The Number One Article On The Truth About Judgments

I am not a lawyer, I am a Judgment Broker. This article is not legal advice, it is my opinion. If you want legal advice or a strategy to use, please contact a lawyer.

With my vast experience, I understand the the cash up-front value for most judgments is now very small. Almost each day, I talk with more than ten judgment owners, and trade emails with at least eleven more.

Far too often, when I break the news to people their judgments are not worth much money up-front, they think I'm wrong.

It's as if they're listening to the facts concerning their judgment, for the first time in their life. Most owners of judgments don't believe the reality about the situation with their judgment.

One can find web sites that boast about buying judgments for "up to 50%", which won't pay even three pennies per dollar for typical judgments.

Some old estimations one can find all over the www, assert that around eighty percent of judgments will never be.

I have worked to recover judgments for around ten years, and have worked as a judgment broker for 3 years. I have very direct experience with thousands of judgments, and have learned this:

In recent history, around ninety-five percent of judgments which are not repaid quickly, never get recovered, at least not for more than ten percent of the amount due.

In my claim that ninety-five percent of judgments never get collected, I'm not including judgments which were dismissed or settled. Some reasons behind the ninety-five percent estimation is:

1) The economic situation is awful, and many people have far less money these days compared to recent history.

Judgments are not the same as cash, and only the judgment debtor can repay a judgment. When the judgment debtor is broke, not much can happen, and the judgment stays nearly worthless.

2) Laws and courts are changing, getting slower, and becoming more expensive. Judgment recovery is slower, more expensive, and occasionally extremely difficult in certain courts.

3) Judgment debtors are much more prone to apply for bankruptcy protection these days. Almost always, bankruptcy destroys judgments.

4) Judgment recovery specialists and buyers of judgments are going out of business faster than ever before.

5) Contingency lawyers, judgment enforcers, and buyers of judgments, have become super picky about what kinds of judgments they will work on.

When a debtor has substantial amounts of available assets, it's easy to sell a judgment, or to find a contingency enforcer. In recent times, now many debtors have even a modest amount of available assets.

For most of the judgments where the debtors have no or few assets; it's as if either few people tell judgment owners the truth, or judgment owners are consistently refusing to believe the truth.

The reality is, it's now extremely difficult to sell a judgment for more than 1-9% of the face value, depending on their debtor.

The average future-payment recovery fee averages 50% if you don't pay or risk anything for a judgment enforcement. If the judgment debtor owns substantial assets, or if you pay all expenses, one might pay a lower future-pay enforcement fee.

The majority of judgment buying and listing sites are now gone. The sole judgment trade/sell/buy business remaining, has few actual sales, as many judgment creditors price their mediocre judgments far more than 5%, so nobody buys them.

It is a shame, that many judgment owners cannot acknowledge the truth about the minimal cash upfront pricing for most judgments. Many contact countless judgment experts.

In my job, I've observed a repeating pattern. For example, a judgment creditor phoned me more than a year ago about a $100,000 judgment, they wanted to sell for $30,000 cash up-front.

I told them that no one pays that high of a percentage, for a cash up-front judgment sale. Also, that he will be much better off with a future-pay collection, where an enforcement expert will pay them about of fifty percent of the amount that is possibly collected.

After that judgment creditor understood me, they said they would pay fifteen percent to have their judgment enforced on a future-pay basis, and not even a dollar more. I told him nobody could do that, and good luck.

What resulted during the following year, was I got judgment leads from approximately 50 judgment experts, from that exact same creditor, who had aggressively and persistently sent and discussed their judgment all over the nation.

About a year after that, the judgment owner phoned me again. He told me that he had contacted about 300 judgment experts over the past year, trying to find a match for his unrealistic conditions.

He still had not found even one enforcer or buyer, for his unrealistic terms. He then asked me did I had any new judgment buyers now, that would pay his price. I said sorry, nobody is going to pay him $30K cash up-front for his judgment.

An irony is, his judgment debtor appeared to own some assets. The 100K judgment creditor, was not any closer to recovering any money for the judgment; and he squandered so much time for others and himself.

Many judgment owners think that with the economy down, judgment enforcers and buyers must contend for their business. This isn't true, as the expense and difficulty of enforcing judgments has dramatically risen. Judgments are never commodity things subject to demand and supply pricing rules.

Most people think one will find a much higher price if they shop a judgment. They're wrong. The truth is a judgment is only worth the amount a buyer pays for it based on their debtor, not for what an alleged buyer brags they might pay "up to".

A judgment sale price, or a fee percentage on a future-pay recovery effort, does not have anything to do with the judgment owner's wishes or needs. It usually doesn't depend on the buyer or enforcer, and almost always depends entirely on the situation of the debtor.

Imagine contacting 300 people and companies for a year, and never learning the problem. The problem is, the creditor was not accepting a truth, that judgments are not cash, and are usually not worth much up-front.

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