Winning the Judgment Was Only Half the Battle in Kingston

The situation

Etienne had worked the same shift at a Kingston manufacturing plant for over a decade, and he had savings to show for it. His sister Yasmin had gone into business a few years earlier and often talked about how much a modest loan from family had meant to her when she was starting out, which was part of what made Etienne comfortable helping when his longtime friend Luc, a hairdresser, asked to borrow $58,000 to open a small hair studio of his own. Etienne agreed. They signed a simple loan agreement: repayment in monthly installments over three years, with interest. For the first four months, the payments came in on time.

Then they stopped. Luc told Etienne the studio was struggling and asked for patience. Etienne gave him nearly a year of it. When the payments still hadn't resumed and Luc stopped returning calls, Etienne came to us.

The loan agreement was solid. It was written, signed, dated, and specific about the amount and the repayment terms — exactly the kind of document that makes a debt claim straightforward to prove. We sued Luc in the Superior Court for the outstanding balance. Luc did not seriously dispute that he owed the money; he simply stopped participating. We obtained judgment in Etienne's favour for the unpaid principal, plus interest that had accrued since the payments stopped, plus a costs award for the litigation itself — a total judgment of roughly $63,000.

Etienne assumed that was the end of it. It wasn't.

The problem: a judgment is not a payment

This is the part of debt litigation that catches most people off guard. A court judgment is a legal declaration that money is owed — it does not come with a cheque attached, and the court does not collect the money on the creditor's behalf. Once judgment is granted, the creditor becomes a judgment creditor and the person who owes the money becomes a judgment debtor, but the debtor is under no obligation to volunteer payment, and nothing forces their hand automatically.

Luc knew this. He ignored letters demanding payment of the judgment. When Etienne asked around, he heard that Luc's hair studio had closed, and assumed — reasonably, but wrongly — that Luc simply had nothing left to collect. Judgment debtors often say exactly that, and sometimes it's even true. But a debtor who has stopped answering the phone and closed a business is not the same as a debtor with no assets. Etienne had no way to find out which one Luc actually was. We did.

Ontario law gives judgment creditors a formal tool for exactly this situation: an examination in aid of execution. It lets a judgment creditor compel the judgment debtor to attend and answer questions under oath about their income, employment, bank accounts, property, and other assets — and to produce supporting documents. Lying under oath at an examination carries real consequences, which tends to make debtors considerably more forthcoming than they were on the phone.

What we did

1. Filed the paperwork to compel the examination. We arranged to have Luc formally served with a notice requiring him to attend and be questioned under oath about his financial affairs. Because he had already shown he would not respond voluntarily, we made clear from the outset that a failure to attend would be reported to the court and could result in a further order against him.
2. Prepared a targeted line of questioning. An examination in aid of execution isn't a fishing expedition — it works best when it is specific. We had Luc's original loan application, which listed a vehicle and a retirement savings account, and we knew from Etienne that Luc had continued doing hairdressing work on a freelance basis after the studio closed, even without a fixed employer. We built our questions around confirming and updating each of those.
3. Conducted the examination. Under oath, Luc confirmed he still owned the vehicle listed on his loan application — registered in his own name, not sold or transferred as he had implied to Etienne — and that he still held a modest registered retirement savings account. He also confirmed he was doing freelance hairdressing work for several clients and being paid by e-transfer into a personal bank account, rather than through payroll at any single employer. None of this had been visible from the outside once the studio closed its doors.
4. Registered a writ of seizure and sale. This is a document filed with the sheriff's office that creates a claim against a debtor's real and personal property in the applicable region. It doesn't seize anything by itself, but it puts the debtor on notice that specific property — including that vehicle — could eventually be seized and sold to satisfy the judgment, and it complicates the debtor's ability to sell or refinance that property cleanly in the meantime.
5. Obtained a garnishment order for the bank account. Garnishment is the more common route where a debtor's income runs through a traceable account. A garnishment order directs a third party — here, Luc's bank — to redirect funds toward the judgment instead of to the debtor. Once the bank account was identified through the examination, we obtained an order attaching a portion of the balance and future deposits, which is what actually started moving money toward Etienne.
6. Negotiated a structured resolution rather than force a sale. Seizing and selling a car for a self-employed hairdresser who needed it to reach clients would have been slow, would have cost money in sheriff's fees, and likely would have yielded less than the vehicle's real value. Once Luc understood the seizure was a real possibility and not an idle threat, he agreed to a repayment schedule backed by the ongoing bank garnishment, avoiding the sale entirely.

The outcome

The garnishment order produced an initial payment of roughly $14,000 from the funds sitting in Luc's account at the time it was attached. The remainder was collected over the following ten months through a combination of continued garnishment on incoming deposits and the negotiated monthly payments, which Luc kept up once he understood the alternative was a sheriff's sale of his vehicle and a possible further examination.

In total, Etienne recovered the full judgment amount — roughly $63,000 including the accrued interest and costs — a little over a year after the litigation itself concluded. The writ of seizure and sale was never enforced against the vehicle; it did its job simply by existing and being disclosed to Luc as a real consequence he was facing.

Ontario judgments also remain enforceable for a long time, which matters when a debtor is simply hoping the creditor will give up. The writ, the examination, and the garnishment order used here can generally be renewed or repeated if a debtor's circumstances change again down the road. Etienne never needed that fallback, but knowing it was available shaped how firmly we could negotiate the repayment schedule instead of pushing straight to a forced sale.

The single most important step in the whole enforcement process was the examination itself. Without it, Etienne would have been holding a judgment worth exactly as much as Luc's willingness to pay it — which, up to that point, had been nothing. The examination converted a piece of paper into specific, attachable assets: a bank account and a vehicle that Luc had not disclosed and had every incentive not to mention.

What you can learn from this