Formal notice template: what yours has to contain

The templates circulating online share one flaw: they were written for a dispute that is not yours. You fill in two blanks — a name, an amount — and keep sentences that match nothing, or that demand something other than what you are owed. A notice with the wrong basis or the wrong figure hands the other party exactly what they want: a reason to argue.

What matters is not the phrasing. It is that the demand can be verified: who, on what basis, how much, by when, and what follows. Each of those points is set out below, in enough detail to write your own — and at the end, the honest comparison between writing it yourself and having it served.

There is a simpler reason too. In Morocco, drawing up a legal document on someone else's behalf is a regulated activity. Indari prepares the notice from controlled models and details confirmed with you by phone, and a commissaire judiciaire signs and serves it. Leaving a ready-made text lying around for anyone to take is neither the same thing nor a service.

It has to let the other party know exactly what is being asked of them, and let a judge — if the file ends up in front of one — verify that they knew. These are the elements that get looked for.

The temptation is to write angrily. The opposite works. A good notice reads like a statement of account: here is the contract, here is what was due, here is what was paid, here is the balance, here is the date. Nothing to interpret, nothing to dispute.

If you are unsure about the amount, do not round it up. Claiming more than you are owed hands the other side a ready-made defence and costs you the one real advantage of the exercise, which is clarity. Claim what you can prove, and flag separately what is still open.

Keep a copy of the letter exactly as it went out, with its attachments. The letter and the proof of sending are only useful together — keeping one without the other is a common and expensive mistake.

The Dahir of Obligations and Contracts provides that a debtor is in default once notice has been given (article 254), and that the notice results from a writing with a certain date (articles 255 and 256). A letter handed over without a receipt, a voice message, a text message: all of these prove you asked, but not when, and not that it arrived.

Two routes give that certain date: a registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, and service by a commissaire judiciaire, whose procedure the Code of Civil Procedure sets out.

The registered letter has a well-known weak point: the item nobody collects. The other party never goes to the post office, the letter comes back, and you have lost two or three weeks without being able to show they knew. The commissaire judiciaire travels to the address, hands over the document and draws up a record; if the person refuses to take it, the refusal itself is recorded.

The period has to be reasonable for what is being asked. Paying an invoice nobody disputes takes less time than vacating premises. Too short a deadline looks like a device; too long a one costs you weeks.

The notice Indari prepares gives the other party 7 days to comply.

You will often come across 15 days. That figure attaches to residential and professional leases governed by law 67.12, where it has a precise meaning. Depending on the nature of your dispute, it is not necessarily the period that applies to yours: what governs is the obligation at stake, not the habit.

Both are valid answers, and they suit different situations.

If the sum is modest, the address certain and the relationship still functional, write it yourself and send it by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt. Plenty of situations resolve exactly that way, and there is no reason to pay more for that outcome.

If the amount justifies proceedings, if the other party has already ignored your reminders, if you are not sure of their address, or if you live abroad and cannot chase an item at a Moroccan post office, the difference in price buys the one thing the letter lacks: proof nobody argues with.

Either way, the deadline runs from receipt, not from sending. Note the exact date on the acknowledgement of receipt or the record of service: that is the date that counts, and the one you will be asked for.

In a good share of cases nothing further is needed: the letter arrives, the person understands the next step is a court, and the situation resolves there.

Otherwise the file can go before the competent court, with the notice and the proof of receipt as the main exhibits. Depending on the dispute that may be a claim for payment, an order to pay, or termination of a contract. What you will have built by then is a file that is dated, quantified and proved — worth far more at that stage than an elegant turn of phrase.