THE 2025 LAW ON CIVIL JUDGMENT ENFORCEMENT: A REMARKABLE BREAKTHROUGH IN ENFORCEMENT PROCEDURES AND TIMEFRAMES

A person may spend nearly two years or more pursuing a lawsuit and win with a legally binding judgment, only to wait several more years just to receive the response: 'verifying the conditions for enforcement.' In civil proceedings, the practical value of adjudication is only guaranteed when the judgment is executed fully, on time, and in accordance with legal procedures. However, civil judgment enforcement practices over the years have revealed several shortcomings, such as prolonged processing times, multi-layered procedures, difficulties in asset verification, and a high rate of judgments lacking the conditions for enforcement.

The Law on Civil Judgment Enforcement No. 106/2025/QH15 enacted in 2025 (effective from July 01, 2026) aims at a single goal: shortening the timeframe, simplifying procedures, and bringing judgment enforcement activities closer to the practical needs of the people.

1. Simplifying procedures and shortening the enforcement timeframe through the digital transformation environment:

One of the reasons causing the prolonged civil judgment enforcement process in practice does not stem entirely from the complexity of the obligations to be executed, but also from the procedural operation method itself. Receiving dossiers in person, relying on paper documents, multi-party information exchange, and verifying enforcement conditions through traditional routines significantly prolong the time from when a judgment takes legal effect to when the legitimate rights of the involved parties are practically secured.

In order to overcome this situation, the 2025 Law on Civil Judgment Enforcement (hereinafter referred to as the "2025 LCJE") has established a legal basis for transforming the method of organizing judgment enforcement from a physical dossier processing model to an advanced method for data management.

According to Article 5 of the 2025 LCJE: the database on civil judgment enforcement managed by the Ministry of Justice is connected and shared with the national comprehensive database; digitally signed electronic documents and data have the same legal validity as paper documents; concurrently, the judgment enforcement agency is responsible for ensuring cybersecurity, data safety, and confidentiality during the enforcement process. This includes the data organization system of Bailiffs - the new name for the former Process Servers (guided by Articles 47, 48, 49 of Decree 151/2026/ND-CP effective from July 01, 2026).

To ensure the synchronization of this mechanism, the Law continues to amend related procedures:

Example: Ms. Ha (residing in Dong Nai - the judgment creditor) has the right to request the Judgment Enforcement Agency against Company B (headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City - the judgment debtor) to pay the amount of 100,000,000 VND under a service contract. Under the old regulations, Ms. Ha might have to directly submit the enforcement request, receive notifications, supplement documents, and work multiple times with the enforcement agency. According to the 2025 LCJE, Ms. Ha's enforcement request can be submitted in the digital environment, notifications are carried out electronically, and the enforcement amount is transferred via bank account. In this situation, Ms. Ha's travel costs and the time spent recovering her money are minimized.

2. A progressively advanced system for verifying judgment enforcement conditions

Previously, verification activities were mainly carried out manually such as: sending Official Dispatches to the Land Registration Office (or Branch Office), credit institutions (Banks), Tax authorities, or local authorities holding information on the assets of the judgment debtor. The exchange process for each contact point not only prolonged the time but also increased the risk of assets being transferred before the enforcement agency could apply securing measures.

To handle this limitation, Article 37 of the 2025 LCJE stipulates "Within 09 days from the expiration of the voluntary execution period, if the judgment debtor fails to voluntarily execute, the Enforcer shall conduct verification; in cases of executing a decision applying provisional emergency measures, verification must be conducted immediately" and the verification of enforcement conditions is carried out in the digital environment through connections with the national database and specialized databases.

In essence, this regulation helps the Enforcer change the source of information access for verifying assets, income, residence, the legal status of assets, and assessing the capabilities of the judgment debtor much more quickly and especially, by no longer completely relying on sending requests and waiting for responses among multiple Agencies, it helps maximize the exploitation of existing data.

* Illustrative scenario as follows: Mr. Nang is entitled to enforce an amount of 2,000,000,000 VND under a judgment regarding a property loan contract. After receiving the enforcement decision, Ms. Mua - the judgment debtor states that she has no money left and does not cooperate in providing any information. Calling on the phone, Ms. Mua does not answer; arriving at her house, the door is locked preventing Mr. Nang from meeting to discuss.

Under the traditional method, the enforcement agency might have to send multiple documents to the land registration authority, Banks, Tax, Social Insurance, or business registration authority to verify what assets Ms. Mua currently has and how much is left. During the waiting period for responses, it is highly likely that Ms. Mua will sell or gift them away to disperse the assets. According to the 2025 LCJE, verification is supported through data connectivity, helping the Enforcer shorten the time to access information to verify conditions.

3. Special procedure for "resubmitting an enforcement request"

One of the major inadequacies in civil judgment enforcement recently is the existence of a significant number of dossiers that have been verified but lack enforcement conditions and remain in a "stockpiled" state for many years. Continuing periodic verification for dossiers with no capacity for execution not only consumes management resources but also has not brought any received value to the judgment creditor.

In order to resolve the above issue, Clause 4, Article 38 of the 2025 LCJE stipulates: upon the expiration of 02 years from the date of the decision on lacking enforcement conditions and having been verified but with no new information regarding the enforcement conditions, the enforcement agency shall execute the resubmission of the enforcement request. Concurrently, to ensure the rights of the involved parties, the time period of returning the enforcement request will not be counted into the statute of limitations for requesting enforcement (Clause 2, Article 34 of the 2025 LCJE)

However, it should also be noted that returning the request does not mean terminating the judgment enforcement or depriving the rights of the judgment creditor.

* Example: in 2023, Ms. Gio is enforced a non-contractual damage compensation amount of 299,040,000 VND. After the verification process, the Enforcement Agency concludes that the judgment debtor has no assets and issues a Decision on lacking enforcement conditions. After 02 years of continued verification without arising new information, the dossier is returned in accordance with regulations.

Suppose by 2029, Ms. Gio discovers that Mr. May (the judgment debtor) has just bought a Vinfast electric car with a market value of about 800,000,000 VND. In this case, Ms. Gio still has the right to file an application requesting the continued organization of judgment enforcement and does not lose her rights because the prior time period is not counted into the request statute of limitations. In addition, Ms. Gio needs to provide the Enforcer in charge with information about the asset such as color, vehicle type, license plate... to make the verification of conditions more favorable and faster.

This regulation clearly shows that the 2025 LCJE aims to reasonably reduce the state's management of dossiers to assess the practical enforcement capability of the judgment but still does not narrow the ability to protect the legitimate and rightful rights and interests of the judgment creditor.

There is a very good quote: "Justice delayed is justice denied" - William Ewart Gladstone - former British Prime Minister in a speech in 1868. When re-imagining that quote, it fairly accurately describes the reality of civil judgment enforcement in Vietnam over the past 17 years: the judgment is correct in content but its execution is delayed through multiple procedural layers, making justice on paper unable to reach the lives of the people in time.

The 2025 Law on Civil Judgment Enforcement has made clear transformative steps by reviewing every timeframe milestone, eliminating prolonged and inefficient intermediary stages, and bringing many procedures into the digital environment for optimal information data management and exploitation. Thereby, it has contributed to helping a judgment no longer stop at the conclusion of a case on paper, but become the starting point for people's rights to be restored in reality.

DL PINNACLE LAW FIRM LLC