You shipped the goods, the French invoice is overdue, and instead of payment you receive a strange email: your customer has entered redressement judiciaire (court-supervised restructuring) or liquidation judiciaire (court-ordered liquidation). If you live abroad and run your business from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, this moment feels like losing everything at once. The customer that owed you 40,000 or 200,000 euros is now under the protection of a French commercial court, your usual reminders are legally frozen, and every week that passes quietly destroys your rights. French insolvency law gives you two lifelines, both with short deadlines: declare your claim (declaration de creance, the formal notice by which a creditor tells the court-appointed representative what it is owed) so you can share in any distribution, and take back your goods if you sold them with a retention-of-title clause (clause de reserve de propriete, the clause that keeps ownership with the seller until full payment). Miss the deadlines and your claim is shut out, even if the debt is genuine. This guide explains how a foreign supplier declares from abroad, recovers its goods, answers when the liquidator disputes the claim, and monitors the case without flying to France. If your customer has not yet entered a court procedure and simply refuses to pay, the emergency procedure is different: our guide on recovering an unpaid French invoice through the payment-order procedure covers that earlier stage. And if you are only now planning your French operations, our pillar guide to setting up a company in France as a foreign founder puts this risk in its wider context. Throughout this article, every French acronym is explained the first time it appears, and every decisive rule is quoted from the official text in force.

I. How does a foreign supplier save its money when a French customer goes bust?

The opening judgment (jugement d’ouverture, the court decision that places the company under sauvegarde, redressement or liquidation) changes everything on the day it is published. From that moment, you can no longer sue your customer for payment in the normal way, and you can no longer send a bailiff to seize its assets. Article L. 622-21 of the Commercial Code (Code de commerce, the statute governing business and insolvency) provides: Le jugement d’ouverture interrompt ou interdit toute action en justice de la part de tous les créanciers dont la créance n’est pas mentionnée au I de l’article L. 622-17 et tendant : 1° A la condamnation du débiteur au paiement d’une somme d’argent ; 2° A la résolution d’un contrat pour défaut de paiement d’une somme d’argent. The same article adds: le jugement d’ouverture arrête ou interdit toute procédure d’exécution tant sur les meubles que sur les immeubles. In plain English: lawsuits for payment stop, enforcement stops, and every creditor must go through the collective procedure. Your debt does not disappear, but the only road to payment now runs through the court-appointed officers: the mandataire judiciaire (judicial representative, who represents creditors in sauvegarde and redressement), the liquidateur (liquidator, who sells the assets in liquidation), and the juge-commissaire (the supervising judge appointed within the court to control the procedure). The two sections below are the two roads. Walk them both in parallel, because they protect different things: the declaration protects your right to a share of the money, while the retention-of-title claim can give you back your goods themselves.

A. How to declare your claim from abroad before the deadline kills it

The declaration of claims is the master key. Without it, you are not in the procedure, and if you are not in the procedure, you are not paid. Article L. 622-24 of the Commercial Code states: A partir de la publication du jugement, tous les créanciers dont la créance est née antérieurement au jugement d’ouverture, à l’exception des salariés, adressent la déclaration de leurs créances au mandataire judiciaire dans des délais fixés par décret en Conseil d’Etat. Every creditor whose claim arose before the opening judgment, except employees, must send its declaration to the mandataire judiciaire within the regulatory deadline. In liquidation, the same mechanism applies toward the liquidator: Article L. 641-3 of the Commercial Code provides that Les créanciers déclarent leurs créances au liquidateur selon les modalités prévues aux articles L. 622-24 à L. 622-27 et L. 622-31 à L. 622-33. Your first practical question is therefore simple: who is the officer, and where do you send the papers? The answer is printed in the judgment and in the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette where every opening judgment is published). Read the BODACC notice for your debtor on bodacc.fr: it names the mandataire judiciaire or liquidator with its postal and often email address. If you trade regularly with France, set a free watch on your main customers’ names so the BODACC warns you the day a procedure opens instead of three months later through a rumour.

