Breach of payment undertaking

Breach of undertaking occurs where the debtor fails, without reasonable cause, to honour a payment undertaking given before the enforcement office. The sanction is coercive detention, ordered by the enforcement criminal court upon the creditor's complaint and capped by statute.

Coercive detention is technically not a punishment but a means of compelling payment: enforcement of the detention ends immediately once the debt is paid. The complaint must be filed within the statutory period from learning of the breach. Conviction presupposes a valid undertaking, and the most frequent grounds for acquittal are minutes failing to state the amount clearly or lacking the creditor's acceptance.

The institution is debated in scholarship for its relationship with the ban on imprisonment for debt; it is defended on the basis that what is sanctioned is not the contractual debt but the violation of an undertaking given before an enforcement organ. Temporary measures affecting its application have appeared in periods of economic crisis.