Bailiff Enforcement Lawyer in Cluj

Received a summons to pay or a garnishment? What to do in the first few days

The envelope from the bailiff (executor judecătoresc), the letter from the bank or the deduction on your payslip usually arrives without warning. The first thing that matters is the date. Write down the day you received the document and check your last day with the court deadline calculator.

Next, don’t pay or sign anything until we’ve checked the enforceable title (titlu executoriu). Some of the enforcement cases I see have problems from the start: the amount claimed doesn’t match the title, the interest is calculated wrongly, the creditor’s right is time-barred or the documents weren’t lawfully communicated to you. Each of these is grounds for a challenge.

What to send me so I can quickly tell you where you stand:

• the court’s ruling approving enforcement and the summons to pay, if you’ve received them;
• the enforceable title: the judgment, the loan agreement, the promissory note or the notarised contract;
• the garnishment letter from the bank or your employer, and the bank statement showing the frozen amount;
• proof of the payments you’ve already made to the creditor;
• your ID.

You can send me photos on WhatsApp. Once I’ve read them, I’ll tell you whether there’s anything to challenge, what deadline you have and how we’d go about it.

How I can help

• Checking whether the enforcement is lawful: the enforceable title, the limitation period (art. 706), the court’s approval (art. 666), the communication of the documents (art. 667), the amount and the interest claimed.
• Challenge to enforcement (contestație la executare): drafting it and representing you at the enforcement court (instanța de executare), within the 15-day deadline (art. 715). I’ve written in detail about the grounds and the procedure in my article on the challenge to enforcement (in Romanian).
• Suspending enforcement: the request for suspension and the security (cauțiune) under art. 719, so that the garnishment or the sale is put on hold until the challenge is decided.
• Bank account and salary garnishment: checking the limits on deductions (art. 729) and the amounts that can’t be seized (art. 727 and 729(7)), and lifting the garnishment when it’s unlawful or the debt has been paid.
• Negotiating with the creditor: a payment plan or a partial payment accepted by the creditor often stops enforcement more cheaply than a court case.
• For creditors: enforcing your title through a bailiff, choosing between garnishment and seizing assets and, when you don’t have a title yet, the small claims procedure (cerere de valoare redusă) (in Romanian), the payment order (ordonanță de plată) or recovering the debt through an ordinary claim.

Enforcement deadlines you can’t afford to miss

The deadline for a challenge runs from service or from when you learned of the act, not from the date on the act. If you didn’t receive the approval ruling and the summons to pay, you can challenge the enforcement itself from the first enforcement act you find out about (art. 715(1) point 3).

Salary and bank account garnishment: what can be taken?

A garnishment is set up without a summons to pay, by a letter the bailiff sends to your bank or employer, and you’re simply notified (art. 783(1)). From the moment the bank receives the letter, the money in the account is frozen, including future payments into it, within the limits of the law (art. 781(2) and art. 784(1)). The bank can release the account only if you deposit the full amount being enforced (art. 784(6)) or if the garnishment is lifted.

On salaries, pensions and other periodic income, the law sets limits (art. 729):

• at most one half of net monthly income, for maintenance and child allowances;
• at most one third of net monthly income, for any other debt;
• with several garnishments, at most one half of net income in total, whatever the debts are for;
• if the income is below the national net minimum wage, only the part above half of that wage.

State child allowances and child benefits, benefits for caring for a sick child, maternity and death benefits, state scholarships and daily travel allowances can’t be seized for any debt (art. 729(7)). Nor can personal belongings essential for everyday life, food for three months or fuel for three winter months (art. 727). If you’re a company, the money set aside to pay salaries for the three months after the garnishment is set up is also exempt (art. 781(5)(c)).

