Documents for Business

In excess of 1,000 customisable documents covering every conceivable business issue.

Introduction to this document

Letter to request court to enter
judgment in default -
fixed amount

You’ve issued your claim for an unpaid debt. The defendant hasn’t filed a defence within the permitted timescale. Use our letter to send to court together with Form N225 in order to enter judgment in default.

Advice

If you requested the court to send out your particulars of claim, you’ll be given Form 205A (notice of issue) which will show the date by which the defendant should reply. This will be 14 days after the defendant received (was served) your claim form, unless they file an acknowledgment. If they do so, they will have an extra 14 days - therefore, a total of 28 days from service of your claim to file a defence. Once this date has passed and no defence has been filed, you can request the court to enter judgment in default.

Tip

When you do your calculations, don’t forget that time starts to run from when the claim has been served on the defendant. When the courts do this, it’s done by first-class post. Service is therefore “deemed” to take place on the second day after it was posted - it doesn’t matter whether these days are actually bank holidays or weekends, e.g. if the claim is sent out by first class post on Monday the deemed date of service is Wednesday.

The request

Use Form N205A or N225. You have to decide how and when you want the defendant to pay, i.e. immediately or by instalments. The court will use this information to complete Form N30 which they’ll send to the defendant to inform them that judgment’s been entered against them and how much to pay and when.

Tip

As soon as the date’s passed for filing a defence, get your application for judgment in as quickly as possible. The sooner you do this, the sooner you can crack on with enforcing it.