Pursuant to Act No. 50 of 2009 on the payment order procedure (fizetési meghagyásos eljárás), from the 1st of June 2010, it is a notarial power to enforce due pecuniary claims in payment order procedures. The goal with the new regulation was primarily to relieve the ordinary courts, since more than 400 thousand of these non-litigious procedures were conducted in front of the courts in every year.
According to the new regulation, if the amount of the claim does not exceed over one million forints the due pecuniary claims are to be enforced only through payment orders, provided that the obligor has a known place of domestic residence, a seat or a local representative, and the claim does not arise from employment or other similar relations.
The Chamber of Civil Law Notaries (MOKK) provides a computer system for the notaries to complete their new tasks. They pursue automatic data procession and certain conducts can be done automatically.
As natural persons we can lodge our request for issuing a warrant of payment orally or using the paper-based submission form, whereas the legal persons or natural persons acting through their legal counsel may do so only electronically. The electronically submitted applications are distributed automatically and equally between the notaries, the ones submitted orally or in a paper based form will belong to competence of the notary they were presented in front of. All notaries have the power to act nationwide.
As an important novelty, the deadlines have been reduced, as the aim was also to have quick and efficient proceedings. The documents received are recorded in the MOKK’s system in 3 working days at most. If there is no rejection or transmission of the request, and no need for completion or the requested documents are already completed, the notary will issue the warrant of payment in 15 days (or 3 days in case of electronically submitted request) calculated from the day the request was presented – without the opponent having been heard.
The defendant has 15 days (as of the delivery) to present his/ her opposition, and hence, the opposition presented in time will transform the non-litigious payment order procedure into a lawsuit before the court. On the other hand a payment order without being contradicted has the same effect as a final, legally binding judgment.
The client requesting the above non-litigious procedure has to pay a court fee for MOKK calculated a rate equal to the amount indicated in the pecuniary claim and with a rate of 3 or 1% depending on whether it is a main proceeding or a procedure for permitting postponement or payment in installations. A stamp fee does not have to be paid except when the case is brought to the court.
Anita Bartal
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