Follow Up On Assignments Of Judgment
It is important to stay on top of who owns your judgment. Whoever is the original judgment owner, or the assignee of record for a judgment, has the right to attempt to enforce the judgment themselves or pick another enforcement option. When a debtor has available assets, an unrecorded assignment of judgment shouldn't be left dangling.
If your judgment debtor has successfully discharged your judgment with a bankruptcy filing, or has kicked the bucket, or moved out of the country, or is chronically broke without any chance of inheriting anything; then it probably doesn't matter when there's a dangling judgment assignment. However, what if your judgment debtor has, or might get some assets in the future?
A worst case scenario would begin when you notarized and sent your assignment of judgment to a judgment recovery specialist who then flaked. For example, they cancelled their PO box, changed their phone, and did not file the assignment to them with your court.
Later, you decided to either attempt to recover the judgment yourself, have a lawyer try to recover your judgment, or assign your judgment to some other person. There's is a tiny possibility that your previously incompetent judgment recovery specialist, could decide to file the old assignment at the court; and then that incompetent enforcer would then own the judgment, and be the only one that could collect money from the judgment.
The chance of that above scenario happening to you are usually tiny. However, the larger the judgment is, and the larger the assets your debtor wins, earns, or inherits, the larger possibility that a dangling assignment of judgment might quickly get filed. My articles are my opinions and are not, legal advice. I'm a judgment referral expert, and not a lawyer. When you ever want a strategy to use or legal advice, please contact an attorney.
What if you are in that kind of circumstance, where you previously assigned your judgment, and that assignment was never filed with the court. How might you fix this? One simple way is to assign the judgment to another person, because the first assignment recorded at your court wins. Another easy way, if you can locate the formerly flaky enforcer, is to get your original copy of your notarized assignment, from the previous enforcer.
What if you cannot get the previous assignment of judgment returned to you, and do not want to once more assign your judgment? This gets trickier then, because as far as I know, there is not any such thing as a "declaration to never let my judgment get assigned" which you might file at the court. One solution is to get your judgment collected (by yourself, with a lawyer, or another recovery solution) as quickly as reality allows, maybe settling with the debtor. Once a judgment is satisfied, it does not matter who owns the satisfied judgment.
Courts do a lot of things right, and occasionally get things wrong. I have heard that some courts accept assignments which were not notarized, which isn't right. Notarizing an assignment gives it more power. There can be several judgment assignees, yet there can be only one assignee of record at a time.
In California, civil code of procedure (CCP), section 673 specifies an assignee of record needs to file with the court, an acknowledgment of assignment of the judgment. The acknowledgment needs to be made in the manner of an acknowledgment of a conveyance of real property, which means that an acknowledgment of assignment of judgment needs to be signed in the presence of a notary public, with a California all-purpose acknowledgment or the equivalent.
California Civil Code sections 945 and 945.5, specify how such assignments occur, and other statutes indicate the "first in time, first in right" principle. The filing of an acknowledgment of assignment isn't required in order to create a valid transfer of the interest in the judgment. However, the filing of an acknowledgment of assignment of judgment gives the entity who first files it, priority over any other potential assignees.
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Please visit the constantly improving site: http://www.JudgmentBuy.com - Judgment Enforcement. The free, easiest, fastest, smartest, and best way to recover your judgment money nationwide for 33% or less, worldwide for 50% (Mark D. Shapiro)
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