Collecting On Your Judgment: A Look At The Money Judgment Enforcement Act

After a protracted, inconvenient, and expensive litigation process, you finally obtained your judgment against an adverse party. Now what?

The simple answer to that question should be "collect". Unfortunately, for many judgment creditors in British Columbia, collecting on a judgment can be just as lengthy, inconvenient, and costly a process as the litigation through which the underlying judgment was obtained in the first place.

While there are many reasons that judgments can be difficult to collect upon, blame is frequently directed at British Columbia's legislative regime and, more specifically, the Court Order Enforcement Act¹ (the "COEA"). The COEA has been criticized for being outdated and unnecessarily burdensome for judgment creditors to navigate.²