend. The modern statement of the test is IDBI Trusteeship Services Ltd v. Hubtown Ltd (Supreme Court, 15 November 2016), which restated the principles that had come down from Mechelec Engineers. Broadly, three outcomes.
| The defence disclosed | What the court does |
|---|---|
| Raises a genuine triable issue — a substantial defence, or facts that if proved would answer the claim | Unconditional leave to defend. The suit proceeds like an ordinary suit |
| Plausible but improbable — the defence is not frivolous, but does not look likely | Conditional leave, commonly on depositing the amount or furnishing security |
| Illusory, sham, or practically moonshine | Leave refused. The plaintiff gets his decree without a trial |
The middle row is where most real cases live, and it is the reason this procedure works even when it does not end at once. A defendant who is told to deposit the money before he may defend is in a very different negotiation from one who can simply keep the case running. Many summary suits settle at exactly that point.
The corresponding warning for a defendant is obvious and is set out further down this page: an application for leave to defend is not a formality and it is not the place to say “I will explain later”. Whatever the defence is has to be on the affidavit, with facts.
Then you are in an ordinary suit for recovery, and it is worth being plain about what that means rather than discovering it gradually. The defendant will file a written statement, issues will be framed, evidence will be led by both sides and tested, and the matter will take the time that contested civil matters take. It is a real remedy and people do win; it is simply a longer and less certain road.
Three things improve an ordinary suit more than anything else. Documentary proof of the payment itself, usually the bank statement. Any writing at all from the other side that admits the money was taken, even if it disputes the terms. And a witness who was actually present when the arrangement was made, identified now rather than in the third year.
And one thing improves it retrospectively: an acknowledgment obtained before you file. It can convert a case about whether the money was ever given into a case about when it will be paid.
The Limitation Act, 1963 fixes a period for suits of this kind, and for a claim of this nature it is ordinarily three years. The part people get wrong is not the length — it is the starting point. For money lent, the period runs from when the loan was made. It does not conveniently start on the day the debtor finally refused to pay, which is the day most people think of as the beginning of the dispute.
What that means in practice is uncomfortable. The lender who gave a friend money three and a half years ago, and who has spent that time being politely put off, may have a claim that is already out of time, and nobody will have mentioned it. A suit barred by limitation is liable to be dismissed on that ground alone, however true the debt.
This is the single most valuable provision on this page, and it is short. Under Section 18 of the Limitation Act, where, before the expiry of the prescribed period, an acknowledgment of liability in respect of the right claimed has been made in writing, signed by the party against whom the right is claimed or by his authorised agent, a fresh period of limitation is computed from the time when the acknowledgment was signed. Section 19 does something comparable where a part payment of the debt is actually made.
Four conditions do all the work, and every one of them catches people out:
Whether an email or a messaging application message satisfies the requirement of being “signed” is argued, and this page deliberately takes no position on it — it is exactly the kind of question that should be answered by an advocate on your actual document rather than by a web page on somebody else’s. What can be said without any risk is the practical ranking: a signed letter beats an email, an email from the debtor’s own account beats a message, a message beats a phone call, and a phone call is nothing.
And one thing this section does not cover, which matters if you are already late. Section 18 works only where the acknowledgment came before the period ran out. Where three years have already gone, there is a separate and quite different route — a fresh promise to pay, made in writing and signed, which the Contract Act treats as an enforceable agreement of its own even though a suit on the original debt was already barred. The difference between an admission and a promise is one word and it decides which provision you are in; our loan agreement page sets that out and is the place to read if your three years have passed.
Since this is free and can be decisive, it deserves a section of its own. The window for getting one is while the relationship is still bearable — which is to say, before a notice goes out, not after.
Do not manufacture one, do not draft something for the other side to sign without their understanding it, and do not put a figure in a debtor’s mouth. An acknowledgment obtained by pressure or misdescription is worse than none, because it becomes the fight.
Where a cheque has been given and dishonoured, most people file a complaint under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act and think of that as their case. It is worth understanding what that is and is not.
A Section 138 complaint is a criminal proceeding about the dishonour. The full process — the demand, the periods, what the complaint must contain — is on our cheque bounce page and is not repeated here. What belongs on this page is the strategy: the same cheque is also an instrument on which a summary suit lies. Those are two different proceedings, in two different courts, and running one does not prevent the other.
