What A UCC Lien Shows

Nearly each day, folks email me their UCC lien, and want to know whether I could find somebody to buy them. (It's hard enough to attempt to find a buyer for the majority of civil judgments.) In my experience, nobody ever buys or sells stand-alone UCC liens.

My articles are my opinions and are not, legal advice. I'm a judgment expert, and not an attorney. If you ever want legal advice or a strategy to use, please contact a lawyer.

You can't become too wealthy, too fit, or remind folks too many times, that UCC liens alone are not judgments. Just about the one way UCC liens are similar to judgments is they must be renewed every so often.

UCC liens get used for recording claims on commercially-related assets, or to passively and weakly lien some personal (non-real property related) assets of people who are debtors.

Even though the UCC lien itself remains the same, there is a huge difference between when a UCC form gets filed pre-judgment (or with no judgment or lawsuit whatsoever), and when that lien references some already existing unpaid civil-judgment.

Alone, with no other legal actions taken; UCC liens are just a piece of paper. One can't get a Sheriff to levy anything with only a UCC lien. Getting your UCC signed by a judge and notarized, still will not make it a real civil judgment.

Without a judgment, or before the-judgment, any UCC is really only a claim. It may get used along with more evidence, to help support some undertaking to eventually get an actual judgment with a lawsuit; if that UCC is backed up with lots of other written evidence, that shows a real debt is owed to you, and your judge agrees.

In most, and probably in all states; you can look for UCCs at the local SOS (Secretary Of State) web site. Usually, SOS websites do not provide the best instructions, although they're easy to figure out eventually. You can search the Secretary Of State (usually over the web, sometimes having to go to the SOS in person) for the name of a person or a company, to quickly see if there's any UCC liens against them. There are alternate ways to find UCCs, they are cheap to research. Don't neglect to also search on Bing or Google for the judgment debtor's name; as that costs nothing, and sometimes leads to possible assets.

Occasionally, searching existing UCC liens can show judgment creditors, and sometimes UCC liens will also show their judgment debtor's assets, for example airplanes, trucks, industrial equipment, etc. If one finds UCC liens on inventory or accounts receivable, this may indicate a company that debtor owns.

Judgment creditors often file their UCCs as a most often minor, however occasionally effective judgment recovery tactic. Eventually, UCC liens occasionally work, and they're relatively easy to get, and very inexpensive. UCCs should always be filed if your judgment debtor owns some going fictitious name of person kind of business. The more precisely a UCC lien specifies the debtor's interests or property(s), the more effective it may become. Judgment debtors often will have several UCC liens and/or judgments against them.

The two more common (especially post-judgment) ways which a UCC can help a creditor, are when the debtor attempts to get financing or a loan (occasionally a UCC will come to someone's attention and will need to be satisfied); or is sometimes in bankruptcy court, to then make it more likely that the creditor will be able to be one of the few secured creditors. Another (very unlikely) way that a UCC really helps, in the case if your judgment debtor wins local lottery.

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