Businesses depend on income and funds continuing to flow in to expand and make a profit. Accordingly, obligations to make payments to your business are extremely important to its success. That knowledge makes it all the more enraging and frustrating when someone misses or withholds payment to you. Having payments held up can curtail growth, delay projects, and put a great deal of unnecessary stress on business owners. For that reason, business owners with outstanding debtors turn to legal professionals for help.
Our firm knows how important a business is, which is why our lawyers work incredibly hard to ensure that you get every cent you are owed from those who are in debt to you. We also know effective strategies for obtaining the compensation you are entitled to while also not burning bridges with entities you may have to do business with in the future.
To get an analysis of your situation from our commercial collections attorneys, call Howe & Associates at the number (678) 680-6983.
What Collection Efforts Can Our Columbus, GA Commercial Collections Attorneys Assist You With?
There are a lot of different sources from which a business may want to collect outstanding debt. Accordingly, you may want our commercial collection lawyers to assist you in a variety of different ways. Below, we will go into some of the things you may want our attorneys to assist you within the commercial collections sphere.
Contract Performance
Suing parties for specific performance of something in a contract is a very common commercial litigation and collection matter. Many contracts involve a payment scheme or plan that must be adhered to, as well as “events of default,” which trigger when a party does not meet its obligations under the contract. Of course, failure to pay for services rendered is a failure to uphold an obligation. Accordingly, our lawyers can file a lawsuit on your behalf against the defaulting party for “specific performance.” A suit for specific performance aims to legally compel a party to do what a contract says. In this case, that means we are suing to compel them to pay you what they owe you.
Mechanic’s Liens
Another thing our lawyers can help you with besides suing for specific performance is properly filing mechanic’s liens on a debtor’s property. A mechanic’s lien is a special kind of lien where you get an interest in a debtor’s building until they pay for the work you did on the property in question. These liens take priority over all others so that you will get paid before any other creditors. However, these liens only last for a short time – only 365 days or less under O.G.C.A § 44-14-361.1(a)(3) – so you need to have our attorneys act quickly both to file these liens properly and act on them in a court of law.
Domestication of Foreign Judgments
Domestication of a foreign judgment is when a court ruling or order from another state is made to have legal force and effect in Georgia. This can happen in law for many reasons – mainly in divorce cases – but it also has use in the business world. For example, suppose you have a claim against a debtor in another state, but all their assets are in Georgia. In order to get a hold of those assets, you would need to have that judgment enforceable in the state they are in.
Domesticating a judgment is mostly a clerical process. You have our lawyers file appropriate forms with the appropriate legal office, and you then serve the debtor with the process. At that point, the judgment from another state can be utilized as if it were made in Georgia.
Why Should You Hire Our Columbus, GA Commercial Collections Lawyers?
Many people think that they should leave debt collecting to dedicated debt collection agencies. This seriously discounts what commercial collections lawyers can bring to the table. Many debt collection agencies are hyper-focused on getting paid at the expense of everything else, including continued relationships with the debtor and potentially basic decency. Indeed, the negative stereotypes associated with debt collectors are not entirely unearned.
Our commercial collection attorneys can take a different approach that is still just as effective at getting you the financial compensation you are entitled to. Our attorneys know that continued cooperation with debtors can be incredibly important for business. After all, a debtor who you are able to work with and have pay off their debts under mutually beneficial terms may end up being an excellent client later down the line. Attacking a debtor viciously can have the exact opposite effect from what you want to happen. They may even file bankruptcy and rob you of the ability to collect debts on your terms at all.
Hiring an attorney to communicate with people also tends to make them listen. Receiving a strongly worded letter regarding outstanding payments from an attorney is a sobering experience for many, and that kind of correspondence is often taken much more seriously than a letter from a debt collection agency, which may be placed with the “junk” mail.
All that being said, our attorneys are also not afraid to hold debtors accountable when they do not want to pay. We know how to utilize the legal system to get you what you are owed from debtors, whether they want to cooperate in a mutually beneficial way or not.
Contact Our Office and Start Pursuing Your Columbus, GA Commercial Collections Claim Today
Howe & Associates’ commercial collection lawyers can be reached at (678) 680-6983 to start going over your claims and overall situation.