Responding to a Money Claim Against You

The pack you receive contains the claim form, the particulars of claim (either on the form or served separately), and a response pack. The response pack contains form N9 with the admission form N9A and the defence and counterclaim form N9B attached.

The core rule is in CPR 15.4. The period for filing a defence is 14 days after service of the particulars of claim, or 28 days after service of the particulars of claim if the defendant files an acknowledgment of service within the first 14 days. Filing the acknowledgment is a simple tick-box step: it tells the court you have received the claim and intend to defend it, or that you dispute the court's jurisdiction. It buys you two more weeks for nothing.

CPR 15.5 allows a further extension. The defendant and the claimant may agree to extend the period for filing a defence by up to 28 days, but the defendant must notify the court in writing that the extension has been agreed. Beyond that you need the court's permission.

Where the clock starts matters as much as its length. If the claim was issued through Money Claim Online, the court allows 5 days from issue for service and treats the fifth day after issue as the date of service — so your 14 days run from that deemed date, not from the day the envelope reached you. If you received the claim late, or at an address you had left, say so in writing immediately: it is directly relevant if a judgment is later entered and you need it set aside.

Once you know the deadline, decide which of these applies:

1. Pay the whole claim. Pay the amount claimed plus the interest and court fee shown on the form, within 14 days of service, and no judgment is entered against you at all. Pay the claimant directly and get written confirmation.
2. Admit the whole claim but ask for time. Complete the admission form (N9A) with your income, outgoings and an offer of payment. Judgment is entered on the terms agreed or determined. This produces a County Court Judgment.
3. Admit part of the claim. Admit the sum you accept you owe and defend the rest, completing both forms.
4. Defend the whole claim. File a defence (N9B) setting out which allegations you admit, which you deny and why, and which you require the claimant to prove.

Alongside any of these you can also bring a counterclaim if the claimant owes you money arising out of the same or a related matter. And if you genuinely do not know whether you owe the money — the debt is old, or has been sold on, or you have no paperwork — file an acknowledgment of service to get the full 28 days and use them to ask the claimant for the underlying documents in writing.

Admitting is not a defeat if you genuinely owe the money. It stops interest and costs building, and it gives you a say in how you repay.

On the admission form you set out your income and expenditure, then offer a rate of payment you can realistically sustain. Include rent or mortgage, council tax, utilities, food, travel, childcare and any other debts you are paying. A free debt adviser can help you produce a standard financial statement, which courts and creditors recognise.

The claimant either accepts your offer, in which case judgment is entered on those terms, or rejects it — in which case a court officer determines the rate of payment on the papers and either side can ask a judge to reconsider. Do not offer more than you can pay to look cooperative: defaulting on a judgment instalment order exposes you to enforcement.

Part admission is often the honest answer: you accept that some work was done or some goods were delivered, but not at the price claimed or to the standard agreed. Admit the portion you accept and defend the rest.

The one-month rule matters here. Pay the full amount within one calendar month of the judgment date and you can apply on form N443 for a certificate of cancellation, removing the judgment from the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines. Pay later and it is only marked "satisfied", staying on the register for six years. The certificate fee is £19.

A defence is not a letter of complaint. It is a structured response to the claimant's particulars of claim, and CPR Part 16 requires you to state which allegations you deny, which you are unable to admit or deny and therefore require the claimant to prove, and which you admit. Where you deny an allegation you must give your reasons and, if you have a different version of events, set it out.

Common defences to a money claim include:

• The debt is not owed at all — you never entered the contract, the goods were never delivered, the service was never performed.
• It has already been paid, in whole or in part. Attach the evidence.
• The sum is wrong — the price was different, the work was incomplete, charges have been added that were not agreed.
• Breach by the claimant — the goods were not of satisfactory quality or the service was not carried out with reasonable care and skill under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
• Limitation. Most simple contract debts cannot be enforced more than six years after the cause of action accrued, under section 5 of the Limitation Act 1980. Limitation must be positively pleaded — a court will not apply it for you.

Keep the defence factual, numbered, and tied to documents you can produce. You sign a statement of truth, so nothing in it should be anything other than your honest account.

Once a defence is filed, the claim moves to a county court hearing centre. Both sides complete a directions questionnaire (form N180), which asks whether you agree to free mediation, how many witnesses you have and which dates you cannot attend. Agreeing to mediation costs nothing and settles a large share of defended claims without a hearing.

If the claimant owes you money, you can bring a counterclaim in the same proceedings rather than starting a separate claim. The counterclaim section is on form N9B, filed with your defence.

Points to understand before you do:

• You pay a fee. A counterclaim attracts a court fee on the same scale as an ordinary money claim, based on the amount you are counterclaiming. Help with Fees can apply.
• It has to be a real claim. A counterclaim is a claim you could have brought in your own right. Dissatisfaction with the claimant's conduct is not a counterclaim; a quantifiable loss caused by their breach is.
• The values are netted off. If both claims succeed, the court gives judgment for the balance.
• Set-off is different. Where your cross-claim arises from the same transaction, you may also raise it as a set-off in your defence. It is common to plead both.
• It raises the stakes. A large counterclaim can push the combined dispute onto a track where costs follow the event.

If no acknowledgment of service and no defence is filed within the time allowed, the claimant may request judgment in default. The court enters judgment without any hearing, for the amount claimed plus interest and the issue fee. Nobody assesses whether the claim was any good.

The consequences are immediate:

• A County Court Judgment is registered against you and stays on the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines — and on your credit file — for six years from the date of judgment, unless paid within one calendar month and cancelled.
• The claimant can enforce: a warrant of control sending enforcement agents to your home, an attachment of earnings order taking deductions from your wages, a charging order securing the debt against your property, or a third party debt order freezing your bank account.
• Interest may continue to accrue. Under the County Courts (Interest on Judgment Debts) Order 1991, county court judgments for £5,000 or more carry interest at the rate in section 17 of the Judgments Act 1838, currently 8% a year — though judgments in respect of a sum recoverable under a Consumer Credit Act 1974 regulated agreement are excluded.

Setting a default judgment aside. The court must set aside a default judgment that was wrongly entered — for example, where the response time had not expired. Otherwise it may set the judgment aside where you have a real prospect of successfully defending the claim, or there is some other good reason why the judgment should be set aside and you should be allowed to defend. Delay is fatal to these applications: the court expects you to apply promptly once you learn of the judgment.

The application is made on form N244 with a witness statement and a draft defence, and the fee for an application on notice is £321 (£126 if the claimant consents). Help with Fees may cover it.