limitation period

Which translation, when

Why

An English limitation period accrues on the day the cause of action arises and runs its six years for contract, negotiations change nothing without a standstill agreement. The German Verjährung plays by different house rules at every step. The default is short, three years, § 195 BGB. The start is generous, § 199 Abs. 1 BGB waits for the end of the year in which the claim arose and the creditor knew or grossly failed to know, so a claim born in February and one born in November start their clocks on the same 31 December, with long-stops independent of knowledge behind them, § 199 Abs. 2 bis 4 BGB. The run is soft, negotiations about the claim suspend it, § 203 BGB, no agreement needed, and proceedings suspend it too, § 204 BGB. And the finish is an Einrede, § 214 BGB, the claim survives, the debtor must raise the defence, and what he pays regardless he cannot reclaim. The parties may reshape most of this, § 202 BGB, shortening barred for intent, lengthening capped at thirty years, and standard terms adding walls of their own, so a contractual limitation clause is not boilerplate in Germany, it is drafting against a movable statutory background.

Typical mistakes

• Verjährungsstatut for statute of limitations is residue with a live homonym inside, Statut in German legal usage is the conflicts lawyer’s governing law, das Vertragsstatut, or a company’s constitution, the German for the body of rules is schlicht das Verjährungsrecht.
• The negotiation rule runs in the claimant’s favour for once, § 203 BGB suspends limitation while the parties talk, no standstill agreement needed, and rushing to issue as if in London wastes the statute’s gift.
• Ultimo start is the arithmetic surprise, § 199 Abs. 1 BGB moves the start of the regular period to 31 December, so converting an English accrual date one-to-one into a German deadline miscalculates the year.
• The three-year rule is the default, not the map, sale and works defects run on their own clocks, § 438 and § 634a BGB, two years from delivery or acceptance in the core cases, five for buildings, day-precise and, fraud aside, knowledge-blind, so the Ultimo arithmetic must not be pasted onto Mängelansprüche.

What matters

Invoice chasing under a German-law services agreement makes the rules concrete: the payment claim defaults in March, the English instinct books six years, the German file notes three, § 195 BGB, from the following New Year, § 199 Abs. 1 BGB, and when the parties then negotiate for a year, § 203 BGB quietly stops the clock throughout. Every one of those moves is invisible to a reader who only got the words translated.

Examples