Unpaid traffic fines, trigger foreclosure, mortgage and administrative arrest?
Unpaid traffic fines can lead to foreclosure, administrative seizure and mortgage of the property, but in what cases? Can not paying a fine for violating the highway code lead to enforcement procedures that lead to the seizure of assets, the mortgage of the house or the administrative seizure of the vehicle? What must be taken into consideration at this juncture is that many Municipalities do not have much interest in recovering low amounts of fines, but there are others, however, who pass quite easily to the notification of tax bills to collect the amount due.
It may happen that you do not pay a fine for a traffic violation or forget to pay it by the deadline.
What risks do we face in these cases? It should be remembered that a fine, if not paid within 60 days of receipt, begins the procedure to turn into a tax bill.
If the fine is raised by the local police, the Municipality, once the time established by law for the balance has elapsed, can register the unpaid sum in the register.
Within five years from the day of the violation, the role is then handed over to the collection agent who proceeds to send the tax bill.
Up to this point there is no risk of forced collection procedures, but it is good to know that when the sum due is requested with the tax bill it involves an increase in the amounts due to the fine, interest, premium and of notification costs.
When the Municipality proceeds with the tax injunctions it is a short step from arriving at the seizure of the assets but from here to risking, for example, the foreclosure of the house is very difficult.
Let's try to understand, therefore, what is the risk of not paying for a road wetsuit.
Unpaid traffic fines, trigger foreclosure, mortgage and administrative arrest? What happens when you don't pay a fine? How is the payment of a fine recovered? When does the administrative detention of the car start? Mortgage on the house for unpaid fines Unpaid fine, when the foreclosure? What happens when you don't pay a fine? When a Municipality does not receive payment of a large fine for a traffic violation, it notifies the driver.
If this is not paid.
You can register the debt with the collection agent who in turn notifies you of the tax bill.
The debtor who receives it has 60 days to pay it, in the absence of payment the collection agent implements credit recovery measures.
In this case you have to be very careful because the interest on the sum owed rises very rapidly and every six months that pass without the payment being made, the sum owed is increased.
How is the payment of a fine recovered? To recover the payment of a fine, two tools are used: on the one hand, precautionary measures such as administrative arrest and mortgage on the properties, and on the other, executive measures such as foreclosure.
The Municipality, in any case, must be quite diligent in recovering the sums given that traffic fines have a five-year statute of limitations.
read also What is the risk of those who do not pay a fine? When does the administrative detention of the car start? What must be kept in mind is that to trigger the administrative arrest it is not necessary to have a high debt.
The important thing is that the same is notified with 30 days' notice to allow the debtor to pay the sum he owes in a single solution or in a deferred manner.
The administrative seizure serves to ensure that the vehicle is not used and damaged in view of a subsequent seizure (which almost never happens).
With the arrest the car cannot circulate even if it can be scrapped or sold (the buyer, however, must be made aware of the presence of the administrative arrest which will not allow him to circulate).
To get back into circulation with the vehicle it is necessary to pay the debt or request an extension by paying the first instalment.
Mortgage on the house for unpaid fines The mortgage is the procedure that occurs most rarely for unpaid fines since it is only possible if the debt exceeds 20,000 euros.
Even in the case of a mortgage, 30 days' notice is required during which the debtor can pay or defer the debt.
Like the administrative seizure, the mortgage does not prevent the sale of the property and does not prevent the owner from living in it.
And the mortgage should also be a first step towards foreclosure of the property, but even in this case foreclosure rarely occurs.
Unpaid fine, when is the foreclosure? Those who do not pay the fines may also be subject to third-party seizure.
The debtor's salary, current account or pension may be seized (within the limit of one fifth over the living wage).
The garnishment of salary or pension, obviously, must follow the rules established on the subsistence minimum.
The current account, however, can be seized in full, but always within the limit of the pending debt.
The house, however, can be foreclosed only if the accumulated debt is equal to or greater than 120,000 euros.
Precisely for this reason it is very difficult for a property to be seized due to unpaid traffic fines (and in any case the first house cannot be seized) because the amount of fines for violation of the highway code is unlikely to be so high.
read also Third party foreclosure 2024: what it is, procedure, how to defend yourself and new limits on amounts