Customer in receivership or liquidation: declare your claim

Occasionally, one of your customers may find themselves in financial difficulty. What happens to the money owed to you?

Let's find out.

When a company is placed in receivership or liquidation by court order, it sends a list of its creditors, together with the amounts of each claim, to a trustee or liquidator. The latter will send you a letter informing you that you are required to submit your claims.

Even if this is not the case, and even more so if it is, it is your responsibility to declare your claims (unpaid invoices) to the trustee or liquidator. You have two months from the date of publication of the judgment opening the collective proceedings in the Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales.

In a letter sent by recorded delivery with acknowledgement of receipt :

• your identity
• the identity of the debtor and information about the opening judgment
• the origin of the claim (enclose a copy of the invoice / author's note)
• the amount of the claim (sums due and to fall due with due dates, interest)
• the privileged status of the claim: author's notes for assignments of rights benefit from priority payment under Article L. 131-8 of the French Intellectual Property Code, which you should quote in your letter. Note that this privilege does not extend to remuneration for work carried out, and is limited to the 3 years preceding the opening of receivership or liquidation proceedings.
• any document proving the existence of the claim (e-mails...)
• and you must state your clear and express intention to claim the amount of your claim.

a model is available here

Your claim is processed by the mandatary or liquidator.

It can be

- partially accepted

- admitted in full,

- contested (in which case you will have to defend it at a hearing before the bankruptcy judge).

It will then be recorded as a liability of the company,

- or rejected.

Claims recorded under liabilities will be settled according to the creditor's rank: priority will be given to so-called super-privileged creditors, then to preferred creditors, and finally to unsecured creditors).

In concrete terms, the order of payment is as follows:

- Post-liquidation creditors

- Creditors prior to liquidation.

And within each category, we prioritize, in order :

- Super-privileged creditors:

employees over the last 60 days

- Preferred creditors :

Treasury, social security bodies, employees over the last 60 days, legal costs, but also special preferential creditors (creditors pledged against the business, mortgagees, pledgees, with retention of title clause).

- Unsecured creditors, with settlement at the marc le franc rate, i.e. proportional to the amount of their claim.

Authors therefore benefit from preferential claims for the amount of royalties, and unsecured claims for the rest of the sums owed. So, depending on the company's financial situation, your claim may be settled in full, in part or not at all...

The deadlines are short and the actions swift, but the results are highly uncertain.

We therefore recommend that you take as many precautions as possible before setting up any shots (consult the legal information available to the public at the commercial court clerk's office, Kbis, balance sheet, etc.).

And beware: the opening of receivership or liquidation proceedings does not interrupt existing contracts. You are therefore obliged to continue fulfilling your contractual obligations. You may, however, request termination of the contract and give formal notice to the administrator or liquidator to decide whether or not to continue. If no decision is taken within one month, the contract may be terminated.