Ukrainian Agency for Law and Investments
tel. (+380 44) 599-54-71
fax: (+380 44) 494-08-46
e-mail: info@
Postal address:
7, Tatarska str., k. 79, Kiev, 04107, Ukraine
You have the right to protect your rights in court when your partners violate the conditions of the contract concluded and your arguments are not sufficient to make them keep their obligations.
In Ukraine disputes between legal entities and/or with participation of natural persons-entrepreneurs are considered by Commercial courts.
You should draw your attention to the following moments before applying to the Ukrainian Commercial court with a debt collection claim:
1. Who will be the defendant according to your claim? Commercial courts of Ukraine consider claims, whose parties are legal entities and/or natural persons-entrepreneurs. Claims with participation of natural persons are considered by the general jurisdiction courts.
2. The claim must be submitted to the Commercial court at the location of the defendant. That means that if your unprincipled partner is located in Kharkiv and your company is registered in Kiev, you should submit your claim in the Commercial court of Kharkiv region.
3. Are the limitation terms kept in this dispute? According to the law, a plaintiff must apply to the court within a certain term since the moment he discovered (or had to discover) that his rights were infringed.
In Ukraine the following limitation terms are set:
· General limitation term is 3 years.
· In certain kinds of legal relationships there is a reduced term of limitation term equal to 1 year (when collecting penalties, disputes related to transportation of goods etc.)
There are some kinds of claims for which the limitation term is equal to 10 years or does not exist at all (a claim to a bank to return deposit, claim to an insurance company for payment of an insurance compensation etc.)
4. Is there a commitment in your contract to regulate any dispute by sending written pretensions or holding negotiations between the parties? If there is such provision present in your contract, a plaintiff must send a written pretension to the defender before application to the court. Such pretension has to contain: description of circumstances, proofs and legislative acts which became the grounds of claims, demands laid down to the defendant, amount of the pretension. Besides that a pretension has to mention: on what banking account must the amount be paid, full names of the pretension sender and addressee, their mailing addresses, date and number of pretension. Pretension has to be signed by the general manager of the company or by a person, who has the proper authority for signature according to the power of attorney or order.
Law gives one month to the debtor for consideration of the pretension starting from the day of its receipt. The pretension sender may apply to the Commercial court if the demands set by pretension were not met by the debtor or were met not in full before expiration of this term.
If your contract with the debtor does not contain any provisions regarding regulation of disputes in the way of negotiations, you may apply to the court without sending a pretension to the debtor.
5. Are the documents you possess sufficient to prove your rightfulness? Do you have, for example, an original contract with both the signature of general manager and stamp print of the debtor company, proofs of payment or delivery of goods (rendering services), invoices, declarations, acts of rendered services, quittances, proofs of sending of pretension to the debtor?
All of these documents may be your evidences in the court
6. And finally, will you have enough patience to pass all stages of court consideration of your case, to obtain a final decision and writ of execution, and than to control the process of collection of your debt by Execution service?
Having a considerable experience related to collection of debts through litigation, we can undertake all the process of work with your debtor – starting from pre-court dispute resolution and application to the court and ending with execution of the court decision by Execution service.
Participation of a lawyer at any stage of your case is also possible.
Price for our services may be preliminary discussed with you. You may pay per each action done (preparation of a pretension, of a claim, participation in court hearing of your case) or you can pay on “no win-no fee” basis (share of the amount of the collected debt). In the second case we will ask you to make a prepayment of a certain amount to compensate our possible costs in this case.
In any case we recommend you to collect all the present documents and to send them to our lawyers. After consideration of your documents you will receive our report regarding possible perspectives of this case. Having such recommendations you will be able to make a grounded decision on what to do in this situation.