There is also one provision on the criminal side that behaves like recovery and is under-used. Section 143A allows the trial court to direct the drawer to pay interim compensation of up to twenty per cent of the cheque amount while the trial is going on, and Section 148 allows an appellate court to require a deposit of not less than twenty per cent where a conviction is appealed. In G.J. Raja v. Tejraj Surana (2019) the Supreme Court held Section 143A to be prospective, so the date of your complaint matters; the position on Section 148 has been treated differently. Take the dates to your advocate rather than the conclusion.
The Commercial Courts Act, 2015 created a separate track for a commercial dispute — a defined expression which covers a long list of ordinary business relationships — of a Specified Value of not less than three lakh rupees. That threshold is fixed by statute and has been amended before, so treat it as current only after checking; the original figure was a crore.
What the track changes is the pace and the discipline: a designated court, stricter timelines including the one on filing a written statement, case management hearings, and a costs regime that takes a harder view of delay. For a creditor that is generally good news. The written-statement timeline in particular is set out on our notice and summons page, which explains why the same Code produces two opposite results on the same question.
Section 12A of that Act provides that a suit which does not contemplate any urgent interim relief shall not be instituted unless the plaintiff has first exhausted the remedy of pre-institution mediation in the prescribed manner.
For years this was treated by many as a formality that could be skipped. In Patil Automation Pvt Ltd v. Rakheja Engineers Pvt Ltd, decided on 17 August 2022, the Supreme Court held that Section 12A is mandatory, and that a suit instituted in violation of it is liable to be rejected. The consequence for a litigant is simple and expensive: a year spent, a court fee paid, and a plaint rejected without the merits ever being looked at.
Read the agreement before you file anything. Where the parties have agreed that disputes go to arbitration, a court before which a suit is brought on the same subject is required, on an application made by the other side in time, to refer the parties to arbitration. The suit does not proceed simply because you would rather it did.
Two practical consequences. First, a claim that belongs in arbitration and is filed as a suit usually loses months before it starts again in the right place. Second, arbitration is not automatically worse for a creditor — it can be quicker, and an award is enforced much like a decree — but it has its own cost structure, which is worth understanding before you commit. Tell your advocate about the clause at the first meeting, not at the first hearing.
These are the routes people take because they look cheaper or faster, and what usually happens.
| The door | What people hope | What usually happens |
|---|---|---|
| A police station | Fear will produce payment | “This is a civil matter” — which, for an unpaid loan, is generally correct. See our FIR page for when it is not |
| A cheating complaint | A criminal case forces a settlement | Cheating needs a dishonest intention at the time the money was taken, not a later failure to pay — our page on cheating explains the line |
| A consumer forum | Cheap, quick, consumer-friendly | Lending money is not buying a service. Dismissed on maintainability. Our consumer court page sets out what it is for |
| The NCLT under the insolvency law | The company will pay rather than face insolvency | The minimum default is one crore rupees. Below that the route does not exist, and even above it, it is a resolution process rather than a queue — our NCLT page explains |
The pattern is the same in all four: a forum designed for something else is asked to do debt collection, and declines. The cost is not only the fee — it is the year, and the limitation period running underneath it.
A notice before action is worth sending in almost every one of these matters, and not mainly for the pressure. It fixes your version in writing on a dated document. It forces a choice on the other side — answer, or stay silent — and both are useful later. It sometimes produces a reply which is itself an acknowledgment of liability. And it is by a wide margin the cheapest step available.
What makes a notice work is not its tone. It is accuracy: the correct parties, the correct amount, the correct dates, the document relied on annexed or described, and a clear demand with a time to comply. What makes one useless is a threat that cannot be carried out, a figure that turns out to be wrong, or a claim of an offence where there is none — each of which is quoted back at you for the rest of the matter. We draft the notice to your advocate’s instructions; what to demand and whether to send it at all are their calls.
A recovery claim gets what it asks for. Three things are routinely left out and cannot easily be added later.
The third of those is also the answer to a question people ask late: can I stop him selling the flat? Sometimes, on an appropriate application, with material to support it. Not on suspicion, and not a year afterwards.