If deductions above these limits have already reached the creditor’s account, you can file a challenge to enforcement and ask for the money to be repaid. If the debt is genuine, it’s often more useful for us to negotiate a payment plan with the creditor than to let the garnishment run. On the page about garnishment I’ve written in detail about bank account garnishment without notice, several creditors at the same time, garnishment by the tax authority (ANAF) and how to check where a garnishment comes from.

The challenge to enforcement and suspension

The challenge is filed at the enforcement court, meaning the district court (judecătoria) for your domicile or registered office on the date the creditor applied to the bailiff (art. 651(1)); for Cluj-Napoca, that’s the Cluj-Napoca District Court (Judecătoria Cluj-Napoca). It’s filed within 15 days, and the court stamp duty (taxă judiciară de timbru) is calculated on the amount challenged, using the scale in art. 3(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 80/2013 (OUG 80/2013), but capped at 1,000 lei; it’s 100 lei when the matter can’t be valued in money (art. 10(2) of OUG 80/2013). You can estimate the duty with the stamp duty calculator.

The challenge on its own doesn’t stop the enforcement. For that you ask for suspension, together with the challenge or separately, and as a rule you pay security calculated on the amount challenged: 10% up to 10,000 lei, 1,000 lei plus 5% of the amount above 10,000 lei, 5,500 lei plus 1% of the amount above 100,000 lei, 14,500 lei plus 0.1% above 1,000,000 lei (art. 719(2)). Suspension is mandatory, with no security, when the document being enforced isn’t enforceable under the law, when a first-instance judgment has declared it forged, or when you have authenticated proof of a deferral granted by the creditor (art. 719(4)). In urgent cases, the court can order provisional suspension, without summoning the parties, if you’ve paid the security (art. 719(7)). When the title isn’t a court judgment, a loan agreement for example, you can also raise grounds in the challenge that go to the substance of the debt, if the law doesn’t provide another way to set the title aside (art. 713(2)). The enforcement court’s judgment can be challenged only by appeal, within 10 days of service (art. 651(4), art. 718(1)).

For creditors: how do you recover money through a bailiff?

If you have an enforceable title, you file the application with a bailiff in the area of the court of appeal where the debtor has their domicile or registered office (art. 782(1) for garnishment). An enforceable title can be a final judgment, a loan agreement, a promissory note, a notarised contract or a legal assistance contract with a lawyer (contract de asistență juridică). The bailiff asks the court for approval within 3 days, the court rules within 7 days (art. 666), and a bank account garnishment takes effect from the day the bank receives the letter (art. 784(1)).

If you don’t have a title yet, the route depends on the amount and the documents: the small claims procedure (in Romanian) for claims of up to 50,000 lei (art. 1.026(1), as amended by Law no. 57/2025), the payment order for claims that are certain, liquid and due and arise from a contract, or an ordinary claim. Don’t let 3 years go by from the due date or from the judgment becoming final: after that, the right to request enforcement is time-barred (art. 706).

How long does it take?

A bank account garnishment works for the creditor from the day it’s communicated to the bank. The district court decides a challenge to enforcement within a few months, depending on the evidence and how busy the court is, and the judgment can be appealed within 10 days of service. Suspension can be obtained faster, together with the challenge or separately, if you pay the security. I’ll tell you from the start how long to expect in your situation and what each step costs.

How I work

1. You send me the documents and tell me briefly what happened and when you received the envelope.
2. I go through them and tell you openly whether the enforcement has defects, what deadline you have and what the challenge would cost, including the stamp duty and the security.
3. We decide the steps together: a challenge and suspension, negotiating with the creditor or, for creditors, enforcement through a bailiff.
4. I draft the documents and represent you at the Cluj-Napoca District Court and, on appeal, at the Cluj Tribunal (Tribunalul Cluj).

The consolidated text of the Code of Civil Procedure, which this page is based on, is on legislatie.just.ro. I know a garnishment can leave you without money overnight. If you’re facing enforcement in Cluj, get in touch and send me the documents, even photos, and I’ll tell you what deadline you have.