A freezing order — also known as a freezing injunction, or historically a Mareva injunction — is a court order preventing a defendant from disposing of or moving their assets, pending the outcome of proceedings or the enforcement of a judgment. It is one of the most powerful interim remedies in English law, and asset tracing is what makes it precise enough for a court to grant.
Winning a court judgment is one step. Enforcing it against a defendant who has moved or hidden their assets is another — and often the harder one. The freezing order is the mechanism that protects the enforceability of a judgment by preventing dissipation before the claimant can act. Understanding how it works, and what is needed to obtain one, is essential to any serious enforcement strategy.
A freezing order is an injunction granted by a court — most commonly in England and Wales under the Senior Courts Act 1981 and Civil Procedure Rule 25.1 — that prohibits a defendant from dealing with their assets up to a specified value. The order typically:
A court will grant a freezing order where the applicant demonstrates three things:
Asset tracing is the intelligence work that makes a freezing order viable. Without a trace, a claimant may know that a defendant has assets — but not what they are, where they are held or how they are structured. A court needs specifics. A well-conducted trace identifies and documents the assets to be named in the application, confirming their existence, location and the defendant's connection to them through lawful registry and investigative work. See our asset tracing service and our glossary entry on freezing injunctions for further detail on how this works in practice.
In urgent matters, tracing can be staged: early findings are passed to lawyers to support an initial application, while the full trace continues. This allows the claimant to freeze what is known while the picture of total assets widens.
Where a defendant holds assets internationally, English courts have the power to grant a worldwide freezing order — an order that extends to assets wherever they are held. This is a significant jurisdiction, and not available as a matter of course: the court must be satisfied that the defendant has sufficient connection to England and Wales, and that it is just and convenient to grant worldwide relief. Enforcing the order in each foreign jurisdiction then requires local recognition proceedings, using the English order as the basis. Cross-border asset tracing — identifying what exists in which jurisdictions — is the intelligence foundation that makes worldwide enforcement a realistic strategy rather than an aspiration.
A freezing order is almost always accompanied by an order requiring the defendant to disclose their assets. This disclosure obligation — which requires the defendant to set out what they own, where it is held and how it is structured — is itself a powerful tool. Cross-referencing that disclosure against an independent asset trace is how claimants identify whether the defendant has complied fully, or whether further assets remain hidden.
A freezing order (also called a freezing injunction or historically a Mareva injunction) is a court order preventing a defendant from disposing of or moving their assets up to a specified value, pending legal proceedings or judgment enforcement. It is one of the most powerful interim remedies in English law and can extend to worldwide assets in appropriate circumstances.
A good arguable case on the merits, a real risk that the defendant will dissipate assets to frustrate judgment, and — critically — identified specific assets to name in the application. Asset tracing provides that specificity: without it, the court has nothing concrete to freeze.
The terms are used interchangeably. "Freezing injunction" is the current Civil Procedure Rules term. "Freezing order" is the common commercial usage. "Mareva injunction" is the historical name from the 1975 case and is still encountered in older materials and some international jurisdictions.
Yes. English courts can grant worldwide freezing orders where the defendant has sufficient connection to England and Wales and it is just and convenient to grant worldwide relief. Enforcing the order internationally requires local recognition proceedings in each jurisdiction, using the English order as the basis.
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