Courts decide these cases on documents far more than on how convincingly people speak. In rough order of weight:
| Evidence | What it establishes |
|---|---|
| A signed loan agreement or promissory note | Everything — the payment, the terms and the liability |
| A cheque, and the return memo from the bank | The liability, and a second proceeding |
| Bank statement showing the transfer out | That the money moved, and when. Not the terms |
| Written acknowledgment or repayment schedule | The liability, and possibly a fresh limitation period |
| Messages discussing repayment | Context, and sometimes an acknowledgment |
| A witness who was present | Helpful in an ordinary suit; rarely decisive alone |
| Cash, with nothing written | The hardest case there is. Be told this early |
Two notes on the last row. Large cash dealings carry their own difficulties quite apart from proof, and a claim built on unexplained cash invites questions from more than one direction. And where the transfer went through a bank, say so early — it is often the strongest thing in a file where the lender believes they have nothing.
The bank statement is usually the backbone of an ordinary recovery suit, so it is worth obtaining properly rather than as a screenshot. Ask the bank for a statement for the relevant period, covering the transfer out and anything received back, and keep the narration intact rather than cropping to the single entry — the surrounding entries are what make it look like a record rather than a selection.
Where the account is operated online, remember that a printed statement is an electronic record and the rules about proving such records apply to it. Ask your advocate what certification will be needed before filing rather than at the stage of evidence. It is the same trap that sinks screenshots in other kinds of case, and it is entirely avoidable.
A guarantee changes the arithmetic of recovery considerably, and people forget they have one. Where a third person guaranteed the debt in writing, the guarantee is itself a document on which a suit for a liquidated demand may lie, and the guarantor is ordinarily liable along with the principal debtor rather than only after every attempt against him has failed.
What to do with that is a question of judgment rather than law: a guarantor with assets is often the reason a matter settles, and a guarantor who was a friend doing a favour is often the person who brings both sides to a table. Ask early whether your paperwork includes one, including inside an agreement where it may appear as a clause rather than a separate document.
This one has ended more suits than any other technicality in this area, and it is almost never mentioned until it is too late.
Under the Indian Partnership Act, a suit to enforce a right arising from a contract cannot be instituted by or on behalf of a firm against a third party unless the firm is registered and the persons suing are shown in the Register of Firms as partners. An unregistered partnership that has been trading happily for years can find that it simply cannot sue its own customer for the money it is owed.
Three things change. The claim is against the company, not ordinarily against the individual you dealt with — unless somebody gave a personal guarantee, which is exactly why guarantees are worth looking for. The address for service is the registered office, and getting it wrong is a common and avoidable delay. And the public record tells you more than you expect: who the directors are, what has been filed, whether the company is still active. Finding out whether the company is a real trading concern before you spend on a suit is time well spent.
The insolvency route is not the answer for most creditors, for the reason set out above — the minimum default is a crore. Where it genuinely applies, it is a different kind of proceeding with different consequences, and our NCLT page is the place to start understanding what that tribunal does.
This page is written mostly for a creditor, but a summary suit lands on somebody, and the wrong reaction in the first fortnight is very difficult to repair.
A negotiated recovery is not a failure. In money matters it is very often the best available outcome, because the alternative is not “all of it” — it is all of it, later, minus what it cost, if the assets are still there.
Where a settlement is reached, get it recorded rather than exchanged. A settlement arrived at in a Lok Adalat is embodied in an award which, under the Legal Services Authorities Act, is deemed to be a decree of a civil court, and no appeal lies against it. That finality is the whole attraction: it converts a promise into something enforceable in one step. Mediation through the court’s own centre produces a similar result once the terms are placed before the court.
What not to accept is an unrecorded promise in exchange for withdrawing something. If a proceeding is to be withdrawn, it should be withdrawn on terms that are on the record, because the alternative is starting again with a weaker case and less time on the clock.
This is the part of the process nobody describes at the beginning, and the part that disappoints most. A decree is an order that you are owed the money. Turning it into money is a separate proceeding — execution — in which the court can be asked to attach and sell property, attach a bank account, attach a salary, or otherwise reach what the judgment-debtor has.
The limitation on it is not legal but factual: execution cannot find assets that do not exist. A debtor with nothing in his name is, for practical purposes, beyond the reach of a decree, however good the decree is. This is why the single most useful question on this page comes before any of the procedure: if I win, what will I attach?
| What | What to know |
|---|---|
| A bank account | The most direct, if you know where it is — and a transfer to you is usually the reason you do |
| Salary or other recurring payment | Can be reached, within the limits the law places on how much |
| Immovable property | Slower, and it matters whose name it actually stands in, not whose family it belongs to |
| Movables and business assets | Possible, and often more useful as pressure than as realisation |
| Money owed to the debtor by somebody else | Can be attached in the debtor’s hands, which people rarely think of |
| Property in somebody else’s name | Not reachable merely because everybody knows who paid for it. That is a separate and much harder case |
The law also protects certain things from attachment, and the details are for your advocate. What belongs here is the shape of it: some assets are reachable, some are not, and knowing which is which before filing is what separates a commercial decision from a grievance.
