A French writ of attachment (acte de saisie) names its addressee tiers saisi, the third-party debtor. Under French law the role falls on whoever owes money to the seized debtor, not on whoever merely holds the funds. This guide covers what the third-party debtor must disclose, when payment is due, and what silence costs, within enforcement procedures in France.
Who is a third-party debtor (tiers saisi) under French law
A third-party debtor in France, the tiers saisi, is whoever personally owes a sum of money to the seized debtor. The creditor attaches that claim in the third-party debtor’s hands. Holding or managing the debtor’s funds is not the test, because the role rests on an obligation of restitution, not on control of the money.
English-speaking readers often arrive here looking for the equivalent of a third party debt order. The French tiers saisi is a different mechanism. This guide describes the French one: who qualifies, what must be disclosed, and what the third-party debtor owes if it stays silent.
Article L. 211-1 of the Code des procédures civiles d’exécution (CPCE) sets three cumulative conditions on the creditor’s side: an enforceable title (titre exécutoire), a claim that is liquide, meaning fixed in amount, and exigible, meaning already due. Only claims for a sum of money can be attached, and that version of L. 211-1 has applied since 1 July 2025.
A management company held the signature on an association’s bank account, but owed the association nothing by way of restitution. The Cour de cassation upheld its exclusion from the role (Cass. 2e civ., 13 November 2014, no. 13-25.167, Bulletin). So the role falls on a bank, an employer, a tenant, a client or an insurer.
Tiers saisi names a role, not a measure, and article L. 211-3 CPCE sets the duty attached to it. The Livre des procédures fiscales gives the same name to the addressee of a saisie administrative à tiers détenteur, the tax authorities’ own attachment (LPF, art. L. 262). The contrast therefore runs between two measures, not between two kinds of person.
Where the third-party debtor must be established
A saisie-attribution produces effect only where the third-party debtor is established in France. The Cour de cassation derives this territorial rule from the independence and sovereignty of States: the measure requires coercion over the third-party debtor, and that coercion stops at the French border (Cass. 2e civ., 10 December 2020, no. 19-10.801, published in the Bulletin).
A legal person is established in France in two situations. Either it has its registered office in France, or it maintains there an entity with the power to discharge payment of the debtor’s claim. For an international creditor, the question is not where the funds sit, but which entity in France has the power to pay. Both conditions are cumulative: owing the seized debtor is not enough.
The 2020 case turned on that point. A creditor served a saisie-attribution on the Paris branch of a bank headquartered in London. The funds were held by the New York branch of the same bank. The courts ordered the release of the seizure (mainlevée), and the Cour de cassation dismissed the appeal. The bank had itself revealed the New York account, but that disclosure did not make the seizure effective.
A separate European procedure exists for the protective attachment of bank accounts (Regulation (EU) No 655/2014); its regime is outside the scope of this guide.
What the third-party debtor must disclose, and how fast
A third-party debtor must state on the spot what it owes the seized debtor, and hand over the supporting documents. The duty comes from article R. 211-4 CPCE. A public accountant has twenty-four hours; a writ served electronically moves the deadline to the next working day.
Article L. 211-3 fixes four heads of disclosure:
- the extent of the obligations owed to the seized debtor;
- the terms capable of affecting them;
- any assignment of claim, delegation or pledge (nantissement);
- prior seizures.
Information and supporting documents travel together, and neither waits for a request. The commissaire de justice, formerly the huissier de justice, records the declaration or its absence in the writ that opens the garnishment (saisie-attribution). That record proves the breach. The duty holds whether the seizure yields anything or not, so a nil or overdrawn balance is still declared (CA Paris, 26 November 1998). A partial declaration is itself a breach, and whether it opens the payment sanction depends on what was left out (Cass. 2e civ., 24 June 1998, no. 96-14.318, Bulletin).
When a failure to answer is excused
A third-party debtor is excused only on a legitimate ground, which it must raise and prove itself. The 1998 ruling adds that judges are not required to look for such a ground of their own motion.
