A Docket shipment flagged critical: demurrage in 7 days, EPR registration missing and a fumigation stamp query, above the invoice, route, free-time and CHA details. — A container against its clock — free time ends 14 Jul, two documents unresolved.

Forfeiture notice: how many days you have, and from when

A forfeiture notice is the letter telling you the government is about to take your cargo. There are two and they count differently. On abandoned cargo, title vests on the 30th day after the date of the notice unless the goods are both entered and paid for first. On seized cargo, a claim is due within 20 days of the notice's first publication.

Forfeiture notice: Notice that imported cargo is about to become government property: either a title-vesting or sale notice on merchandise gone unclaimed and abandoned, or a notice of seizure and intent to forfeit. Each carries its own deadline, counted from a different event.

Unentered cargo: the clocks before the notice arrives The US sequence on cargo nobody enters. The notice is the last step, not the first, and every deadline before it is a paperwork deadline.

A forfeiture notice is not one document. It is two, they arrive for opposite reasons, and the deadline printed on one is not the deadline that binds the other. An importer holding the wrong one of them and counting thirty days has already lost ten.

Two documents, both called a forfeiture notice The deadlines are not the same length and they do not start at the same event.

The abandonment path: nobody entered it

Most cargo the government takes was never seized. It was left. The sequence is mechanical throughout, and it starts with a document deadline rather than with an allegation.

Unentered merchandise may remain at the place of unlading until the fifteenth calendar day after landing. After that the carrier notifies a bonded warehouse certified to receive general order merchandise, and the warehouse arranges transport and storage, in the regulation’s own words, “at the risk and expense of the consignee”. Nobody has accused you of anything. You are now paying a second custodian, on top of whatever terminal storage charge was already running.

The reason that move happens on time, every time, is that the deadline is not yours. Under 19 CFR § 4.37(a) the carrier, master or agent must notify CBP of unentered cargo

No later than 20 calendar days after landing

and failure to do it “may result in assessment of a monetary penalty of up to $1,000 per bill of lading against the master or owner of the vessel or the agent thereof”, reduced to the value of the goods where the bill is worth less than that. Paragraph (d) adds liquidated damages equal to the value of the merchandise where the custodian fails to relinquish it to a general order warehouse in time, and paragraph (e) gives the warehouse operator five calendar days from notification to take possession.

So three parties have a dated obligation in the fortnight after landing, and the importer is not one of them. Your deadline is day fifteen and nothing enforces it; the carrier’s is day twenty and a penalty does. That asymmetry is the whole reason a container moves to a warehouse you did not choose while your desk is still chasing the document. The people with the clock running are not waiting for you, and they are not going to ask twice.

Why cargo ends up there is worth reading in full, because the third reason is the one that catches working desks:

(a) Whenever entry of any imported merchandise is not made within the time provided by law or regulations prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury. (b) Whenever entry is incomplete because of failure to pay estimated duties. (c) Whenever, in the opinion of the port director, entry cannot be made for want of proper documents or other causes.

“Want of proper documents.” A missing certificate of origin is a general order clock in the same way it is a demurrage clock, and it is the same missing certificate.

Then the long wait. The general order period “expires 6 months from the date of importation”, and during it the goods are not subject to sale. At six months in customs custody, with estimated duties and storage or other charges still unpaid, the merchandise “shall be considered unclaimed and abandoned”.

The notice, and the two conditions

At that point the government may sell the goods, or it may take title to them.

If it sells, notice goes out on Customs Form 5251 “30 days prior to the date of sale”: to the importer if known, and failing that the consignee, the shipper, the warehouse transferee or a lienholder. If it takes title instead, the statute is precise about the countdown and about what stops it. Title vests

free and clear of any liens or encumbrances, on the 30th day after the date of the notice unless, before such 30th day— (1) the subject merchandise is entered or withdrawn for consumption; and (2) payment is made of all duties, taxes, fees, transfer and storage charges, and other expenses that may have accrued thereon.

Read the conjunction. It is “and”, not “or”. Filing the entry on day 29 and paying on day 31 is not compliance; it is a lost consignment. The entry summary has to be filed and the money has to be moved, both inside the window, and the money includes six months of somebody else’s storage bill.

On the sale path the window is wider and the mechanism is the same: merchandise subject to sale “may be entered or withdrawn for consumption at any time prior to the sale upon payment of the duties, any internal revenue tax, and all charges and expenses that may have accrued thereon”. Two things you cannot do: export it before the sale without paying the duty, and enter it for warehouse.

Thirty days is the long version

The three-day and ten-day variants are the ones that surprise people, and they attach to the cargo rather than to the case. Unclaimed explosives, dangerous articles, fruit and other perishables “shall be sold after 3-days’ public notice”. Other merchandise liable to depreciation is sold “upon public notice of not less than 6 or more than 10 days, as the port director may determine”. A reefer consignment and a pallet of machine parts sitting in the same warehouse on the same day are on different clocks.

The seizure path, and the shorter deadline

The other notice is a notice of seizure and intent to forfeit, and it exists because the government has taken the goods over an alleged violation rather than because you were late. It must state “the time, cause, and place of seizure”, and then:

State that any person desiring to claim property must appear at a designated place and file with the Fines, Penalties, and Forfeitures Officer within 20 days from the date of first publication of the notice a claim to such property and a bond in the sum of $5,000 or 10% of the value of the claimed property, whichever is lower, but not less than $250, in default of which the property will be disposed of in accordance with the law

Two things in that sentence cost importers cargo. The clock is twenty days, not thirty. And it runs from the date of first publication — the notice is posted on an official government forfeiture website for at least thirty consecutive days, and the twenty days start when that posting begins, not when a letter reaches your office. The publication window is longer than the deadline inside it, which is exactly the shape that reads as more time than there is.

