Every professional — lawyer, doctor, accountant, engineer — is well acquainted with the frustration of an outstanding unpaid credit. But how many are aware that, in certain circumstances, even a real and documented credit can become impossible to collect, not because it has "expired" in the ordinary sense, but because the law presumes that it has already been paid? This is precisely the ground on which the recent order no. 20056 of the Court of Cassation, published on 16 June 2026, operates, offering important clarifications on an often underestimated legal institution: presumptive prescription.
What Is Presumptive Prescription and Why It Differs from Ordinary Prescription
In common usage, the word "prescription" evokes the idea of a right that lapses because its holder has remained inactive for too long. Ordinary prescription works in exactly this way: once a certain number of years have passed without the creditor taking action, the right becomes extinguished.
Presumptive prescription, governed by Articles 2954 et seq. of the Civil Code (Codice Civile), follows an entirely different logic. It does not sanction the creditor's inactivity, but is instead grounded in a legal presumption of payment: the legislature, that is, considers that certain credits — by virtue of their very nature — are normally settled within a short period of time and without leaving any written record. Consequently, once the prescribed time limit has elapsed, payment is presumed to have already occurred, even if in reality it has not.
Professional credits typically fall within this category. Consider the fee of a lawyer for a single consultation, the invoice of a family physician, or the compensation of a technical expert for an occasional appraisal: these are services which, in common practice, are settled in cash, without formal receipts, and for which the creditor rarely retains documentation.
The Crucial Role of the Debtor's Conduct in Legal Proceedings
The most delicate point — and the one addressed by the Court of Cassation in the order under examination — concerns the procedural consequences of presumptive prescription. Its distinctive feature lies in the fact that it can be neutralised by the debtor's own conduct.
In substance, if the debtor, in the course of the proceedings, admits to not having paid, or adopts a procedural stance incompatible with the position that payment has already been made, the presumption set forth in Articles 2954 et seq. of the Civil Code (c.c.) falls away. The creditor professional thus reacquires the possibility of having their right judicially recognised.
This mechanism has very concrete practical implications:
- For the creditor: it is essential to carefully monitor the statements and defences of the debtor from the earliest stages of the proceedings, as an admission — even an implicit one — may prove decisive.
- For the debtor: invoking presumptive prescription and
