You hold a judgment from another country. The debtor, or the debtor's money, is in Ontario. The legal test for recognition is well settled: the foreign court must have properly taken jurisdiction, the judgment must be final, and it must be for a fixed sum (Chevron Corp v Yaiguaje, 2015 SCC 42). A debtor who defended on the merits abroad has very little room to resist on the law. Nor does it help a debtor to have stayed away: Ontario applies the same test to foreign default judgments, and there are no special rules or extra safeguards for a defendant who chose not to participate.

That is the legal layer. The outcomes that matter to you, how much you recover and what it costs to get there, turn on practical questions that are worth asking before the first step is taken. Here are the three we hear most.

1. Can we freeze assets before Ontario recognizes the judgment?

Yes. An Ontario court can grant a Mareva injunction at the very start, before the recognition application is even heard, and can continue it after judgment "in aid of execution." The logic is the same at both ends: the risk you are guarding against is that the debtor deals with the assets before you can seize them, and that risk does not disappear the day judgment is granted. A freeze obtained at the outset and carried through to collection is a single strategy, not two separate motions.

What makes a freeze obtainable:

• Your foreign judgment does most of the work. It supplies the strong case the court needs. We walk the court through the recognition test and the debtor's participation abroad.
• The debtor's track record supplies the rest. Courts will infer a risk of dissipation from the foreign court's own findings about the debtor's conduct, from unexplained transfers of property around the time of judgment, and from a pattern of evasion. Direct evidence of intent is rarely available and not required.

What to expect once the order is made:

• A freeze is only as good as your asset map. Banks are bound when they receive notice, so identifying accounts and institutions early is as important as the order itself. Real property can be protected by registering the order on title.
• Carve-outs are normal. The debtor will be entitled to apply for living expenses and legal fees. These should be conditioned on full financial disclosure, and they should be tracked, because they come out of the pool you are trying to preserve.
• You give an undertaking as to damages. The court will require you to stand behind the freeze if it later proves unjustified. For most judgment creditors this is a manageable exposure, but it should be understood going in.

What we will ask you for: the foreign judgment and the procedural history behind it, evidence of how the debtor conducted the foreign litigation, everything you know about the debtor's Ontario footprint, and a record of the efforts you have made to locate the debtor and assets to date.

2. How long do we have?

Ontario's basic limitation period is two years, but the clock does not necessarily start when your judgment was entered. It starts when a reasonably diligent creditor would have understood that proceeding in Ontario was an appropriate means of recovery, which in practice means when you knew or ought to have known that the debtor had assets here and could be served (Grayson Consulting Inc v Lloyd, 2019 ONCA 79; Independence Plaza 1 Associates v Figliolini, 2017 ONCA 44). A judgment that is several years old is not stale if the debtor only recently surfaced in Ontario.

Two cautions. First, discoverability protects the diligent, not the idle. A creditor who knew the debtor was in Ontario and did nothing will lose the point. Second, the search must be documented. Investigator reports, dated searches and a record of every dead end are what turn "we did not know" into "we could not reasonably have known." Keep that file as you go. And once the asset turns up, move quickly.

3. What happens after Ontario recognizes the judgment?

Recognition converts your foreign judgment into an Ontario judgment with Ontario remedies: garnishment of accounts, writs against land, examinations of the debtor and third parties, disclosure orders against institutions, and continuation of the freeze while enforcement proceeds.

The judgment is the ticket. Enforcement is the trip. If you are holding a foreign judgment and believe the debtor has an Ontario connection, the right time to call is when you find the asset, not after it moves.

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