You have a strong claim, and the defendant’s property has just been listed for sale. The accounts, you suspect, are draining. The question arrives with its own urgency: how fast can a court freeze things?
The Honest Timeline
Mareva applications are classic ex parte territory — notice would defeat the purpose, since warned respondents move money in hours — so where the case justifies it, the application can be heard without notice, the order served on the respondent and on banks (who must comply), with a return date days later for the contested round. From instruction to order can genuinely be fast. But the speed has a manufacturing process: the grounding affidavit drafted and sworn, the exhibits assembled, the dissipation evidence marshalled, counsel briefed — and that process runs at the speed of your evidence, not your alarm.
What Makes Speed Possible
Three proofs, ready to go: a good arguable case on the underlying claim — the documents establishing what you’re owed or entitled to; assets within reach — identified specifically enough to freeze; and the battleground, a real risk of dissipation shown by conduct rather than suspicion: the transfers already begun, the sudden listing, the corporate reshuffle, the history of evasion. Add the ex parte duty of full and frank disclosure — everything material, including what hurts you — and a meaningful undertaking as to damages, sized by what a wrongful freeze does to a trading respondent.
The line worth memorising: the gap between suspicion and application is where money disappears. If you’re watching assets move, the evidence-gathering and the call happen the same day — because every day of watching is a day of moving, and delay corrodes both the assets and the application.
Assets moving now? 01 5827148 — urgent calls taken, including out of hours.