The honest answer: it depends on one thing
"How long will this take, and what will it cost?" is the first question every creditor asks, and the honest answer turns almost entirely on a single variable: does your debtor genuinely dispute the debt, or are they simply not paying?
Those two situations look identical from your side — an invoice unpaid, emails ignored — but they lead to completely different procedures, with timelines that differ by a factor of ten. A debt nobody seriously contests can produce an enforceable court order in weeks. A genuinely disputed claim is litigation, and litigation takes years. Most B2B files, in our experience, fall into the first category and never see a full trial.
Timeline by route
Formal notice — days
Drafted and dispatched within 24 business hours, delivered in 2–3 business days, with an 8-day payment deadline. Around 40% of cases settle here. Details →
Payment order — 2 to 3 months
No hearing. Order issued in 15–30 days, then served, then a one-month window for the debtor to oppose before it becomes enforceable. Details →
Référé-provision — 3 to 8 weeks
A hearing 2–6 weeks out, an order often the same day, immediately enforceable even on appeal. Details →
Full action on the merits — 6 to 24 months
For genuinely contested claims: several rounds of written submissions, then judgment. Count 6–12 months before a commercial court (the usual B2B forum) and 12–24 months before a judicial court. Add 12–18 months if either side appeals.
A pre-judgment freeze takes about 5–7 business days to bite and does not delay anything else — it runs alongside whichever route above you are on. Once the freeze is executed, you have one month to launch the merits action. For EU-based creditors the European Account Preservation Order does the same job EU-wide.
What actually causes delay
Very little of the elapsed time in a French debt case is the court thinking. The real drivers are:
- Service on the debtor. A court order has no effect until formally served by a commissaire de justice. A debtor who has moved, or whose registered office is a mail-forwarding address, adds weeks.
- The opposition window. After a payment order is served, the debtor has one month to oppose. That month is pure calendar time and cannot be shortened.
- Opposition itself. Filed in roughly 5–10% of cases, it converts the fast-track order into ordinary adversarial proceedings — the single largest timeline risk.
- File quality on day one. A missing signed contract or proof of delivery is the most common reason a fast route is unavailable and a slow one becomes necessary.
A commercial claim in France is time-barred 5 years after the sum fell due (article L.110-4 du Code de commerce). Waiting also raises the risk that the debtor becomes insolvent — once insolvency proceedings open, individual recovery stops and you join the queue of creditors. Speed is not just about convenience; it is about whether there is anything left to collect.
The three layers of cost
Cost in a French recovery case comes in three distinct layers, and creditors often conflate them.
1. Your attorney's fees
Flat, and strictly incremental — each step is charged only if it actually becomes necessary:
- €189 ex VAT for the formal notice — the only fee to get started
- €800 if the debtor does not reply within 8 days, or replies and a pre-litigation negotiation opens
- + €1,000 if summary proceedings (référé provision) must be filed
- + €800, optional, to freeze the debtor's bank accounts before judgment
On recovery cases a success fee applies to the sums actually recovered: 8% ex VAT up to €15,000, 7% from €15,000 to €30,000, and 6% above. French Bar rules forbid a pure contingency fee, so this always supplements a base fee rather than replacing it. Everything is fixed in a written fee agreement before work starts — the full breakdown, including VAT treatment for EU and non-EU clients, is on the fees page.
2. Court and officer costs
Modest and regulated: court filing fees of roughly €30–70, and service by a commissaire de justice from around €50 per act, rising to €120 for a formal summons. Certified translation, where a procedure requires it, is the one variable item worth budgeting separately.
3. What comes back to you
This is the layer creditors most often forget, and it materially changes the arithmetic:
- Late-payment penalties accrue automatically between businesses, without any reminder being necessary. The default rate is the European Central Bank's refinancing rate plus 10 percentage points, and cannot contractually be set below three times the legal interest rate (article L.441-10 du Code de commerce).
- A fixed €40 recovery indemnity per overdue invoice, owed automatically (article D.441-5 du Code de commerce) — with the right to claim more if your actual recovery costs exceeded it, on proof.
- An attorney-fee award against the losing party under article 700 du Code de procédure civile. Courts commonly award €1,500–5,000 in a standard B2B case, more in heavily litigated ones. It is discretionary and must be specifically requested — never assume it is automatic.
- Enforcement costs fall on the debtor by law (article L.111-8 du Code des procédures civiles d'exécution).
Article L.111-8 shifts enforcement costs to the debtor only once you hold an enforceable title. Recovery costs incurred without one stay with you. This is the strongest financial argument for reaching a court order quickly instead of spending months and money on informal pressure that the law will never let you recharge.
Frequently asked questions
A formal notice that works — days, not months, and it resolves around 40% of files. Where it fails, the fastest enforceable outcome is usually a référé-provision (3–8 weeks) or a payment order (2–3 months), depending on whether the debtor has raised any objection at all.
Rarely in full. An Article 700 award is set at the court's discretion with regard to fairness and the parties' financial positions, and typically covers a significant part rather than the whole. Enforcement costs, by contrast, fall on the debtor by law once you hold a title.
No. Fees are the same for foreign and French creditors, and the procedure is handled remotely. The only cross-border-specific cost that may arise is certified translation of documents where a procedure requires it.
Individual recovery stops. The case converts into filing a claim within the insolvency proceedings, and recovery rates fall sharply. This is precisely why a pre-judgment asset freeze matters when there are early warning signs.
Below a certain size the cost-to-recovery ratio stops working, which is why the firm applies a minimum claim threshold. We will tell you plainly if your case falls below it rather than take a file we cannot serve economically.
Yes. A written fee agreement setting out scope, pricing and expected out-of-pocket costs is provided before any billable work begins — it is a legal requirement in France, not just firm policy.
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