The Cour de cassation upheld a finding that combined circumstances amounted to a legitimate reason. The writ had been served on 29 August, in the holiday period, on an executive assistant with no access to the figures; the debt had been due for under a month and was small against turnover (Cass. 2e civ., 15 December 2005, no. 04-12.171, Bulletin). No circumstance alone carries that result.
A delay conceded by the writ itself binds the creditor. The enforcement officer had summoned the third party to answer within 48 hours instead of on the spot; the late answer was held to have a legitimate ground (Cass. 2e civ., 8 September 2011, no. 10-17.506, Bulletin). That figure belongs to the case, not to French law: read the writ to know what time it allows.
Internal organisation, by contrast, does not move the burden. Within a public body only the public accountant may declare; a court of appeal that excused the third party because others could have answered was quashed (Cass. 2e civ., 2 July 2020, no. 19-14.379, Bulletin). That point is confined to public accounting. Trial judges have also rejected a pending lawsuit and a group’s international size. Proceedings make the funds unavailable; they do not excuse declaring their value (Cass. 2e civ., 13 November 2015, no. 14-24.557, not published).
Two sanctions, two logics: what silence costs
Article R. 211-5 CPCE attaches two sanctions to two different breaches. A third-party debtor who, without legitimate reason, fails to supply the required information is ordered to pay the creditor the sums due to him. One who makes an inaccurate or knowingly false declaration may be ordered to pay damages.
Paragraph 1 is written in the indicative; paragraph 2 says only « peut être condamné ». Only a failure bearing on the extent and the terms of the third party’s obligations opens the first sanction (Cass. 2e civ., 5 July 2000, nos. 97-19.629 and 97-20.403, Bulletin). Silence costs more than lying. The text also reserves the third party’s recourse against the debtor.
Delay counts as failure to declare: a third-party debtor who has not declared on the spot, without legitimate reason, incurs that same sanction (Cass. 2e civ., 5 July 2001, no. 99-20.616, Bulletin). One case gives its measure: an attachment served on 23 January 2012 for 746,898.19 euros, an answer on 21 February, and a condemnation to the causes of the seizure that the Cour de cassation left standing (no. 14-24.557, not published).
Two debts coexist. Article L. 211-2 caps the debt born of the attachment itself, making the third party personally liable « dans la limite de son obligation ». The sanction of R. 211-5 is separate: commentators read it as covering the causes of the seizure whatever the third party owed, and without proof of loss. Where that party owed the debtor nothing on the day of the attachment, the same commentators allow damages only.
The creditor’s action does not enforce a title held against the third party, so the ten-year limitation of Article L. 111-4 does not apply, and it may be brought from the service of the attachment record (Cass. 2e civ., 6 September 2018, no. 17-18.953, Bulletin).
The enforcement judge (juge de l’exécution) hears the dispute exclusively, even where it bears on the substance of the right, and the compensation claims arising from enforcement (Article L. 213-6 of the code de l’organisation judiciaire).
That leniency towards lying belongs to the saisie-attribution alone. In a protective attachment (saisie conservatoire), refusal and false declaration both expose the third party to the causes of the seizure (Cass. 2e civ., 4 February 2021, no. 19-12.424, Bulletin, decided on R. 221-21 and R. 522-5, not on R. 211-5). The same limitation solution holds there, but it runs from the service of the decision ordering the debtor to pay (Cass. 2e civ., 6 September 2018, no. 17-18.955, Bulletin). Under the tax saisie administrative à tiers détenteur, abstention and false declaration alike may lead to payment, due within thirty days of receipt (Article L. 262 of the livre des procédures fiscales).
Attribution is immediate, payment is not
The writ of attachment transfers the seized claim to the seizing creditor immediately, on service, without any court order. Payment follows a separate timetable, because the third-party debtor pays only against a certificate attesting that no challenge was filed within one month of notice to the debtor.
Article L. 211-2 CPCE carries that transfer, accessories included, up to the sums claimed. Attribution does not wait for the declaration, because the disclosure duty arises from the seizure, which produces that effect by itself (Cass. 2e civ., 30 September 2021, no. 20-14.060, published in the Bulletin). Silence freezes nothing, and it exposes the third party to article R. 211-5 as well.
