Remote Judgments

Recently I saw a judgment recovery specialist's web site, where he bragged that he takes every judgment - local, state, federal, tribal, overseas, and galactic. This judgment enforcer was not a lawyer, didn't work for a collection company, and he had a home office. I think no one individual has any reason to look for judgments not on earth. Certain inexperienced judgment enforcers and collection attorneys take judgments very distant from them, and then discover they should have stuck to recovering judgments close to them.

This article is my opinion and is not, legal advice. I'm a judgment broker, and not an attorney. If you ever need legal advice or a strategy to use, please contact an attorney. When enforcing judgments, there are three reasons to just recover judgments close to you:

1) You get familiar with the court clerks, process servers, judges, and Sheriffs. Even though it shouldn't matter, the more you know them, the smoother things will go for you inside their courts or offices.

2) You will have better opportunities to track the debtor, will save costs and travel time, and it will be easier to schedule and go to debtor examinations.

3) Each state and county is unique, and there's differences in each county Sheriff and court system, that make local judgment enforcement important.

There isn't any need to be local if recording liens, because lien recordings may be accomplished by mailing documents. Alternatively, attachment judgment collection tactics will probably require at least occasional appearances. Some examples are wage garnishments, bank levies, oppositions to exemption or third party claims; or perhaps contesting bankruptcy filings, especially when judgment debtors have hidden some of their assets.

With some judgment recovery circumstances, remote recovery attempts might make sense if the court allows appearance over the phone, or when you are willing to hire a lawyer to appear for you. Of course when the judgment is big and the debtor owns a bunch of available assets, you might decide to travel, and pay for a hotel close to the debtor's court if required.

Some judgment recovery specialists only accept "slam dunk" judgments where the debtors are rich and most likely won't fight levy attempts. In this situation, they may accept judgments that are distant. Unfortunately, that means they refuse almost every judgment. Judgment recovery specialists might want to think about referring judgments they do not want, to a nationwide judgment broker.

Recovering a far away judgment can be attractive when it is big enough to justify the cost of having to travel, or paying a lawyer to appear for you. It all depends on the risk/reward ratio. When you have plenty of cash, this can make sense. When you can't travel, don't take distant judgments. The biggest reasons to work just judgments locally is to increase the chances for successful judgment recoveries, and reduce your costs.

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