On December 4, 2024, the National Inspectorate (Corregedoria Nacional de Justiça)– an organ of the National Council of Justice (CNJ) responsible for regulating the performance of notary offices across the country – issued Provision 188/24. The provision, which recently came into force, amended the provisions of the National Code of Standards on the functionalities and rules of the National Center for the Freezing of Assets (Central Nacional de Indisponibilidade de Bens - CNIB).

The CNIB is a system developed to make the application of judicial and administrative decisions more effective and allow notary offices and real estate registries to easily identify frozen assets.

When an authority determines the freezing of a debtor's assets to guarantee the enforcement of a decision, an order is entered in the CNIB system, to ensure that any assets of that debtor, at the national level, are considered unavailable.

Thus, the disposal of these assets is prohibited until the cancellation of the freezing order occurs. This avoids the deterioration of the defaulting debtor's assets in a preventive manner. In relation to real estate properties, the order of unavailability is also recorded in the registration of the property, which guarantees the publicity of the execution and, in many cases, the satisfaction of the credit.

In addition, in real estate negotiations, prior consultation with the CNIB is required for the drawing up of the public deed, in order to ensure that there is no decision that prevents the sale of the property.

With the changes promoted by Provision 188/24, CNJ intends to modernize the institute of freezing, making it compatible with Brazilian procedural rules. The new procedure will allow the enforcement to be less burdensome for the debtor without, however, removing the protection of the creditor.

The main change brought by the provision consists of allowing that the freezing will fall only on assets that are sufficient to settle the debt to be enforced. Until then, the order of unavailability was indistinct and fell on all the debtor's assets. This procedure was quite onerous for the debtor, since it blocked the sale of all his assets until the cancellation of the freezing.

With the modification brought by the provision, when the order of freezing is issued, the authority may choose to carry it out in general or only on part of the debtor's assets, selected at the time of registration of the order.

In addition, the debtor may indicate an order of preference of assets to be eventually recorded with the freezing order, composing a basis, even if not binding, for the authorities to make other indications.

This may avoid situations that are excessively harmful to the debtor against whom enforcement is sought, who was often faced with the freezing of his entire assets on account of a specific debt, even if this debt was substantially lower than the assets encumbered with the restraining order.

This change was accompanied by other innovations, which involve, among other issues, ensuring that real estate records are always up to date in relation to freezing orders and its respective cancellations, in addition to simplifying the cancellation process as a whole.

The National Operator of the Electronic Real Estate Registration System (ONR), the agency responsible for operating the CNIB platform, has updated the systems and since January 14, 2025 the changes have already been implemented.

The expectation is that, with the modernization of the CNIB, the judicial and administrative authorities will increasingly guarantee the effectiveness of the decisions rendered, which may facilitate the work of lawyers and creditors in the search for real estate properties to satisfy the debts.

This measure also favors the real estate market, since it enables the sale of real estate properties of the debtor, who was harmed by indistinct blockages of his assets and by the bureaucracy of the cancellation processes (total or partial) of the freezing order. Thus, the National Inspectorate and the ONR seek to ensure agility in the practice of acts and the continuity of economic activity without excessive and/or unnecessary obstacles.

Machado Meyer is following the innovations of CNIB, which intends to release access to the platform to the general public and increase the transparency and efficiency of the sector.