Personal Property Registry

The Personal Property Registry is a government agency that collects information relating to claims that people have registered with regard to assets owned by others. If you have a claim against another person, such as an unpaid court judgment, you can protect your claim by registering it at the Personal Property Registry. The claim then attaches to assets owned by the debtor. Registration allows you to take steps to enforce your court judgment and also allows you to share in any proceeds from enforcement by other creditors.

It is entirely possible that the person who owes money to you also owes money to others. If you have a claim against another person’s assets it needs to be registered at the Personal Property Registry to maintain your priority against other people who might also have claims to those same assets. Once an enforcement mechanism is commenced against a debtor, those that have claims registered at the Personal Property Registry will share in the proceeds according to the type of claim they have registered and the order of priority established by law.

The Personal Property Registry only deals with assets, not land or interests in land.

The type of claims that can be registered at the Registry include

• a chattel mortgage (e.g. where you loan someone money and the loan is charged against an asset they own such as a car);
• a small claims judgment as evidenced by a Writ of Enforcement;
• a conditional sales contract (e.g. where you buy a TV from a store on the basis that you pay for it over two years. You do not own the TV until it is fully paid for);
• a Matrimonial Property Order (where a spouse has been given exclusive possession of a mobile home or household goods);
• a Garageman’s Lien (where a garageman will register an interest against a vehicle for repairs, parts or storage for which he has not been paid).

Secure and Unsecured Claims

Claims against assets belonging to others can be divided into secured and unsecured claims. A secured claim is one that specifically mentions the asset or assets of another person, for example a loan of money from a bank that is secured upon all your assets, or a conditional sales contract where the seller owns the item until it is totally paid for, for example a TV. If you have registered a secured claim you will get paid before others who have not registered their own secured claims.

An unsecured claim includes most court judgments. As a result of a judgment in your favour, you have a claim against another person, but it does not relate specifically to particular assets. It is necessary to register unsecured claims at the Personal Property Registry because only those with registered claims will participate in a distribution of any proceeds from the debtor’s assets. You need to register your claim to use enforcement proceedings such as garnishee or seizure.

Order of Payment

The law establishes an order in which creditors share in the proceeds from a debtor’s assets. As with all areas of law there can be exceptions and special circumstances for which you may need to consult a lawyer. Very generally, registered secured creditors will share before registered unsecured creditors. Registered unsecured creditors then share equally in any amount left. As a registered unsecured creditor you will share in the proceeds of any enforcement method put in motion by another creditor, as long as there are sufficient funds after secured creditors have been dealt with.

Likewise, if as an unsecured creditor you begin enforcement proceedings, your claim will rank behind any registered secured creditors. So even though you begin the enforcement proceedings, you may not gain anything out of it, if there are insufficient funds to pay the unsecured creditors. That is why it is important to carry out a search at the Personal Property Registry before putting enforcement proceedings into motion. If you see that there are many secured creditors, or that there are other unsecured creditors who will share equally in the proceeds with you, you may decide that the cost of enforcement will not be worth what you might gain at the end of the day.

Searching the Personal Property Registry

There are different types of searches that you can carry out at the Personal Property Registry to ascertain what other interests might be registered against particular property or against a particular person. As well as searching the registry when you are owed money, you should also search when you buy personal property or accept personal property as collateral for a loan, to ensure that there are no outstanding interests registered against the property.

You can carry out the following searches at the Registry:

• Individual Debtor Name Search –to see if there are any registrations against a specific person or business as a debtor;
• Business Debtor Search-to see if there are any registrations for a specific business debtor name;
• Serial Number Search-to see if there are any registrations for a particular serial number of an item;
• Related Writ Search-to see if there are any other related writs registered for individuals or businesses;
• Distribution Seizure Search-to see if any individuals or businesses are registered as being able to share in the distribution proceeds of the sale of the debtors goods;
• Registration Number Search-to determine the status of a specific Personal Property registration number.

Effect of Registration of an Interest

When you register an interest at the Personal Property Registry you will be given a registration number. It is very important to register information accurately as an error might make the registration invalid. It is especially important to register the debtor information and serial numbers correctly. It is also important to be sure that you have good grounds to register an interest and that you are doing so in good faith. It is possible for a person to sue you if damages result from a registration made in bad faith. 

For more information about the Personal Property Register see the Alberta Government Services website at http://governmentservices.gov.ab.ca.