The question we are asked most often by businesses is some version of: someone owes me money and won't pay — what can I do?

The honest answer starts with a question back: can they pay? A decree against someone with no attachable assets is an expensive piece of paper, and the time to establish that is before you spend on litigation, not after.

Assuming there is something to recover, here is how it actually works.

Start with the paper

Before anything else, establish what you can prove:

  • The contract or purchase order, or whatever recorded the arrangement
  • Invoices, and evidence they were delivered and not disputed at the time
  • Delivery documents or evidence the service was performed
  • Account statements showing what was paid and what remains
  • Any acknowledgement of the debt — an email, a message, a part payment, a reconciliation signed by the debtor
  • Any cheque given and dishonoured

An acknowledgement is disproportionately valuable. A debtor who has confirmed the balance in writing, or made a part payment, has narrowed the dispute considerably — and in some circumstances that also affects limitation.

Send a legal notice

A properly drafted legal notice should identify the debt, its basis, the amount, the demand, a reasonable period to pay, and what will follow.

It is not merely a formality. A meaningful share of matters settle at this stage, because it is the point at which the debtor understands the creditor will actually litigate. It also creates a record, and it forces the debtor to state a defence — which is useful, because a defence invented later that contradicts their response to the notice rarely survives.

The recovery suit

Where the notice does not produce payment, a suit for recovery is the substantive remedy. Two points determine how it goes.

Interim protection. Where there is a real risk that the debtor will dispose of assets, applications such as attachment before judgment can preserve the position. This matters more than most claimants realise: a decree obtained against a debtor who has since transferred everything is worth little.

Summary procedure. Where the claim is on a written contract, a bill of exchange or a cheque, a summary route may be available in which the defendant must obtain leave to defend rather than defending as of right. That is materially faster, and whether your claim qualifies is one of the first things worth establishing.

Where the creditor is a financial institution, recovery proceeds instead before the Banking Courts under the Financial Institutions Ordinance, which is faster still — see banking and finance.

A dishonoured cheque changes the picture

If the debt is evidenced by a cheque that bounced, there is an additional route: criminal proceedings alongside the civil claim. In practice the criminal process functions as pressure that brings a debtor to settlement, while the civil suit remains the mechanism that actually recovers the money.

See our guide on cheque dishonour in Pakistan.

Execution: where cases go to die

Obtaining a decree is not recovery. Execution is the separate proceeding in which the court enforces it — by attachment and sale of the judgment-debtor's property, garnishee orders against money owed to them by third parties, and other measures.

Execution is frequently slower than the suit that produced the decree, and it is where poorly prepared cases stall. The determining factor is whether you can identify attachable assets. A creditor who has thought about that from the outset — and preserved the position with interim relief — is in a completely different position from one who obtains a decree and only then starts looking.

Limitation

Claims do not remain available indefinitely. Contractual claims are commonly subject to a three-year period running from when the right to sue accrued, though an acknowledgement of the debt can affect the position.

Creditors routinely wait, chasing informally, until the claim is close to or past limitation. If a debt is ageing, take advice now rather than after another round of promises.

Deciding whether to sue

Weigh, honestly:

  • Recoverability — does the debtor have attachable assets?
  • The strength of the paper — can you prove the debt, or only assert it?
  • Proportionality — the cost and years against the amount at stake
  • The relationship — whether a negotiated recovery of most of it now beats all of it eventually
  • Limitation — how much time is actually left

Sometimes the right advice is to settle at a discount, and sometimes it is not to pursue at all. We will say so.

How the firm can help

We draft and serve legal notices, file and prosecute recovery suits including under the summary procedure, obtain interim relief to preserve assets, and conduct execution proceedings. We also defend recovery claims, where a demand is overstated or the underlying contract was not performed.

Because we also handle corporate and insolvency-adjacent work, we can advise on whether the debtor is worth pursuing before you commit — which is usually the most valuable thing we can tell you.

Contact the firm with the invoices, the contract and whatever correspondence exists, and we will give you a realistic view.