The document by which a claimant acknowledges payment and gives up any later claim, often signed before the loss has stabilized.
A discharge receipt records payment and, in its usual wording, carries the claimant's waiver of any later claim arising from the same loss. It often serves a second, subrogative function, by which the claimant expressly transfers to the insurer their rights against the responsible third party, securing the recovery to come. Its danger lies in its date: in property claims, a receipt signed before hidden damage is discovered shuts a door nothing will reopen, and in bodily injury, a receipt signed before medical consolidation freezes compensation on a condition that will go on changing. The protective practice is to sign subject to reservation, naming precisely what remains to be assessed, or to pay only an installment while the harm is unstabilized. The French legislature attached a right of withdrawal to compensation offers made to road accident victims, proof that a claimant's signature is not treated as ordinary consent. The problem solved is the definitive closing of a file, without which no reserve could ever be released.
France's Badinter Act of July 5, 1985 requires an insurer to put an offer of compensation to a road accident victim within eight months, and gives the victim fifteen days to withdraw after accepting. Those two figures frame exactly the weak point of the discharge receipt: the pressure of a quick settlement on someone whose condition has not yet stabilized.
reçu pour solde de tout compte, quittance subrogative