And filing the claim does not bring the container back:

The filing of a claim and the giving of a bond, if required, pursuant to section 608, Tariff Act of 1930, shall not be construed to entitle the claimant to possession of the property. Such action only stops the summary forfeiture proceeding.

It buys a court instead of an auction. Getting possession is a separate application, and where the appraised domestic value does not exceed $100,000 the fines, penalties and forfeitures officer may accept a written offer to pay that value and release the goods.

What a desk can automate here

Not the notice. By the time either letter exists, the answer is a customs broker and possibly a lawyer, and any tool that offers to run that countdown for you is offering to be wrong about a legal date.

What is automatable is everything in front of it, and it is the same work that keeps a container off demurrage. The fifteen-day clock after landing is a document deadline. So is the six-month one. So is reason (c), want of proper documents, which is the only one of the three reasons that describes a desk doing its best and running out of days. The pack that would have cleared the box in week one is the pack that would have cleared it in month five, and nobody chased it either time.

That is the job worth buying software for: demurrage and detention software that counts down the days left before a document deadline, and chases the party who owes you the document until it arrives. Document packs routinely run about eight days late against free time, and a container that is eight days late against free time is a container nobody has yet started counting against the fifteenth day after landing. The notices in this entry are what the far end of that looks like.

Questions traders ask

Is there software that counts down the days left on a forfeiture notice?

Not from us, and be careful of anything that says otherwise. The deadline on a forfeiture notice is a legal date that turns on which notice you are holding and what has already been filed, and reading it off a screen is how a desk misses the one condition that actually releases the cargo. What software can usefully count is the clock upstream: the fifteenth calendar day after landing, when unentered cargo goes to general order, and the six months after that. Docket works that end — the document pack, complete before the deadline that starts the whole sequence.

How many days does a forfeiture notice give you?

It depends which one you have. On abandoned cargo, a title-vesting notice under 19 U.S.C. 1491(b) says title vests in the United States on the 30th day after the date of the notice, and a notice of sale under 19 CFR 127.24 goes out 30 days before the sale date. On seized cargo the shorter clock applies: a claim must be filed within 20 days from the date of first publication of the notice. Perishables and explosives are sold after three days' public notice, and goods liable to depreciation on six to ten days'.

Can I still get my cargo back after a forfeiture notice?

On the abandonment path, usually yes, and the mechanism is money rather than argument. Merchandise subject to sale may be entered or withdrawn for consumption at any time prior to the sale on payment of all the duties, taxes, charges and expenses that have accrued. A title-vesting notice is stricter: both the entry and the payment must be done before the 30th day, not one of them. What you cannot do is export it before the sale without paying the duty, or put it into a bonded warehouse.

Why did my container go to general order?

Most often because the paperwork was not there. Cargo becomes general order merchandise when entry is not made within the time the law allows, when entry is incomplete because estimated duties were not paid, or when, in the port director's opinion, entry cannot be made for want of proper documents or other causes. Unentered cargo may sit at the place of unlading until the fifteenth calendar day after landing; after that it moves to a general order warehouse at the risk and expense of the consignee.

What is the difference between abandonment and forfeiture?

Abandonment is what happens when nobody claims the cargo: after six months in customs custody with duties and charges unpaid, it is considered unclaimed and abandoned to the government by operation of the statute. Forfeiture follows a seizure — the government has taken the goods because of an alleged violation, and is giving notice that it intends to keep them. The first is a deadline you missed. The second is an allegation you can contest.

Does filing a claim get the goods released?

No, and the regulation says so in terms: filing a claim and giving a bond 'shall not be construed to entitle the claimant to possession of the property. Such action only stops the summary forfeiture proceeding.' It moves the case to a court rather than to an auction. Release before that is a separate application, and on property appraised at $100,000 or less the fines, penalties and forfeitures officer may accept a written offer to pay the appraised domestic value.

Related terms

General order — The customs custody status of imported merchandise that has not been entered or released: taken into the port director's custody and deposited in a general order warehouse at the risk and expense of the consignee, where storage runs on top of whatever the terminal has already billed.
Entry Summary — The documentation or data filed with US Customs and Border Protection that enables it to assess duties, collect statistics on imported merchandise and determine whether other legal requirements are met. Normally CBP Form 7501, submitted through ACE within 10 working days of entry.
Demurrage — The charge a carrier or terminal levies when a container remains inside the port past its allotted free time, accruing daily per container until the box is collected.
Terminal storage charge — The charge a marine terminal operator levies for an import container occupying terminal ground beyond its free dwell time, set out in the terminal's published scale of rates and identical for every importer at that terminal, as distinct from the carrier's demurrage.
Container Freight Station — A customs area outside the port where import containers are taken for de-stuffing, examination and clearance. In India its operator is a Customs Cargo Service Provider under the Handling of Cargo in Customs Areas Regulations 2009 and must publish its schedule of charges.
Bill of Entry — The customs declaration an importer files to clear imported goods in India, filed electronically on ICEGATE, normally by the CHA, and required before the goods can be assessed, duty paid and the cargo released.