The deadline is the trap most foreign creditors fall into. The decree sets two months from publication of the opening judgment in the BODACC, but creditors outside metropolitan France get double. Article R. 622-24 of the Commercial Code provides: Le délai de déclaration fixé en application de l’article L. 622-26 est de deux mois à compter de la publication du jugement d’ouverture au Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales. It continues: le délai de déclaration est augmenté de deux mois pour les créanciers qui ne demeurent pas sur ce territoire. A supplier based in Manchester, Delaware or Dubai therefore has four months, not two, when the procedure is opened by a court in metropolitan France. Do not treat the extra two months as comfort: gathering invoices, delivery proofs, translations and a signed mandate from abroad always takes longer than expected, and the sanction for lateness is brutal. Article L. 622-26 of the Commercial Code warns: A défaut de déclaration dans les délais prévus à l’article L. 622-24, les créanciers ne sont pas admis dans les répartitions et les dividendes à moins que le juge-commissaire ne les relève de leur forclusion s’ils établissent que leur défaillance n’est pas due à leur fait ou qu’elle est due à une omission du débiteur lors de l’établissement de la liste prévue au deuxième alinéa de l’article L. 622-6. Late creditors are excluded from distributions unless the juge-commissaire lifts the foreclosure (relevé de forclusion, the rescue decision that readmits a late creditor), which requires proving the failure was not your fault or that the debtor forgot you on its creditor list. Relief exists, but it is a lawsuit, not a formality, and while it runs the distributions continue without you.

What must the declaration contain? There is no mandatory form, but an incomplete file invites a dispute. The official English guidance of the French enterprise portal lists the required content: the amount owed on the day of the opening judgment with due dates, or an estimate if the amount is not yet fixed; the nature and extent of any security; the method for calculating interest that keeps running; evidence proving the existence and amount of the claim, certified as sincere (certifiée sincère, your signed statement that the claim is genuine) when it does not result from a court judgment or notarised deed; and the court already seized if the claim is being litigated elsewhere. Attach copies of the contract, order forms, delivery notes, unpaid invoices and account statements, preferably numbered as exhibits (pièces, numbered supporting documents). If your documents are in English or Arabic, add a French translation of at least the essential pages: the mandataire works in French and a file it cannot read is a file it disputes. Send the declaration by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt so you can prove the date, and keep the receipt stapled to your copy. The declaration can be signed by your legal representative or by any agent of your choice, including a French lawyer or an employee with a written power of attorney, and the power must be attached if the signatory is not the legal representative. Two details save files every year: a declaration made in your name can be ratified by you until the judge rules on admission, and when the debtor itself has brought your claim to the officer’s attention, it is presumed to have acted on your behalf until you file your own declaration. Both safety nets appear in Article L. 622-24, but treat them as parachutes, not as a plan: file early, file complete, file provable.

B. How to take back your delivered goods with a retention-of-title clause

Money in a distribution is uncertain; your own goods sitting in the debtor’s warehouse are tangible. French law lets you reclaim them if you sold with a retention-of-title clause, and foreign suppliers of equipment, materials, stock and spare parts use this weapon every week. The Civil Code (Code civil, France’s general private-law statute) defines the mechanism: La propriété d’un bien peut être retenue en garantie par l’effet d’une clause de réserve de propriété qui suspend l’effet translatif d’un contrat jusqu’au complet paiement de l’obligation qui en constitue la contrepartie. Ownership is retained as security: the transfer of title is suspended until you are paid in full. The statute adds that the reserved ownership is the accessory of the secured claim (La propriété ainsi réservée est l’accessoire de la créance dont elle garantit le paiement.), which means it follows and protects your unpaid invoices. In insolvency, Article L. 624-16 of the Commercial Code opens the reclaim action (revendication, the court action by which an owner takes back its property from the insolvent estate): Peuvent également être revendiqués, s’ils se retrouvent en nature au moment de l’ouverture de la procédure, les biens vendus avec une clause de réserve de propriété. Goods sold with a retention-of-title clause can be reclaimed if they still exist in kind when the procedure opens. Three conditions decide everything, and each of them is checked strictly.

First, the clause must exist in writing no later than delivery. The same article requires: Cette clause doit avoir été convenue entre les parties dans un écrit au plus tard au moment de la livraison. A clause invented after trouble starts, or printed for the first time on a reminder letter, is worthless. Good news for regular suppliers: the clause can sit in a framework document, because the text adds that Elle peut l’être dans un écrit régissant un ensemble d’opérations commerciales convenues entre les parties. Your signed distribution agreement, your accepted general conditions of sale (conditions générales de vente, the seller’s standard terms) or a standing order confirmation can carry the clause for every future delivery, provided you can prove the customer accepted that document before the disputed delivery. Second, the goods must still be identifiable in the debtor’s hands. Goods incorporated into another product can still be reclaimed if separation is possible without damage, and fungible goods (fuel, grain, standard components) can be reclaimed if goods of the same kind and quality are found with the debtor or its custodian. What you cannot reclaim is what has been resold, consumed or transformed beyond recognition: keep delivery notes with serial numbers, batch references and photos of distinctive markings, because the mandataire will ask you to point at your goods, not at a family resemblance. Third, the reclaim action itself has its own guillotine deadline. Article L. 624-9 of the Commercial Code provides: La revendication des meubles ne peut être exercée que dans le délai de trois mois suivant la publication du jugement ouvrant la procédure. Three months from publication, not from the day you learn about it. Write to the mandataire judiciaire or liquidator immediately, by registered letter, identifying each item, each invoice and the clause, and demanding restitution. Know also the compromise the law offers the estate: even with a valid clause, there is no reclaim if the juge-commissaire orders the price to be paid immediately. That outcome is still a victory for you, because it means cash instead of goods.

