philgoddard Oct 30, 2013:

The basic idea is that there is no evidence of any debt before the contract came into force, but I agree that some more context would be helpful.

AllegroTrans Oct 30, 2013:

Yes we really need context - i.e. the whole sentence, each of the sentences before & after it, a brief summary of what the proceedings involve, how many parties there are and which party is pleading this.

Nikki Scott-Despaigne Oct 30, 2013:

I find it hard to read anything into this that might be about a binding obligation of any sort. The original language context is limited to the phrase in which the term appears. Is it possible to post the sentence before and the one after the one you have already given?

Otherwise, then "No debt shall be given/made/undertaken/* before the application**..."

Difficult to be more precise. Further *could be any one of a number of synonyms, the limited context restricts the possibilities of precision. Ditto **.
In other words : "given" may not be suitable for "donnée"; "application" may not be suitable for "application".