Later seizures or levies do not call the attribution into question, even from preferred creditors, and neither does a subsequent safeguard, reorganisation or liquidation. Writs served on the same third party on the same day are deemed simultaneous, and their authors rank concurrently if funds fall short.
Payment obeys article R. 211-6 CPCE. The certificate comes from the court registry or the commissaire de justice, and payment may come sooner if the debtor states in writing that it does not challenge. The month runs from that notice, not from service on the third party. Paying early is a breach in the same way as paying late: a spontaneous payment parts with the funds without a title.
A challenge is filed within one month on pain of inadmissibility, and its author informs the third-party debtor by ordinary letter. The third-party debtor is informed, not made a party.
Banks: what a French seizure requires of an account provider
A bank served with a French saisie-attribution declares the balance of the debtor’s account or accounts on the day of the seizure. A fifteen-business-day period of unavailability then runs, during which the declared balance can still move, but only through operations that predate the seizure.
Article L. 162-1 CPCE names the balance in the plural: a debtor holding several accounts with one bank gets no compartmentalisation. Authorised overdraft facilities stay outside the declaration, a credit facility falling outside a saisie-attribution by nature. French commentators state the position bluntly: « le banquier n’est pas juge de la saisie ». A bank cannot know whether an unrecorded remittance will cover an overdraft.
The fifteen business days are neither a grace period, nor a time to declare, nor a time to pay. The bank must prove that an operation predates the seizure. For discounted commercial paper left unpaid, the reversal period runs for one month. Debits reduce the attributed balance only where their cumulative result is negative and exceeds the sums the seizure does not reach.
Where the frozen sums decrease, the bank sends the creditor a statement of every operation on the accounts since the day of the seizure. That day counts. The statement goes by registered letter within eight days of the expiry of the reversal period. Electronic transmission applies where the writ of attachment was itself served that way (article R. 162-1 CPCE).
For an individual debtor, the bank leaves available of its own motion, within the limit of the credit balance, a sum of a maintenance nature equal to the flat-rate RSA benefit for a single claimant (article L. 162-2 CPCE).
On a joint account, the commissaire de justice denounces the seizure to each holder. The bank informs the co-holders only where the commissaire de justice lacks their names and addresses and asks it to act, and it then states the seizure and the amount claimed, immediately.
Since 1 April 2026, a commissaire de justice transmits the certificate of non-contestation, or the debtor’s written declaration, to a deposit-account provider by electronic means.
Employers: a separate regime since 1 July 2025
An employer served with a French wage garnishment does not answer under the saisie-attribution regime. Since 1 July 2025, article L. 211-1 CPCE reserves the rules specific to the seizure of remuneration, so the liability of the employer has its own seat in a separate chapter of the same code.
The reform moved the procedure out of the courts. Commissaires de justice now run it, under the supervision of the enforcement judge. A commissaire de justice répartiteur collects the employer’s payments and distributes the funds.
An employer who fails to declare, without legitimate reason, may be ordered by the judge to pay a civil fine (article L. 212-14 CPCE). A false declaration exposes him to that same fine. Article R. 212-1-41 CPCE caps it at 10,000 euros, in its version in force since 1 April 2026. The fine is optional, and the judge modulates it: the figure is a ceiling, not a tariff.
An employer who omits the payments due may be condemned to pay the deductions that should have been made. That sum is bounded by the attachable fraction of the salary (quotité saisissable), not by the employee’s debt.
The employer may exercise his recourse against the employee only after the garnishment is lifted. Article R. 211-5 CPCE, by contrast, reserves an immediate recourse. The Cour de cassation ruled on the earlier procedure, where an order declared the third-party debtor personally liable for the deductions. That order did not extinguish the debt of the seized debtor (Cass. 2e civ., 20 November 2025, no. 23-13.496, Bulletin). Admission of the claim to the liquidation of the third-party debtor changed nothing. The act has since changed its name, but the third-party debtor is still added to the debtor, never substituted for him.
The measure itself is set out in our guide to wage garnishment (saisie des rémunérations). A third-party debtor served in France has few days to arbitrate. That arbitration is decided on the act itself, the first document our enforcement practice reads.