Judgment Enforcement Obstacles

I am not a lawyer, I am a Judgment and Collection Broker. This article is my opinion, based on my California experiences, and laws vary in every state. If you want legal advice or a strategy to use, please contact a lawyer.

Judgments cannot be guaranteed, they are only chances for getting some cash in the future. When our economy was great, a judgment was sometimes a document that resulting in money. Now, they are just a chance of being paid some money.

In the best situation, your debtor is wealthy and will repay your judgment after a single polite reminder. That's not the case 99% of the time. Most of the time, judgments are never enforced. When they get recovered, it is a very slow process that often involves compromise, and partial recoveries more often than full satisfactions.

Here are the top 10 reasons many judgments are never recovered:

1. The judgment debtor could file for bankruptcy protection. Once a judgment debtor files for bankruptcy protection, all creditors have to stop all collection activities, at least until they later get written permission from the bankruptcy court. While there are exceptions, usually, bankruptcy kills judgments.

2. The judgment debtor can die. While it's possible to show the judgment to the executor of the dead person's estate, if there are no assets left, you won't get paid. Most often, one either gets nothing or have to settle for a portion of what is owed.

3. The judgment debtor can , or be poor. When one sues a debtor with a fake name, or when the judgment debtor is a professional fraud that keeps all their assets in names that cannot be linked to them, or is really poor, most of the time, that means a judgment against them cannot be enforced.

4. The debtor can move. It is not cheap or easy to domesticate judgments in another state. Several states make it very hard for creditors, Florida being one of the worst. Some states thwart judgment enforcement with laws that specify that small claim cases may not be assigned, or you have to be a lawyer to recover any judgment, even a $100 one.

5. The judgment debtor can become sick or get hurt. Social security (and disability) income can't be reached by creditors, and disabled debtors often lose their ability to earn income.

6. The judgment debtor could file a claim of extension. Each State has exemptions for a debtor's personal property. If the debtor files a claim of extension, you must appear at the hearing. If you do not show up, the judgment debtor wins.

7. The debtor can vacate the judgment. Especially with default judgments, requesting the court to vacate a judgment is cheap and easy. The judgment debtor may not win, however if the creditor don't show up, the debtor wins.

8. The judgment debtor could claim "it's not me". Especially if the debtor has a really common name, or grandpa, dad, and son, all have the exact same name; it can become difficult to enforce a judgment. It might take too much money and time to prove who is the actual debtor.

9. The judgment debtor could retain a lawyer. Some judgment debtors would rather spend $10,000 on attorneys, than pay $4,000 to satisfy a judgment against them.

10. The debtor can have many previous liens and judgments. When a debtor has a string of judgments against them already, many judgment recovery specialists will not even try to recover a judgment against the debtor. This is not always fair,as the first one that recovers the judgment wins, even if there are 30 other unsatisfied judgments against the judgment debtor.

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