Naming The Right Debtor
I'm not a lawyer, I am a judgment referral expert. This article is my opinion, and is not legal advice, based on my experiences in California. If you ever need a strategy to use or legal advice, please contact an attorney.
Before a judgment can be sold, or anything can get recovered on judgments, it's very important to precisely identify your debtor.
It is critical to know precisely whom your judgment debtor is, and what possible assets they might have, prior to trying to start a lawsuit or to collect judgments. After that, one must learn and be for sure that the judgment is correct and effective.
Judgments may be flawed, making them very difficult to collect. There may be substantial matters to resolve, before a judgment can be collected. It is absolutely necessary to determine whether or not the judgment is enforceable.
The first issue is, who is named on your lawsuit which later turned into a judgment? Only entities or persons precisely listed inside the body of the judgment will owe money. You cannot rely on the captions, the shortened names shown near the upper part of the first page of the judgment. Judgments specify precisely whom owes the money and what they owe, only within their body.
Many lawsuits do not name the entity or person that owes money correctly or specifically enough. More than a few lawsuits create judgments that can never get enforced.
Common mistakes with lawsuits are not paying enough attention to a company's DBA or corporate status, not correctly spelling people's names, or not investigating the defendants enough prior to suing them. Also, proof of service becomes very important. An incorrect name, or a defective proof of service, can cause the judgment set aside (vacated).
As a judgment referral expert, I process countless judgments. I've read a couple of judgments that showed the defendant's date of birth, age, partial social security number, and a current address, in the judgment's body. That is really awesome, I wish all judgments showed all that info.
Too many times, judgments against judgment debtors having common names end up worthless. If you sue Mr. Dan Debtor, that seems to live at 456 Scammer's Street, there might be potential difficulties.
What if your judgment debtor's Dad, Son, Grandfather, and Uncle, all use exactly same name? What if your debtor's name is very popular, and he was only visiting where he got served notice of the lawsuit? What if he never lived, paid bills, or paid rent, from that address?
What if you won a default judgment? Suddenly, you may not be certain which Mr. Dan Debtor owes you the money. It may be a headache to do examinations, levies, or garnishments, as it will be so easy for a Dan Debtor to claim "it's not me, it's my...".
In that default judgment situation, it's smart to serve people first, to get them into court, to iron out the "is this the correct debtor?" issue, prior to spending money and time, searching for assets of the wrong individual; or hiring a Sheriff to possibly levy the wrong person's assets.
Always be sure to identify and name the correct person or entity in any lawsuit, and if you are trying to collect your judgment. There should never be any confusion on exactly who is, your judgment debtor.
About the Author
http://www.JudgmentBuy.com - Judgment Enforcement. Nationwide free judgment referrals. The easiest, fastest, and best way to get the most money for your judgment. Mark Shapiro, the free judgment matchmaker. We pay for judgment leads, and have the best quality free judgment referral leads for enforcers, collection agencies and contingency collection attorneys.
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