Modern financial technologies, AI scoring systems and automation of banking processes provide an ideal environment for recovering funds from working professionals.
How do modern bailiff systems track seniors?
Well, theoretically yes, although practice shows a completely different reality. In 2025 court bailiffs achieved a spectacular result, recovering a total of almost 14,4 billion PLN. This result means that 22.1% of the amounts reported for execution were secured.
This figure precisely matches the historical record from 2023. The largest share of the recovered sum (excluding direct payments from debtors themselves) came from automatic bank account seizures. The real breakthrough lies a step further. For the first time in history, pension and annuity benefits provided debt‑collection agencies with a larger cash flow than traditional employee salaries.
According to the newspaper “Rzeczpospolita”, an unprecedented situation occurred. The total amount obtained from the execution of pensions and annuities reached 2,373 billion PLN, while from wages, bailiffs managed to seize only 2,361 billion PLN.
This is a technological and mathematical paradox: a social group that is smaller than the working population and has significantly lower financial resources has become the main engine of Polish bailiff execution.
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Legal protection asymmetry. Why work protects better than a pension?
The answer to why the system drains seniors’ accounts so ruthlessly does not lie in their lack of financial responsibility, but in flawed legal algorithm design. There is a deep asymmetry in the so‑called exempt amounts, which in practice paralyzes bailiff actions against younger generations while exposing seniors to the first line of attack.
For employees, the law protects debtors extremely strongly. Exempt from execution (except for alimony cases) is the entire minimum net salary. In 2025 this amount was about 3500 PLN, and in 2026, after raising the minimum wage to 4806 PLN gross, it rose to about 3600 PLN.
Announcements for the next year indicate further increases of the minimum wage to 4950 PLN gross, which will further raise the protective shield for workers.
When it comes to pensions and annuities, the rules are entirely different, and legal protection is drastically lower. Here the bailiff must leave the debtor with only 75% of the minimum benefit. Translating this into real money – in 2025 the exempt amount was only about 1331 PLN, and in 2026 it rose to about 1395 PLN.
Any surplus above this modest threshold is automatically and ruthlessly taken to cover the debt.
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Systemic error and blocked collection
Experts and lawyers do not hide their criticism of the current state of affairs. In an interview with “Rzeczpospolita”, Prof. Andrzej Marciniak from Łódź University points out directly that the exemption of the minimum wage from execution in full is a mistake.
If the regulations are not urgently updated, collection against working debtors will increasingly become ineffective. Such a legal construction blocks not only the recovery of private debts but also hinders the collection of basic state dues, such as fines, mandates or public fees.
The National Bailiff Council has long warned that the protection pendulum has swung too far in the wrong direction. Przemysław Małecki, KRK spokesperson, notes that with the sharp rise in the minimum wage, an increasing portion of society falls under the safe umbrella of the exempt amount.
Meanwhile pensions grow much slower. As a result, the system, instead of optimally and fairly distributing the burden of obligations, strikes where resistance is weakest, i.e., in the savings and daily budgets of the oldest citizens.
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Source: Rzeczpospolita.
