A United States company sells to a Mexican buyer, ships the goods, invoices, and then the payments stop. The calls go unanswered, the emails bounce between departments, and the collection agency that works fine in Texas or Illinois discovers it has no standing, no local counsel and no way to enforce anything south of the border. That is the point where most of these accounts get written off as a loss.
They should not be. A commercial debt owed by a Mexican company is collectible in Mexico, through Mexican courts, using instruments that Mexican law treats as strong evidence. What it takes is a firm licensed to litigate in Mexico that knows which door to use. We have spent twenty years doing exactly that, and we act as counsel for most of the banking institutions in the country, which means we spend our working life on the creditor side of this problem.
This page explains how the process actually works, what we need from you, the deadlines that decide whether you can still collect at all, and what it costs. If you would rather just send the file, our contact page is one click away.
How international debt collection works when the debtor is in Mexico
There is a common assumption that a debt owed across a border needs some special international mechanism. It usually does not. The debt is governed by the commercial relationship you already have, and it is collected where the debtor and their assets are. That means Mexico, under Mexican commercial law, in front of a Mexican judge.
In practice the work runs in four stages, and most files never reach the last one.
Assessment. Before anything else we read what you have. The single most important question is not how much you are owed, it is what instrument backs it. A signed promissory note and an unpaid invoice are both debts, but under Mexican law they travel through completely different procedures at completely different speeds. We also check whether the claim is still within its statutory period, because a debt past its deadline is a conversation about pressure, not about litigation.
Locating the debtor and their assets. A judgment against a company with nothing in its name is an expensive piece of paper. We verify that the company still exists, who currently controls it, whether it is still operating and whether there is anything worth attaching. This is also where we find out if the entity that signed your contract is the same one holding the assets, which in Mexico is frequently not the case.
Out of court demand. A formal demand from a Mexican firm that visibly represents banks changes the temperature of the conversation. Many debtors who ignore a foreign creditor for months respond within weeks once the demand arrives from local counsel that can clearly file suit. A negotiated payment plan recovered in sixty days is usually worth more to you than a larger judgment two years out, and we will tell you when that is the case.
Litigation and enforcement. If the debtor will not pay, we sue. Mexican commercial procedure gives holders of certain instruments a fast track with the ability to attach assets early in the case, which is the real pressure point. Enforcement is where cases are actually won or lost, and it is the stage foreign creditors most often underestimate.
What documents support your claim
Mexican law separates debt into categories depending on what backs it, and the category decides the procedure. Before we define a strategy we review what is in your file, because the fastest route depends on the instrument you hold.
- Promissory notes (pagarés). The strongest position you can be in. A properly drafted note lets us file a direct action against the signer through executive commercial proceedings, one of the fastest routes available, with the ability to attach assets early.
- Checks. If the check was presented on time and was not covered, it supports a direct action against whoever issued it. The timing rules here are strict and unforgiving.
- Invoices and contracts. When there is no negotiable instrument, your invoices, purchase orders, delivery receipts and the commercial contract still prove the relationship and the debt. They support an ordinary commercial lawsuit, which is slower but entirely viable.
- Acknowledgments of debt. A payment agreement signed by the debtor, even one they later broke, makes the case substantially easier. If you negotiated at any point and got something in writing, send it.
- Email and purchase order trails. Do not discard these. In ordinary proceedings, a documented history of orders, deliveries and partial payments frequently carries the case.
We never require original documents to start. Clear copies are enough for us to assess a file and open the matter, which matters when the originals are sitting in an office two thousand miles away.
The deadlines that decide whether you can still collect
This is the part that costs American creditors the most money, and it is the reason we ask you not to sit on a file. Mexican law puts a clock on each type of claim. Once it runs out, the debt still exists morally but you lose the ability to enforce it in court, and with it most of your negotiating power.
| What you hold | Time limit | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Promissory note (pagaré) | 3 years from the due date | Article 165, General Law of Negotiable Instruments and Credit Transactions |
| Check | 6 months | Article 192, same law |
| Invoices and contracts (ordinary commercial action) | 10 years | Article 1047, Commercial Code |
| Default interest where none was agreed | 6% per year | Article 362, Commercial Code |
Two practical notes. First, the six month window on checks is short enough that by the time a foreign creditor has escalated internally, involved their attorney and found Mexican counsel, it has often closed. Second, the ten year window on invoices is long, which is why an account you gave up on in 2019 may still be perfectly collectible today. We have opened files on debts that the client had already written off their books.
Reviewed: August 2026. This is general information about Mexican commercial law, not legal advice on your specific matter. Statutory periods can be interrupted or affected by acts of the parties, so the only way to know where your file stands is to have it reviewed.
Judicial or out of court: which one your file needs
Not every account should go to court, and a firm that tells you otherwise is selling billable hours. Out of court recovery is faster, cheaper and preserves a commercial relationship you may want to keep. It works when the debtor has the money and needs a reason to prioritize you over their other creditors.
Litigation is the right answer when the debtor is stalling in bad faith, when assets are being moved, when the statutory clock is close to running out, or when previous promises have already been broken. The decision is not ideological, it is a read on the specific debtor, and it is one we make with you rather than for you.
Enforcing a United States judgment in Mexico
Some creditors arrive having already won. They sued in their home state, the Mexican company did not appear, and they hold a default judgment that nobody in Mexico will honor. A foreign judgment is not self executing here: it has to go through a recognition procedure before a Mexican court, and that court will examine how the defendant was served and whether the judgment offends Mexican public policy. Service is where these cases most often fail, because service that satisfies a United States court frequently does not satisfy a Mexican one.
Sometimes recognition is the right path. Often it is faster to sue in Mexico on the underlying debt, particularly when you hold a negotiable instrument. Bring us the judgment and the file, and we will tell you which of the two is shorter in your case.
International debt collection in Mexico: why a law firm and not an agency
A collection agency can call, write and report. In Mexico it cannot file suit, cannot attach a bank account, cannot place a lien on real property and cannot appear before a judge. Against a debtor who has decided not to pay, that arsenal runs out quickly, and sophisticated Mexican debtors know precisely how far an agency can go.
The other reason is procedural. Mexican courts move on formality. A document that was signed abroad, a power of attorney granted in another country, or a company representative whose authority is not properly evidenced can stall a case for months over paperwork that had nothing to do with the merits. Getting that right at the start is most of the job.
What it costs
We work on contingency. We do not charge you for the initial review of your file, and when we take a matter our fee is a percentage of what we actually recover for you. If nothing is recovered, you do not owe us a fee. The percentage depends on the age of the debt, the instrument backing it and whether the account is likely to settle or go the full distance, and we agree on it in writing before we start.
That structure exists because it aligns us with you. We only make money on files we believe are collectible, which is also why we will tell you plainly when a file is not worth pursuing instead of billing you to find out.
Where we work
We are based in Monterrey, forty minutes from the Texas border, with a second office in Mexico City. Those two cities cover the industrial north and the corporate and financial center of the country, which is where the overwhelming majority of Mexican commercial debtors sit. We litigate nationwide, and our attorneys handle matters in English.