When a creditor has one or more outstanding claims, the normal course of action is to seek an amicable settlement for payment of the amounts due. It is only when this avenue fails that recourse is made to the courts.
It is common knowledge, that the courts offer two major types of redress namely: a declaratory order and an enforcement order. In the first case, court relief is sought to obtain a judgment declaring the existence of a debt – or its nature and scope – , and that the debtor must satisfy this.
Only when there is no voluntary compliance with the provisions of this decision, or with other documents that possess identical declaratory order status, does the second type of relief enforcing the order come into play. In accordance with which the court proceeds to implement the judgment against the debtor to pay the debt, usually by selling their property at public auction and giving the proceeds to the creditor, to satisfy the claim.
A declaratory order is obtained through the appropriate court procedure – that is also termed declaratory – and this may be ordinary or special, depending on whether it affects the generality of the issue or some aspect in particular. Arising from this there are two ordinary declarative procedures namely: the ordinary hearing and the oral hearing.
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