Judicial collection of private debts in Brazil reached its highest level on record in 2025: 1,239,537 new enforcement lawsuits over non-tax extrajudicial titles were filed in the country's courts, according to a survey by news outlet g1 based on the statistics panel of the National Council of Justice (CNJ), the body that oversees Brazil's judiciary. The figure is about 60% higher than in 2020, when 772,645 cases were filed. Between January and March 2026, another 295,541 were distributed.
These are enforcement actions on extrajudicial titles: the document filed by the creditor already proves the debt, such as a loan contract, vehicle or real estate financing, unpaid rent, a bounced check or an unpaid invoice, so the judge is asked to order payment, without first weighing the merits. The cases can involve consumers and companies alike. The CNJ series climbs every year: 838,701 new cases in 2021, 994,098 in 2022, 1,131,730 in 2023 and 1,194,184 in 2024, before the 2025 record.
The record came in a year of peak demand on Brazilian courts. The CNJ's Justiça em Números 2026 report, released in June, counted 40.9 million new cases in 2025, the largest volume since the series began in 2009. The surge in debt lawsuits also tracks record household debt: in March 2026, 80.4% of Brazilian households reported being in debt, the highest share in the consumer debt survey (Peic) of the National Confederation of Trade in Goods, Services and Tourism (CNC), up from 77.1% a year earlier.
Why debts end up in court
For Fernando Corrêa, who coordinates the legal metrics lab at the Brazilian Jurimetrics Association (ABJ), enforcement tends to appear after other collection attempts have failed. "Enforcement is fairly ineffective, because it is hard to seize the parties' assets. It is not that creditors are discovering this option as a better way to satisfy debts. It is kind of a last resort," he says. The g1 report also lists easy credit, sports betting apps (known in Brazil as bets) and the habit of refinancing old debt with new loans among the causes cited by specialists.
Judge Káren Rick Danilevicz Bertoncello, of the Rio Grande do Sul Court of Justice, ties the caseload to the absence of an entrenched culture of renegotiating out of court before disputes reach the judiciary. "In Brazil, we still do not have a solidified culture of voluntary extrajudicial renegotiation," she says. She points to excessive lending as a central driver of over-indebtedness and argues that bank-run debt fairs "end up hurting the budget, because the consumer cannot take a global view to distribute his payment capacity among all his creditors." Brazil's Overindebtedness Law, she notes, now requires banks and lenders to assess a consumer's real repayment capacity before granting credit, placing on the creditor the duty to know who it is contracting with.
In Rio Grande do Sul, the state court runs an over-indebtedness management program covering 31,075 cases, more than 20,000 of them still active and 13,657 involving elderly people; 6,273 settlements have been approved by judges. Nationwide, the CNJ report shows conciliation resolved 28% of non-tax extrajudicial title enforcement cases in state courts in 2025.
The government's response
In recent years the federal government has launched programs such as Desenrola Brasil to help defaulters settle debts and clear their names. In April, g1 reported that President Lula's administration was studying a new plan to merge credit card, personal loan and other debts into a single loan, with lower interest rates and discounts on the principal of up to 80% in some cases. Also in 2026, the government regulated the use of part of the FGTS, the worker severance fund, as collateral in payroll-deducted loans for formally employed workers. Specialists heard by g1 say refinancing eases household budgets in the short term but solves nothing if it comes with fresh credit granted without a real assessment of repayment capacity. No date has been set for announcing the debt consolidation plan, and first-quarter figures show new lawsuits still arriving at a high pace.