[doikor]

If you are the only debtor and they have the money (no need to sell anything) then it is actually really fast. The court just takes over the bank accounts and sends you the money.

The real slowness of the process kicks in when there are multiple parties claiming their money and there isn’t enough assets to pay everyone.

[lazide]

By ‘really fast’, I’d wager 6 months to a year, no?

You’d have to show all that was the case for instance, which if they ignored you and generally were unco-operative would take awhile.

[doikor]

Took me 17 days last time. A couple days for the claim to go trough the court and 14 days of time for them to pay. After that as they did not during the next bank day the court took control of their bank account and wired me the money. This was for unpaid wages but the same applies to any unpaid bill.

As I said it really only gets slow if the party does not have the money (as in they are bankrupt for real instead of just refusing to pay) and there are multiple parties claiming it. At that point it slows down to figure out how to split the assets.

There really isn’t any way to avoid this outside shutting down the company and moving the money out of the accounts but that will just dig the hole deeper as now they are not only contempt of court (not paying as ordered to when they are capable of) but they are also actively stealing/hiding someone else’s money.

[lazide]

Which jurisdiction?

Unpaid wages are usually treated very different from most claims, at least here, and do get handled in a very expeditious manner (labor commissioner in some places with literally raid workplaces sometimes).

Secured debt (pay me or I get this property - in the contract), can often get similar expedited treatment here in CA.

unpaid improvements (mechanics liens) on real or personal can get handled in a month or two here, but actually getting liquidated damages out of it can take a long time.

Other claims (general vendor bills, liquidated settlements), often meh.