Protestados

Protestados is a term most commonly used in Brazilian Portuguese to refer to individuals or legal entities against whom a protest of a financial title has been filed. In this context, protestado (singular) denotes the debtor named in a “certidão de protesto,” a public record created when a creditor formally objects to the non-payment of a debt through a notary office (cartório). The plural form protestados covers multiple such cases.

The legal mechanism behind the term involves the protest of a title, such as a promissory note, bill of exchange, or other negotiable instrument. After failure to receive payment, the creditor can register the protest at a cartório de protestos. The resulting certidão de protesto is a publicly accessible record that signals the existence of an unresolved obligation. The protest can affect the debtor’s credit history and access to new credit, loans, or certain services until the dispute is resolved or the debt is paid and the protest cancelled.

Scope and usage vary across jurisdictions and states in Brazil, and similar procedures exist in other Portuguese-speaking countries under different names. While the primary use of protestados is in the civil-credit context, the term can also be understood literally as “those who protested” in a different sense, though this article concentrates on the credit-related meaning.

See also: protesto de títulos, certidão de protesto, cartório de protestos.