The deadliest trap is the battle of standard terms, and the Cour de cassation (France’s supreme court for private law, which quashes decisions that misapply the law) has just restated the rule in a decision every foreign supplier should read. On 11 February 2026, in case no. 24-13.195, the Commercial Chamber rejected a seller whose retention-of-title clause appeared on its invoices while the buyer’s purchase terms stated that any seller retention clause needed express case-by-case approval, which had never been given. The Court approved the appeal judges’ statement that une réserve de propriété, qui nécessite l’accord de volonté des vendeur et acheteur, doit être mentionnée de façon suffisamment apparente, claire et lisible pour pouvoir être acceptée par ce dernier, and that la présence de clauses croisées se contredisant exclut l’existence d’une clause de réserve de propriété. A retention clause needs the meeting of both wills, must be apparent, clear and legible enough for the buyer to accept it, and contradictory standard terms on both sides destroy the clause entirely. Neither performing the contract knowingly nor signing the delivery slip saves it. Translate this into your export practice today, before any insolvency: put the clause in your signed framework contract or in general conditions the customer demonstrably accepted, repeat it on every invoice and delivery note, and the moment a French buyer sends you its own purchasing terms containing a rejection of retention clauses, stop and negotiate that point in writing instead of shipping over the contradiction. Suppliers who discover the conflict only after the customer collapses learn that their so-called retained ownership never existed.

II. How do you get paid or challenge a refusal without flying to France?

Declaring and reclaiming are only the opening moves. The mandataire or liquidator verifies every claim, and disputed claims go before the juge-commissaire; meanwhile the procedure advances through reports, asset sales and distributions that you must watch from abroad. Foreign creditors lose at this stage for two mundane reasons: they never answer a request for additional documents, and they let one-month court deadlines expire because the letter arrived at their foreign address late. Everything below can be handled through a French lawyer or authorised agent with email and scanned exhibits, but only if you give that person a proper mandate early and check your mail. The procedure does not pause because you are in another time zone.

A. What happens when the liquidator disputes your claim and how to answer

After receiving your declaration, the mandataire or liquidator draws up the statement of claims and the juge-commissaire decides on admission. Three outcomes are possible: your claim is admitted as declared, admitted for a different amount or ranking, or rejected. Partial admission is common for foreign files: the officer admits the principal but trims penalties, undocumented extras or interest calculated with a method you did not explain. When a real dispute persists, the juge-commissaire does not decide the merits itself; it records a serious dispute (contestation sérieuse, a disagreement the supervising judge cannot resolve on the papers) and sends a party to the competent court. The rule comes from Article R. 624-5 of the Commercial Code, as restated by the Cour de cassation on 23 October 2024 in case no. 23-17.962: le juge-commissaire qui constate l’existence d’une contestation sérieuse, invite, selon le cas, le créancier, le débiteur ou le mandataire judiciaire à saisir la juridiction compétente dans un délai d’un mois à compter de la notification ou de la réception de l’avis délivré à cette fin, à peine de forclusion à moins d’appel dans les cas où cette voie de recours est ouverte. The invited party has one month from notification to seize the competent court, on pain of foreclosure, unless an appeal lies. One month is brutally short for a company abroad: the practical answer is to designate your French counsel the day you declare, so the invitation is received, understood and acted upon within days, not forwarded around your organisation for three weeks.

The same 2024 decision contains a warning about appeals that foreign creditors must understand. The Court held that si la cour d’appel confirme l’ordonnance ayant invité l’une des parties à saisir la juridiction compétente dans le délai d’un mois à compter de la notification de l’ordonnance, l’arrêt se substitue à l’ordonnance attaquée et la notification de l’arrêt fait courir un nouveau délai de forclusion d’un mois. When the court of appeal confirms the referral order, the appellate decision replaces it and its notification starts a fresh one-month foreclosure deadline. In the case itself, the creditor that waited months after service of the confirmatory decision found its referral time-barred and its declaration rejected, with an order to pay 3,000 euros in costs. The lesson for you is mechanical: every notification from the juge-commissaire or the court of appeal restarts a one-month clock, and missing it kills the claim just as surely as missing the initial declaration. Build a calendar with three dates the day the procedure opens: your four-month declaration deadline, your three-month reclaim deadline if you retained title, and a standing instruction that any judicial letter is forwarded to counsel within 48 hours. Most foreign creditors that lose in France do not lose on the law; they lose on the calendar.

