Disputing demurrage and detention invoices

A demurrage or detention invoice can look final, but in the United States the way these charges are billed is regulated, and the rules give the billed party real grounds to question them. An invoice that arrives too late, or that leaves out information it is required to contain, may not be one you simply have to pay. Knowing the timing and content rules turns a D&D bill from something that happens to you into something you can scrutinise.

This guide explains the main pillars of the US billing rules, flags a recent change that has shifted what is and is not in force, and sets out the practical habit, keeping clean records, that lets you act on any grounds you find. It is US-specific; other countries regulate these charges differently or barely at all. It is general information, not legal advice, so confirm your own position before relying on it.

Where the rules come from

The Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022, usually shortened to OSRA 2022, directed the US Federal Maritime Commission, the FMC, to write rules governing how demurrage and detention are billed. The result is a billing rule whose main provisions took effect on 28 May 2024.

The rule does not abolish these charges or cap their amount. What it does is set out how a charge must be billed: who issues the invoice, how quickly, what it must say, and how long the billed party has to push back. Those procedural requirements are the levers you can pull. If a charge is billed in a way that breaks the rule, the rule itself may relieve you of the obligation to pay it or give you a structured route to seek relief.

The timing pillars

Two deadlines sit at the centre of the rule, and both are measured in calendar days, not business days.

• Issuance. An ocean carrier or marine terminal operator must issue a demurrage or detention invoice within 30 calendar days of when the charges were last incurred. A party that then passes a charge on, such as a non-vessel-operating common carrier (an NVOCC), generally gets its own 30-day window running from when it received its invoice. Note this is 30 days, not 60; an invoice that turns up months after the fact may have missed the window.
• Disputing. The billed party gets at least 30 calendar days from the invoice issuance to request a fee mitigation, refund or waiver. Read "at least" literally: it is a regulatory minimum, not a fixed cap, and an NVOCC may get an additional window to pass charges through.

So the first two questions to ask of any D&D invoice are simple: did it arrive within the issuance deadline, and are you still inside the window to dispute it?

The required-information test

The rule also says a D&D invoice must contain specific required details, the information a billed party would need to understand and check the charge. This is where many invoices fall down.

The important point is the consequence of getting it wrong: if a required field is missing, the obligation to pay that charge can be eliminated. An incomplete invoice is not merely untidy; under the rule an omission can void the charge it relates to. You do not need to memorise every required field to make use of this, and you should not treat any informal checklist as gospel. The practical move is to read the invoice against what the rule requires and note anything absent, because each omission is potentially a ground to dispute.

What changed recently

One part of the original rule has fallen away, and it matters for what you can and cannot claim. The rule had limited which parties could be billed for demurrage and detention. That billed-party provision was vacated by a September 2025 US federal appeals-court ruling and then formally removed by the FMC in December 2025.

The upshot: you should not rely on a claim that a D&D invoice may only be billed to the contracting party or consignee, because that restriction is no longer in force. Be careful with older guidance and templates that still assert it. The pillars that do still stand are the ones above, the 30-day issuance deadline, the dispute window of at least 30 days, and the required-information requirements whose omission can void a charge. Build any challenge on those, not on the vacated billed-party rule.

How Altery fits

Disputing a D&D charge is ultimately about evidence and timing, and Altery does not run disputes, interpret the FMC rules or give legal advice. What it can do is keep the financial records behind a dispute clean and keep contested money where it belongs while the question is settled.

Every payment you make through Altery produces a clear, timestamped, categorised record, the kind of audit-ready transaction history that supports a challenge to a late or incomplete invoice and makes reconciling what you actually paid against what you were billed far less painful. If you operate through several entities, multi-entity management keeps each one's D&D payments and balances separate, so the trail for any given move is easy to follow. And where a charge is contested, you can hold the disputed amount in a ring-fenced reserve rather than letting it sit in operating cash, so the money is set aside pending resolution without being treated as spent.

Altery is not a bank, and this guide is general information, not advice. Use the rules to decide whether you have grounds, keep the records that support your case, and confirm the specifics, and any legal questions, with a qualified adviser.

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