Enforcement and insolvency are usually described as two stages of the same effort. They are closer to opposites. Enforcement rewards the creditor who moves first; insolvency exists to stop exactly that, and it reaches backwards — a payment you successfully collected months before anyone filed can be pulled back into the estate, and so can the enforcement document you collected it on.
The Act is the Zakon o stečaju, Službeni list Crne Gore nos. 1/2011, 53/2016, 32/2018 (Constitutional Court decision), 62/2018 (Constitutional Court decision) and 1/2022. What follows is the creditor's side of it: the deadlines that create rights, the one that destroys a security interest, and the lookback windows that decide whether money already in your account stays there.
The calendar decides more than the merits
Creditors acquire the status of a party by filing a claim — that is Article 51, and it is the reason a creditor who has not filed has no procedural existence in the proceedings, however large the debt.
| Step | Period | Provision |
|---|---|---|
| Court decides on opening the proceedings | 30 days from the proposal | Art. 70 |
| Creditors file secured and unsecured claims | 30 days from publication of the opening notice | Art. 72 |
| Secured creditor notifies the court of its pledge | Within the claim-filing period | Art. 53 |
| Administrator draws up the list of creditors | 30 days from opening | Art. 109 |
| Administrator states whether it will perform a mutual contract | 15 days from receipt of the request | Art. 96 |
| Creditor proposes continuation of interrupted litigation | 8 days from receipt | Art. 92 |
| Objection against an act of the administrator | 8 days from learning of it | decided within 8 days |
| Appeal against a decision in the proceedings | 8 days, court decides within 30 days | appeal provisions |
| Avoidance action may be brought | From opening until the main distribution hearing | Art. 122(4) |
Two of these are worth stating in words rather than in a table.
Article 72 requires the decision opening the proceedings to call creditors to file secured and unsecured claims within 30 days of publication of the notice. For a foreign creditor this is the single most dangerous line in the Act, because the clock runs from a publication nobody sends you.
Article 96 puts a clock on the administrator, not on you: where a contract is mutual and unperformed on both sides, the administrator must, within 15 days of receiving the request, tell the debtor's counterparty in writing whether it will perform. A creditor with a live contract should be the one sending that request rather than waiting to learn the answer.
The pledge trap: security you hold but do not notify
This is the provision that quietly destroys the most value, and it is easy to read past.
Article 53 provides that on the opening of the proceedings, pledges and measures of forced collection or security obtained in a particular way cease to apply, and creditors holding them are not secured (razlučni) creditors. It then requires secured creditors to notify the court of the pledge within the period for filing claims, submitting the corresponding evidence — and failure to do so within that period has the consequence that those creditors cannot exercise their pledge rights.
A registered mortgage does not enforce itself inside a bankruptcy. The security survives as a claim to preferential treatment only if it is asserted, in time, with evidence. Under Article 112a, secured creditors file on the prescribed basis; and under Article 112, a late filing is possible only until the examination hearing begins, and only where the creditor proves justified reasons it could neither foresee nor remove.
Where you actually rank
Article 55 sorts unsecured insolvency creditors into three payment ranks:
- First rank: employees' and former employees' claims for gross wages at the level of basic wages, with interest from maturity to the opening of the proceedings; and employees' claims for injuries at work, whether arising before or after the proposal.
- Second rank: pension and disability insurance contributions for employees and former employees not falling into the first rank.
- Third rank: the claims of all other insolvency creditors — which is where a supplier, a lender or a contractor lands.
Creditors of the same rank are satisfied pro rata, and a lower rank is paid only after the higher rank has been satisfied in full. Article 55(2) adds a fourth position by agreement: creditors who agreed before the proceedings to be paid only after one or more other creditors are satisfied after the third rank, with interest.
The one route from third rank to first
Article 96 governs contracts that are mutual and unperformed on both sides, and it contains the only routine upgrade in the Act.
Under Article 96(1) the administrator may perform the debtor's obligations instead of the debtor and demand performance from the counterparty. Under Article 96(2), if the administrator refuses performance, the counterparty is left to pursue its claim as an ordinary insolvency creditor — third rank, pro rata, alongside everyone else. Article 96(3) gives the counterparty the lever: on being called on to declare itself, the administrator must state in writing within 15 days whether it intends to perform.
