Satisfied vs Discharged CCJ: What Each Status Actually Means

This guide explains the status markers that can appear against a County Court Judgment in England and Wales, and where the word "discharged" comes from. It is not legal advice.

People search for "discharged CCJ" constantly, and it is not a status the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines uses. The register knows about judgments being satisfied, cancelled, or set aside. Discharge belongs to insolvency — bankruptcy and debt relief orders — where it has a precise and quite different meaning.

The confusion matters because the four words describe outcomes that range from "you paid, and the record stays" to "the debt itself is gone". Getting them mixed up leads people to believe a judgment has been wiped when it has only been marked, or to assume nothing can be done when the debt has in fact already been written off.

• Satisfied — the judgment debt has been paid in full. The entry stays on the register until six years from the judgment date, but is marked as settled. Applied for on form N443, fee £19.
• Cancelled — the entry is removed from the register entirely. Available where the judgment was paid in full within one calendar month of the judgment date. Same form, same fee.
• Set aside — the court has cancelled the judgment itself, usually because it should never have been entered. The entry goes, and the underlying claim reverts to being defended.
• Discharged — not a CCJ register status. In insolvency, discharge is the point at which a bankrupt or a person subject to a debt relief order is released from the qualifying debts, which can include a judgment debt.

Satisfied is the most common outcome and the most disappointing one, because paying a judgment does not remove it.

Once the debt is paid in full, you apply to the court for a certificate of satisfaction on form N443 with a £19 fee. Registry Trust then marks the entry satisfied and notifies the credit reference agencies. If you cannot evidence payment, the court will write to the creditor, and issues the certificate anyway if there is no reply within a month.

The entry remains visible for the balance of the six years. What changes is how it reads to a lender. An unpaid judgment says the matter is live and unresolved; a satisfied one says it was settled. In mortgage decisions especially, that distinction moves applications between "declined" and "considered with conditions", even though the entry is present either way.

Nothing marks the entry automatically. A creditor who has been paid has no strong incentive to tell the court, so if you paid a CCJ and never applied, the register may still show it unpaid years later. Checking is free at the register, and our guide on how to check whether you have a CCJ explains the steps.

Cancellation is the same form and fee as satisfaction, with one extra condition: full payment inside one calendar month of the judgment date. Meet it, and the entry is removed rather than marked.

It is the only route by which paying a valid judgment gets it off the register, and the window does not reopen. The mechanics are covered in full in our guide on how to get a CCJ removed.

Set aside is a court decision rather than an administrative marking. It is granted where a judgment was wrongly entered, or where you have a real prospect of defending the claim and applied promptly after finding out about it.

The effect is different in kind from the other two. Satisfaction and cancellation both follow payment. A set aside says the judgment falls away without anyone paying anything — but it also puts the original claim back in play, so the creditor may continue and you defend. The debt is not written off by the set aside itself.

Discharge is insolvency vocabulary, and it does describe something real that can happen to a CCJ.

Where a judgment debt is included in a bankruptcy, the bankrupt is normally released from the qualifying debts on discharge, which in most cases is one year after the bankruptcy order. Where it is included in a debt relief order, the qualifying debts are discharged at the end of the moratorium period, again normally twelve months. In both cases the creditor loses the right to pursue the debt — the outcome people are usually imagining when they search for "discharged CCJ".

The register entry itself is a separate matter. A judgment caught by bankruptcy or a DRO does not vanish from the register on discharge; it runs its six years like any other. So it is entirely possible to have a CCJ that is discharged in the insolvency sense — no longer owed by you at all — while still showing on the register as unpaid.

Our comparison of IVAs, DMPs and DROs sets out which routes discharge debt and which merely reschedule it. An IVA, notably, does not "discharge" debts in the bankruptcy sense: it binds creditors to the terms of the arrangement, and debts are written off on its successful completion.

The phrase turns up often, and it usually describes one of three things:

1. A judgment included in a bankruptcy or DRO that has since been discharged. The debt is no longer enforceable against you; the register entry may still be running.
2. A judgment someone believes was written off after six years. It was not — the entry was removed, and as our guide on an unpaid CCJ after six years explains, the judgment survives.
3. A misreading of "satisfied". Satisfied means paid. If a report shows satisfied and nothing was paid, that is an error worth disputing with the agency showing it.

Looking for more on this topic? Browse all our debt guides.

This guide draws on the following legislation and official sources:

• Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines Regulations 2005
• Insolvency Act 1986
• GOV.UK — County court judgments for debt
• GOV.UK — Debt relief orders
• Registry Trust — the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines

Free, impartial money guidance is available from MoneyHelper, the government-backed service run by the Money and Pensions Service.

Related: How to Get a CCJ Removed | IVA vs DMP vs DRO Compared | All debt guides.