The Interest on Money Claims Act 2016 has changed the process for being awarded interest by the court and claiming interest on a judgment debt from 1 January 2018.
Please note: an application to vary an attachment order is not a new enforcement application.
When you make a new enforcement application to the court, you can ask to be paid interest on civil debt more than $3000.
If you started your claim for a judgement order prior to 1 January 2018, you can continue to claim interest under sections 62B and 65A of the District Courts Act 1947 until the debt has been paid in full.
Please note: an application to vary an attachment order is not a new enforcement application.
After a judgment order, interest on civil debt is:
You as creditor can claim:
To calculate the amount of interest you can claim on a civil debt, you need to:
To claim this amount of interest on civil debt, you can either:
If you want help calculating the interest, or your judgment order is older than 1 July 2011, you can:
Please note: an application to vary an attachment order is not a new enforcement application.
The ability to claim interest is now awarded in a money judgement and can be liable to be paid from the date specified by the court, up until the debt is paid in full.
The court will set the initial debt amount. This is the amount specified by the court in a money judgement, and is the amount against which interest can be claimed for the defined period.
When using the Civil Debt Interest Calculator, this is the amount you will enter as the initial amount.
Please note: interest cannot be claimed on costs or interest awarded after the judgement has been made, such as the cost of filing enforcement applications.
When the court is defining a period or periods to award interest on, the start date is the date from which interest begins accruing. This will be either:
When using the Civil Debt Interest Calculator, this is the start date you will enter into the calculator.
The interest awarded accrues until the judgment debt has been paid in full. When using the Civil Debt Interest Calculator, the end date will be:
Please note: each time you file an enforcement application you can provide the updated amount of interest owing. An application to vary an attachment order is not a new enforcement application.
You must include any payments made towards the judgement debt when calculating the amount of interest that can be claimed.
If the debtor pays or intends to pay the judgement debt in one payment, you do not need to enter anything in ‘instalments’, but you must enter the date of payment as the end date. This will calculate the total amount owing, including interest, for the debt to be paid in full.
If the debtor has made payments towards the judgement debt in instalments, you will need to enter each payment amount and the date it was made into the calculator using the add instalments button.
Once the judgement debt (including all interest claimed under the Interest on Money Claims Act 2016) is paid in full, no further interest can be claimed.
Calculating the interest on a money judgment made under the Interest on Money Claims Act 2016 can be done through accessing the Civil Debt Interest Calculator.
Frequently Asked Questions provide further details about the interest rate, how it is calculated and how it is applied to the debt.
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