Two things worth saying out loud, neither of which helps us sell anything.
The first is that a recovery matter is a commercial decision and should be taken like one. Before anything is filed, put three figures next to each other: what is owed, what it will cost to pursue, and what you would realistically attach. Where the third number is small, a settlement today at a discount is very often the better outcome, and taking it is not weakness. Where the third number is solid, the calculation is different and worth making properly.
The second is that documents win these cases. The person who has a signed paper is in a different procedure from the person who does not, and no amount of being obviously right converts one into the other afterwards. If you are reading this because of one bad debt, the most valuable thing on this page may be the part that applies to the next arrangement you make — a written loan agreement, an agreement that states the sum and the date, or at minimum a written record of what was agreed. It costs very little and it decides everything if things go wrong.
Everything signed by the other side, in date order. The cheque and the bank’s return memo if there is one. The bank statement showing the money going out and anything coming back. Every message or email about repayment, exported rather than photographed. The names and correct addresses of everybody you intend to proceed against, including a company’s registered office and any guarantor. A single sheet giving the dates: money out, last payment, last written word from them. Any earlier notice sent or received, with proof of despatch. And your own identity and address proof.
Parts of that set have to go on oath, so build a visit to an oath commissioner into the plan from the start — the affidavit verifying the claim is central in a summary suit rather than incidental, and a defective one costs you the procedure you came for. Collect a certified copy of each order as it is passed, put anything in another language through translation before it is annexed, and where a settlement involves one side giving comfort to the other, ask your advocate whether an indemnity belongs in it.
Documents, and nothing beyond them. We are not a recovery agency. Nobody here telephones a debtor, visits anybody, or works for a share of what is collected — and a firm that offers to do any of that is not what you want anywhere near a claim you may have to explain to a court. Nobody here is an advocate and nobody appears in any court. What we do is the legal notice settled to your advocate’s instructions, the plaint and its annexures, the applications — interim relief, execution, leave to defend where you are the defendant — the reply where you have been sued, the affidavits and their attestation, the document index, settlement terms and any indemnity that goes with them, a written loan agreement for whatever comes next, certified copies, translations, and the appeal papers later on. Where a police complaint is genuinely the right step, your advocate will say so, and the complaint is drafted to what they settle.
Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it. The directory is free to open and free to write through, it runs A to Z, and no listing on it was bought.
Say so at the outset. Representation at the State’s cost is available under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 to those who fall within its categories and its income ceiling, and the legal services desk at the court complex is where that is assessed. The ceiling is revised, so no figure appears here — ask there and get the current answer.
Two further things belong in this section rather than anywhere else. The mediation and Lok Adalat routes cost nothing and are the ones most likely to produce actual money in a small matter. And if the sum owed is modest and the debtor has little, the honest arithmetic may be that pursuing it costs more than it returns — in which case being told that today is worth more than any document we could sell you.
Open any service page and that document’s price is on it, before you order and before you speak to anybody. Anything payable to a court or a government office is shown apart from our figure, because it is not our money.
You hear the whole figure before work begins and nothing is taken in advance. On this page the useful thing is not the price but the order of doing things: find the date the money went out, find the last thing they put in writing, and try for an acknowledgment before anything else. Those three cost nothing and they decide which procedure is even available. Tell us those dates on the call and the drafting that follows is built on them.
Listed alphabetically. We do not rank, rate or feature advocates, and nobody pays for a position here — the reason is on our Find an Advocate page. Neither reading a profile nor writing to somebody through it costs anything.
Those two dates decide almost everything — whether the claim is still within time, whether an acknowledgment restarted the clock, and whether the document you hold opens the summary procedure or the ordinary one. Send what you have, including the bank entry and any messages. We will tell you what a complete file looks like and what is missing from yours, and put the directory in front of you. We will not collect the money for you and we will not take a share of it, because that is not what this is. Searching the directory is free and no commission from anybody on it reaches us.
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