Then Article 96(4): if the administrator declares that it will perform, and then during the proceedings stops performing, the claim under that contract falls into the first payment rank, as a cost of the proceedings. That is a different economic outcome from third-rank pro rata, and it is reached by asking the question in writing rather than waiting.
Article 97 adds a related position for equipment: where proceedings are opened over a lessee, the finance lessor has a right to separate satisfaction and a right of priority over the leased object.
The part most creditors have never been shown: your payment can be taken back
A creditor who collected shortly before the collapse tends to assume the matter is closed. Chapter VI of the Act says otherwise, and it is precise about how far back it reaches.
Article 122(1): legal transactions and other legal acts concluded or taken before the opening of proceedings, which disturb the equal satisfaction of creditors or damage them, or which put individual creditors in a more favourable position, may be challenged by the administrator in the debtor's name and by creditors. Article 122(2) treats an omission as an act.
🔴 Article 122(3) is the one that connects directly to enforcement: legal transactions and procedural acts on the basis of which an enforcement document was issued, or which were taken under an enforcement document or in enforcement proceedings, can also be challenged on the same condition — and where the challenge succeeds, the enforcement document ceases to have effect against the estate. Winning the enforcement race is therefore not the end of the analysis; the mechanics of that race are set out in our enforcement guide.
Article 122(4) sets the window for bringing the action: from the day the proceedings open until the day of the main distribution hearing, or the finality of the decision closing the proceedings.
Then the lookbacks.
| What is challenged | Lookback before the proposal | Additional condition | Provision |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ordinary satisfaction — security or payment in the manner and at the time the creditor was entitled to | 6 months | Debtor insolvent and creditor knew or must have known | Art. 123(1) |
| Ordinary satisfaction taken after the proposal was filed | After filing | Creditor knew or must have known of insolvency or of the proposal | Art. 123(2) |
| Extraordinary satisfaction — security or payment the creditor had no right to demand, or not in that manner or at that time | 12 months | None stated | Art. 124 |
| Acts directly damaging creditors | 6 months | Debtor insolvent and counterparty knew | Art. 125(1)(1) |
Article 124 is the provision to read twice, because it has no knowledge requirement on its face: satisfaction the creditor was not entitled to demand, or was entitled to but not in that manner or at that time, is challengeable for a full twelve months before the proposal. Renegotiated security taken from a wobbling debtor, or payment accepted early, sits squarely inside it.
Article 123(4) removes the argument most connected parties reach for: a person connected with the debtor at the time of the transaction is deemed to have known of the insolvency or of the proposal. And Article 123(3) sets a low bar generally — knowledge is presumed where the creditor knew circumstances from which insolvency or the filing of a proposal could be concluded beyond doubt.
The reorganisation vote
Where a reorganisation plan is on the table, Article 166 gives voting rights to all creditors in proportion to their claims, and where a claim is contested or unexamined, the bankruptcy judge assesses its basis and amount for voting purposes. Written voting requires ballots with a certified signature of the authorised person.
Article 167 requires voting within classes, and establishes separate classes that vote separately, beginning with secured creditors and then the payment ranks. A third-rank creditor's influence is therefore a function of the size of its claim inside its own class, not of its commercial importance to the debtor.
Scope
This page is the general commercial creditor's view. The off-plan buyer's version — where the contract remedies before insolvency matter as much as the ranking after it — is set out in our developer insolvency guide, and the pre-insolvency collection route in our enforcement guide. Where the counterparty is still solvent and the argument is contractual, the construction-side position is in our construction contract guide.
Read in the consolidated text covering the gazette numbers listed above and checked on 26 August 2026. Cross-border recognition of foreign insolvency proceedings is dealt with separately in the Act and is not covered here.
Before the counterparty fails
Three questions decide whether you are a creditor with rights or a creditor with a grievance. Do you have a monitoring arrangement that will tell you when a Montenegrin counterparty enters proceedings, given that Article 72's thirty days run from a publication you will not receive? If you hold security, is there a standing instruction to notify the pledge to the court within the filing period, because Article 53 forfeits it otherwise? And if you have been paid recently by a debtor showing distress, has anyone assessed that payment against Article 123's six months and Article 124's twelve?
Send us the exposure, the security documents and the payment history, and we will tell you what to file, by when, and which receipts are exposed to a claw-back. This work sits in our enforcement and insolvency practice.
