How to find someone who owes you money

Start with what the debt is worth

Tracing and enforcement both cost money, and neither is worth pursuing for a debt that will not cover them. Before doing anything, be honest about three things: how much is owed, whether you can prove it, and whether the person is likely to have anything to pay it with. A debtor with no job, no property and no assets can be found and sued and still not pay.

If you have a written agreement, invoices or messages acknowledging the debt, you can prove it. If the debt is more than six years old and nothing has been paid or acknowledged in writing since, it may be statute-barred, and a solicitor should look at it before you spend anything.

What you can find yourself

A good deal of tracing is desk work you can do in an afternoon.

• The electoral roll. The open register is available through commercial search services for a small fee and shows where someone is registered to vote, if they have not opted out.
• Companies House. If the person has ever been a company director, the register shows the addresses they gave and the companies they are connected to. A director’s correspondence address is often a home or an accountant who will forward post.
• The Land Registry. For a few pounds you can find out who owns a property, and search for property in a name. Ownership is a strong sign of an address and an asset at the same time.
• Social media and the open web. People announce moves, new jobs and new relationships. Photographs carry locations. Business listings carry phone numbers. This is open-source intelligence done by hand, and it is lawful because the person put the information where anyone could see it.
• Mutual contacts. A polite, direct message to a former neighbour, colleague or family member asking them to pass on a request that the person contacts you is not harassment. Repeated messages, or messages that reveal the debt to third parties, can be.

Keep a note of what you searched and when. If the matter reaches court, you may need to show that you made reasonable efforts to find the person before asking for an order that dispenses with serving them in person.

What a professional trace adds

A trace from an investigator draws on the same public sources, alongside licensed databases that compile credit reference, utility, telephone and address data and are open only to firms that can show a lawful purpose. Recovering a debt is a recognised legitimate interest under the UK GDPR, which is what allows a trace to be run without the person’s consent, provided it is proportionate and the result is used for that purpose alone.

A trace is priced as a fixed fee, and a reputable firm will tell you the fee before starting and quote for a confirmed result, which means an address the person is currently living at rather than one they were last connected to. Our fees page sets out how that works.

Most traces are completed within a few working days. The result is a report stating the address, the evidence it rests on and the date it was confirmed, in a form that can be exhibited to a court application. Where a trace fails, the report says what was checked.

What we will not trace

A trace is refused where the purpose is not what it appears. Someone who describes a debt but is actually looking for a former partner who left to get away from them will not get an address from us, and we ask questions at scoping designed to tell the difference. Our missing persons page sets out the rule and why it exists. Where a trace is completed, the person found is not contacted by us and is not told who instructed the search, unless that is part of the agreed scope.

Once you have an address

An address on its own recovers nothing. It lets you do three things.

Write a letter before claim. A formal letter setting out the debt, the evidence and a deadline is required before court proceedings and settles a fair proportion of debts on its own. Where the debt is between a business and an individual, a specific pre-action protocol applies and a solicitor can make sure the letter complies with it.

Issue a claim. Debts up to £10,000 go through the small claims track of the county court, which is designed to be used without a solicitor. Claims for a fixed sum can be issued online through the court service. If the debtor does not respond, you can ask for judgement in default; if they do, the court decides.

Enforce a judgement. A judgement is a court’s finding that the money is owed. It is not the money. If the judgement debtor does not pay, the court’s enforcement methods are the next step, and which one to choose depends on what the person has:

• A warrant of control, under which enforcement agents attend the address to take goods, which is the most common route and the reason a confirmed home address matters.
• An attachment of earnings order, which takes payments from wages, and needs the name of an employer.
• A third-party debt order, which freezes and takes money from a bank account, and needs the bank.
• A charging order over property the person owns, which secures the debt against the property and can lead to a sale.
• An order to attend court for questioning, under which the debtor is required to answer questions about their means under oath, and which is where an investigator’s asset report is often most useful.

Asset tracing for larger debts

For a debt large enough to justify it, the question moves from where the person is to what they have. An asset report establishes the property, vehicles, company interests and visible lifestyle of the debtor from public and licensed sources, so that enforcement is aimed at something that exists. It also records the evidence of assets being moved out of reach, which supports an application to freeze them. This is due-diligence work applied to an individual, and it is quoted as a fixed fee once we know the scope.

Getting documents served

Court documents sometimes have to be served on the debtor personally, and a debtor who is avoiding you will avoid service too. A process server attends the address, hands the documents over and provides a statement of service for the court. Where a trace has confirmed an address, service can be arranged at the same time.

This guide is general information about the law of England and Wales as we understand it at the date shown at the foot of the page. It is not legal advice and does not take account of your circumstances. Before acting on anything here, particularly where court proceedings, a criminal complaint or an employment decision are involved, take advice from a solicitor. We are investigators, not lawyers, and we will say so if a question you bring us needs one.

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