B. How to monitor the case, use relief from foreclosure and rank for payment

If you declared late, all is not necessarily lost, but the rescue has its own strict timetable. The juge-commissaire can lift your foreclosure where your failure was not your own doing, for example because you were never warned although the debtor knew you, or because the debtor omitted you from its mandatory creditor list. The action for relief (action en relevé de forclusion) must be brought within six months of publication of the opening judgment in the BODACC, by application to the greffe (the court registry, the office that receives all filings) for the juge-commissaire. Prepare evidence of the obstacle: hospital records, proof that your address changed and the warning went nowhere, or the debtor’s own accounts showing your invoices. If relief is granted, you can declare within one further month, but you compete only for distributions after your request, which means the money already shared is gone. This is why late declaration is a diminished return even when excused. A parallel deadline applies in the other direction: keep every proof of sending, because the officer can challenge the date of your declaration, and a foreign postmark plus an acknowledgment of receipt settles the argument.

Monitoring the procedure from abroad is straightforward once you know the three windows. First, the BODACC publishes the opening, the deadlines, the appointment of officers, the plan or liquidation judgments and the closing of the procedure: check the debtor’s BODACC sheet monthly. Second, the greffe of the commercial court (tribunal de commerce, the court for business disputes, or the tribunal des activités économiques in some cities) holds the file; your French counsel can consult it, obtain the claims statement and receive notifications at its own address if you elect domicile there (élection de domicile, designating an address in France where all court letters are validly served). Electing domicile at your lawyer’s office is the single most effective move a foreign creditor can make: it neutralises postal delays and starts every one-month clock on the day counsel receives the letter. Third, insist on written answers to each of your filings and keep a chronological bundle, because a distribution can arrive two or three years later and the paying officer will ask for your bank details and an updated certificate of your company’s existence, sometimes with a fresh translation.

Finally, understand the ranking, because it sets your expectations honestly. Employees’ recent wages, court costs and claims secured by published securities are paid before ordinary unsecured creditors (créanciers chirographaires, creditors with no security, paid last on what remains). Your declared invoice claim is usually unsecured unless you hold a guarantee, which is exactly why the retention-of-title reclaim in section I matters so much: recovered goods bypass the ranking entirely. In liquidation, unsecured dividends are frequently symbolic, a few percent after years of waiting, and sometimes zero. Two additional paths can improve the picture. Where the debtor is a company whose liquidation shows a shortfall (insuffisance d’actif, liabilities exceeding assets), the court can order the directors in law or in fact who committed management faults to bear all or part of it: Article L. 651-2 of the Commercial Code provides that Lorsque la liquidation judiciaire d’une personne morale fait apparaître une insuffisance d’actif, le tribunal peut, en cas de faute de gestion ayant contribué à cette insuffisance d’actif, décider que le montant de cette insuffisance d’actif sera supporté, en tout ou en partie, par tous les dirigeants de droit ou de fait, ou par certains d’entre eux, ayant contribué à la faute de gestion. You cannot bring that action yourself, but the liquidator can, and a creditor that documents the director’s behaviour usefully (late filing for insolvency, continued loss-making trading, missing accounts) helps its own case. Where your contract had a French parent guarantee, a bank guarantee or a credit-insurance policy, activate it in parallel without waiting for the procedure: guarantees and insurance are outside the freeze described in section I. And when the distribution finally arrives, it can be wired to your foreign account; confirm in advance with the officer which documents your bank needs, because a payment rejected over a missing certificate restarts weeks of correspondence.

Conclusion

A French customer’s insolvency is not the end of your claim, but it transfers your case into a system where deadlines decide nearly everything. Declare within four months from abroad to the mandataire judiciaire or liquidator with a complete, translated, provable file; reclaim your goods within three months wherever a written retention-of-title clause accepted before delivery allows it; answer every dispute through French counsel inside the one-month referral periods, remembering that each confirmatory appeal decision restarts the clock; and if you missed a deadline, seek relief within six months rather than abandoning the file. The suppliers who recover are not those with the largest claims but those who move first: the BODACC notice read on day one, the registered letter sent in week one, the domicile elected at a French office, and standard terms whose retention clause is apparent, clear and accepted. Put those reflexes in place now, and the next French insolvency will be a managed procedure instead of a lost debt.

Need a quick opinion on your case

Talk through your unpaid French claim with a lawyer before a deadline expires. Our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a cabinet attorney, to check your declaration deadline, your retention-of-title clause and your chances of recovery. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 (Maître Reda Kohen) or write via our contact page with your customer’s company name, the amount owed and the date you learned of the procedure.