If you have a judgment, it usually means you've "won" your case and that the defendant can longer contest that they owe you the money. It also means you can now enlist the "aide of the court" in enforcing the judgment. The important thing to know is that obtaining a judgment is just the first step; they do not enforce themselves.

There are a variety of considerations that go into enforcing your judgement, but for the purposes of this FAQ we'll go over the variety of choices availiable to most people after obtaining a judgment.

+ Garnishment?

If you have your debtor's financial information (where they work, where they bank..etc), a Garnishment is often a good place to start for getting your money back. The benefit of a Garnishment is that they are quick and provided there are assets to be had, its fairly easy to get them.

A Garnishment is in essence a separate lawsuit; the garnishee can contest whether it owes the judgment debtor anything but at the same time you as a judgmenet creditor are entitled to discovery and a full trial against garnishee to determine how much they actually owe to the Judgment Creditor. This is usually unneccessary in Bank Garnishments but may be needed when garnishing an accounts receivable or other assets.

Garnishments can come in various forms. You can Garnish a debtors bank, their wages, or their accounts receiveable. Each of these have their own advantages.

• Bank Garnishments depend largely on having good knowledge of yoru debtor's banking habits; you can get this from either a credit application or a check receivied

• Wage garnishments depend also on your knowledge of where the debtor works. These are useful as well, though more limited in the amount you receive, due to protections afforded to the debtors.

• If you are aware of where your debtor does business or where your debtor has pending projects, a garnishemnts on your debtor's accounts receivable is an excellent way of getting your money back or creating a form of leverage for your debtor to make a deal.

Garnishment procedures vary from state to state, but will generally require filing specific forms with the Court, waiting a specified period of time for the Garnishment to beocme "returnable" or for an answer to be reiceved by the entity you are seeking money from.

+Domesticating your judgment and Docketing in other jurisdictions?

Another useful tool is domesticating your judgment in another state. Sometimes, getting a judgment in your own state isn't sufficent, either because the debtor has cleverly moved their assets away elsewhere or owns property elsewhere.

Essentially what domesticating a judgment involves taking the final judgment you obtained in your home state and filing it with the court of another state and jurisidiction where you believe the debtor may have assets hidden. Mostly this involves a bit of paperwork, but much like Garnishments, its a fairly straightforward process.

The benefits of doing this is that the judgment becomes a lien on all real estate owned by the debtor in that particular county. Once domesticated, the judgment works a lot like a mortgage and continues to accrue interest at the legal rate of interest (or the rate at which you obtained your judgment at.

Similarly, "Docketing" a judgment involves much of the same process. A judgment is generally county specific, so in order to apply it to another county you have to "docket" it, which essentially

Keep in mind that judgments aren't "infinite" they will usually expire after a certain period of time, so its important to keep in mind your own jurisdictions time limits. In Virginia, that time limit is 20 years before you need to renew and in Maryland it is about 12 years.

+ Levy

A Levy is another tool you can use to attach a judgment lien to tangible property. However, these are generally a less effective method of collecting on your judgment. This is mainly due to the fact that most tangible personal property will either have little value or in the event it does have value, it will be subject to prior liens. Even "free and clear" personal property will tends to be old, and with little to no foreclosure value.

So why is it less effective? Surely something is better than nothing right? Certainly, one may think that, however, the problem arises from the expense of a a levy action. Generally, the procedure to levy tends to be involved and expensive; you must advertise the property for sale, pay the sherriff's fee, and post the required bond.

There are still ways to utilze the initial levy process without spending more than you are owed. You can have the sheriff "list and leave" the property, which, as you can tell by its name is when the sheriff literally makes a list of the items on the premises, tags them, and leaves it where it was. Usually, the sheer embarrasment of having everyone witness the sheriff come in, list, and tag propety during business hours, prompts the debtor to pay.

+ Other Options

Debtors Interrogatories

Debtor's interrogatories are usually a method of getting information from your Debtor so that you can use one of the other methods outlined above.

The main purpose of debtors interrogatories is to get information regarding assets that you as a creditor have no knowledge regarding. You are essentially summoning the debtor to appear, under oath, and answer questions and/or produce documents.

However, debtors interrogatories suffer from the opposite problem of the other methods of enforcement; its usually a bad sign if your debtor does show up for debtor's interrogatories, since that means they're able to tell the truth and report that they have no assets. The other problem with debtor's interrogatories is that the debtor gets plenty of notice, which means they have plenty of time to hide their assets or move their money around.