Can a creditor put a chgarge on my property if there is not a CCJ?

[i.dan]

I have a debt as a result of losing a court case. The debt is for the defendants legal fees and costs. The trial did not result in a CCJ against me. It did result in an order to pay the costs (80% of the costs) with a certain amount of it to be paid in full by one month after the hearing. prior to the one month deadline I wrote to the 'judgment creditor' that I could not afford to pay and asked to have an extension and to stop interest. That was ignored and now they have obtained an Interim Charging Order, and are applying for a Charging Order on my property.
Question is can they obtain sucvh a charge if there is not a registered CCJ against me?

[R0b]

Hi

I think you misunderstand the meaning of a CCJ. A CCJ is a final judgment of a matter which means you must have had a court hearing and a judge has found in favour of the creditor. You say that you lost a court case so that judgment by the court will be the county court judgment.

A CCJ is not automatically registered because you have a period of 30 days to pay in full before the court notifies the Registry Trust who manages the CCJ register.

Even after the 30 day period the CCJ is not usually registered until the creditor takes some kind of enforcement action. An interim charging order is one form of enforcement of a CCJ.

So to answer your question, nobody can take enforcement action such as a charging order unless they have a valid judgment in their favour.