Getting a Scottish decree marked as satisfied

A Scottish decree is a court order telling you to pay money you owe, and it is the Scottish equivalent of a county court judgment in England and Wales¹. Once you have paid it off, the entry on your credit file does not change by itself. You have to get a letter of satisfaction from the pursuer, the person or company you owed the money to, and send it to the register with their administration fee and confirmation of your name and address at the time of the decree¹.

The fee is £6, and you must send evidence from the pursuer that the debt has been paid². The letter needs to confirm five things: the name of the court, the case number, the date of the decree, the amount of the decree, and the date the debt was repaid in full³.

Timing matters more than anything else in this process. If you pay off your decree within one month, you can ask to have the entry removed from the register⁴. Pay after that month and the decree can still be marked as satisfied, but it stays on your file for six years from the original judgment date, whether the balance has been paid or not³.

What 'satisfied' means on the Register of Decrees

On the registers that record court orders, an entry is shown as either satisfied or unsatisfied. Satisfied means the award has been paid in full; unsatisfied means it has not⁶. The same wording is used across the different registers: a county court judgment is satisfied when you have paid in full⁷, and the same applies to a fines default⁸ and to a Child Support Agency liability order⁹.

For a Scottish decree, the practical effect is that the register entry is updated to show the debt has been cleared. The register itself shows the date of the judgment, the amount owed, and the name of the court that issued the judgment¹⁰. What changes when you are marked satisfied is the status, not the underlying details.

It is worth being clear about what a satisfied marker is not. It is not a deletion, and it is not a statement that the decree should never have been granted. It is a note that the money has been paid. Lenders reading your file see both the original entry and its status, which is why the timing rules below matter so much.

Satisfied or unsatisfied: how a decree shows on the register

The register entry carries a status label. Entries are shown as either satisfied or unsatisfied, where satisfied means the judgment has been paid in full and unsatisfied means it has not¹¹. Once the certificate of satisfaction is granted, the register will show the entry as paid off or satisfied¹².

If you pay the debt off more than a month after the date of the decree, a note is made against your entry on the register to show that the debt has been satisfied, or paid¹³. That note is the marker lenders see. It does not shorten the six years.

The same pattern appears in other parts of the register system. Where an administration order is completed, the details stay on the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines but are marked as satisfied¹⁴. The register keeps the history; the status tells the reader what happened next.

Paying the decree in full

The satisfied marker depends on full payment. A decree asking for the full amount is what you get if you did not apply for time to pay, or returned the forms too late¹⁵. If the people you owe agreed that you could pay in instalments, the order is a decree with a time to pay direction instead¹⁵.

Where you settle by paying a lump sum big enough to repay your debts in full, the debts are marked on your credit file as satisfied¹⁶. That is the outcome the letter of satisfaction is there to evidence.

Part payment does not produce the same result. Where a creditor agrees to write off part of a debt, the credit file is marked with a partial payment if you settle part of it¹⁷. If a default notice was issued before the write-off was agreed, the account is likely to be marked as partially satisfied; if no default notice was issued, it is likely to be marked as a partial settlement¹⁸. Organisations will usually mark an account as partially settled or partially satisfied in these cases⁵. Those markers are not the same as a satisfied decree, and the process described on this page does not apply to them.

Getting a letter of satisfaction from the pursuer

In Scotland, it is not the court that issues the certificate, and you need to take the steps yourself¹. You get a letter of satisfaction from the pursuer in the action, or the pursuer's solicitor, explaining that the debt has been paid¹. Either can provide it.

The letter is written evidence, and official guidance sets out what it should confirm: the name of the court, the case number, the date of the decree, the amount of the decree, and the date that the debt was repaid in full³. Ask for all five points before you send anything on, because a letter missing one of them may not be accepted.

If you are not sure who to approach, the debt may have changed hands. Where a debt is sold, the letter explaining the change should say who the new owners are, include the name of the original creditor, usually include the original creditor's account number, and explain where payments should now go¹⁹. That letter tells you who the current pursuer is. Where a solicitor is acting, they must send a letter of claim in the post before sending any court forms²⁰, so the correspondence you already hold usually names the right party.

How to apply to have the decree marked as satisfied

The process runs in a fixed order, and each step depends on the one before it.

1. Pay the decree in full.
2. Ask the pursuer, or the pursuer's solicitor, for a letter of satisfaction confirming the debt has been paid¹.
3. Check the letter confirms the court name, case number, decree date, decree amount, and the date the debt was repaid in full³.
4. Send the letter to the register with their administration fee of £6 and confirmation of your name and address at the time of the decree¹.
5. If you paid within one month, ask for the entry to be removed from the register at the same time⁴.

If the decree should not have been granted in the first place, there is a separate route. You complete Form 13B Application to Recall and send it to the court²¹. If the court agrees to recall the decree, you can request that the information on your credit reference file be corrected²². That is a different process from marking a decree satisfied, and it turns on showing a valid ground applies.

Where the protection stops

A satisfied decree is a record, not a repair. The entry stays for six years from the original judgment date whether or not it has been paid³, and the satisfied marker does not remove it early. The only route to removal is the one month window: pay off your decree within one month and you can ask to have the entry removed from the register⁴.

The same limit applies to other register entries. If you pay a county court judgment after one month, it can be marked as satisfied but will remain for the full six years²³. The Scottish position follows the same shape.

If a decree is not yours, or the details on it are wrong, that is a different problem with a different answer, and it is worth separating the two in your mind. Marking a decree satisfied confirms that a real debt has been paid. It does not challenge whether the decree should exist.

Free and impartial help is available if you are dealing with a decree you cannot pay. National Debtline and Business Debtline publish guides on Scottish court action and on recalling a decree²⁵, and StepChange covers Scottish court action and the options around it²⁵. Debt advice charities can talk through your circumstances before you decide what to do.