Deferred Court Costs, Net

The Company pursues legal collections using a network of attorneys that specialize in collection matters and through its internal legal channel. The Company generally pursues collections through legal means only when it believes a consumer has sufficient assets to repay their indebtedness but has, to date, been unwilling to pay. In order to pursue legal collections the Company is required to pay certain upfront costs to the applicable courts that are recoverable from the consumer (“Deferred Court Costs”).

The Company capitalizes Deferred Court Costs in its consolidated financial statements and provides a reserve for those costs that it believes will ultimately be uncollectible. The Company determines the reserve based on an estimated court cost recovery rate established based on its analysis of historical court costs recovery data. The Company estimates deferral periods for Deferred Court Costs based on jurisdiction and nature of litigation and writes off any Deferred Court Costs not recovered within the respective deferral period. Collections received from debtors are first applied against related court costs with the balance applied to the debtors’ account balance.

Deferred Court Costs for the deferral period consist of the following as of the dates presented (in thousands):



	December 31, 2018			December 31, 2017
Court costs advanced	$	828,713		$	743,584
Court costs recovered	(336,335		)	(299,606		)
Court costs reserve	(396,460		)	(364,015		)
Deferred court costs	$	95,918		$	79,963

A roll forward of the Company’s court cost reserve is as follows (in thousands):



	December 31, 2018			December 31, 2017			December 31, 2016
Balance at beginning of period	$	(364,015	)	$	(327,926	)	$	(318,784	)
Provision for court costs	(90,026		)	(82,702		)	(67,850		)
Net down of reserve after deferral period	53,383			50,743			53,527
Effect of foreign currency translation	4,198			(4,130		)	5,181
Balance at end of period	$	(396,460	)	$	(364,015	)	$	(327,926	)