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Eight Tips for Enforcing Judgments

Successful judgment enforcement can be fraught with obstacles in addition to the judgment debtor’s inability to satisfy the judgment. To help minimize some of those other obstacles, consider the following tips to avoid traps for the unwary.

Tip #1 - Ensure the judgment correctly identifies the name of the judgment debtor.

Your judgment is only enforceable against the judgment debtor named in the judgment. Accordingly, before judgment is entered, ensure you have correctly identified the name of the judgment debtor, particularly where the judgment debtor is an entity. Otherwise, you may find that the judgment debtor can successfully evade enforcement efforts by establishing the assets you have attempted to levy, are owned by another entity not correctly named in the judgment.

Tip #2 - Ensure your underlying complaint and judgment names all persons and entities liable to you.

It stands to reason, the more judgment debtors named in the judgment, the better your chances of successfully enforcing the judgment. Therefore, at the time of preparing the underlying complaint, or earlier at the time the debt is initially incurred, ensure you name as defendants all persons or entities responsible for payment of the debt, and ensure you obtain as many guaranties of that debt as possible. Also refer to Tip #1.

Tip #3 - Create as many liens as possible following entry of judgment.

Once judgment is entered, creating judgment liens against the judgment debtor’s assets establishes your place in line with all the other creditors chasing your judgment debtor’s assets. Consequently, you want to be as far ahead in line as possible to establish the priority of your judgment against other creditors’ claims. Creating judgment liens accomplishes this goal. Judgment liens are creatures of statute. They are numerous and relatively inexpensive to create. They may also give you priority over earlier claims against your judgment debtor if the creditor failed to create a lien at the time the earlier judgment was entered.

Tip #4 - Develop a strategy for enforcing your judgment.

Face it, debtors don’t want to part with their assets. They will do what they believe they can get away with to avoid losing their assets. Without a strategy for enforcing your judgment against this mindset, your chances of success are slim and none. Enforcing judgments is similar to a cat and mouse game. You’re the predator looking for game consisting of non-exempt assets that can be converted to cash. How you achieve that goal is key to whether you will be successful against the debtor trying his best to hide his assets. Experience in enforcing judgments and playing the cat and mouse game with your debtors, will enable you to determine what strategies work best with what type of debtor. Without such experience, you will waste time and effort pursuing false trails.

Tip #5 - Know how to implement your strategy.

Once you decide on the best course of action for enforcing your judgment against this judgment debtor, you must know how to implement that strategy. Whether through execution on assets or other post judgment remedies through the courts, you will need to be knowledgeable in what actions must be taken, when and with whom, in order to efficiently and expeditiously, implement your enforcement strategy. Again, experience with the process is key.

Tip #6 - Don’t expect the court or the levying officers to be overly cooperative.

Judgment creditors often assume that once they obtain a judgment from court after a hard-fought victory, the court and levying officers will be ready and willing to assist in enforcing that judgment. It can be a rude awakening to find out that is far from reality. Judges are most knowledgeable in prejudgment proceedings. It is not uncommon to find judges unfamiliar with post judgment remedies. Accordingly, you may be required to educate the judge not only on the facts, but the legal authority relied upon to obtain the post judgment relief sought. Additionally, levying officers are understaffed and fear civil liability from seizing property of the judgment debtor. Consequently, not only must you have all the paperwork properly completed for the levying officer, you may also encounter considerable reluctance or outright refusal from the levying officer to proceed with a proper levy. Thus the key is preparation and attention to detail when requesting court and levying officer assistance.

Tip #7 - Be persistent.

Judgment enforcement is not for the faint of heart. If you aren’t willing to hang in there and keep the pressure on the judgment debtor, you might as well save yourself time and energy and give up before you start. This is true because one of the primary strategies employed by judgment debtors is to make your life as difficult as possible. They do so by hiding assets, lying about the existence or disposition of assets, their sources of income and support and by basically not cooperating with your efforts even through the courts. Judgment debtors believe and sometimes correctly, that such a strategy will wear you down mentally and financially to the point where you give up, or they can negotiate pennies on the dollar satisfaction of your judgment.

Tip #8 - Hire Brigham Law Firm to enforce your judgment

When you get serious about enforcing your judgment, you need an aggressive firm, knowledgeable and experienced in judgment enforcement strategies. Judgment enforcement is a specialized legal field. Most attorneys are knowledgeable when it comes to obtaining the judgment, but not so knowledgeable when it comes to enforcing it. After all, that is the most important aspect of civil litigation. Turning the hard-fought victory into cash. Unless your attorney is well-versed in the legal and practical aspects of enforcing the judgment, the judgment you obtained may turn out to be a worthless piece of paper.

We at the Brigham Law Firm are knowledgeable and experienced in the intricacies of enforcing judgments against sophisticated judgment debtors who do not want to voluntarily pay your judgment. We are trained and experienced investigators and attorneys and we know the strategies employed by judgment debtors and how to counter them. We know what remedies to employ based upon the circumstances of how the judgment debtor has structured his assets and sources of income. We have an extensive network of trained and experienced former FBI Agents who can assist in locating judgment debtors and their assets. Bottom line, we provide debt recovery and judgment enforcement services for serious creditors.

Brigham Law Firm
5000 Birch Street
Suite 3000
Newport Beach, CA 92660
949.260.2081
Email Donald
www.brighamlawfirm.us