Over the past decades, I have rented numerous apartments in Paris, some good, some less good. But they all had in common that all laws were respected, the buildings were nice, the neighborhood pleasant, and what more do you need?
The apartment I rented in the 5th arrondissement in Paris in the fall of 2019 turned out to be a different story – the neighborhood was great, but that was it. Read my running story of a not-so-perfect Paris apartment below.
When a court in France orders someone to pay you money, it stops there. The court does not help you retrieve the money. When you win and someone has to pay you a sum of money, the second battle begins. For this part, you need the Commissaire de justice, and they charge by the hour.
What is a court ruling worth in France? Nothing, it seems. In France, a court can order you to pay a fine, but nothing happens if you don’t pay. At least, that’s the reality of the French legal system as I have come to know it.
On Wednesday, August 3rd, 2022, after two years and eight months, I got the rest of my deposit back from my Parisian landlord of 2019. The fine the judge ordered the landlord to pay has not been paid yet, more than 4000 €, and the French huissier de justice I hired to deal with this has not returned my latest inquiries.
I thought renting an apartment via a huge and long-established rental agency would be the financially safest when I went to Paris in 2019. I was wrong. It is now two years and seven months since I moved out of an apartment in Paris, and I still don’t have the money the court declared in January 2022 that I was owed.
I was delighted when I got the French court's Aye that my former landlord should pay me the rest of my deposit with two years of interest. After two years of paperwork, courts, and significant expenses, it was a happy ending to a awful apartment situation in Paris. Or so I thought.
In life, you lose nonstop – youth, looks, money, friends, illusions. But sometimes, you win in court. And so, after two years of paperwork and courtrooms, on January 28, 2022, a French court ordered my former 2019 Paris landlord to return my full security deposit, plus two years’ interest.
