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Judgment Enforcement – The Step-by-Step Course

6. Is this a good judgment for us to get? There’s no way to

know until we investigate the judgment debtor. CAUSE OF
ACTION
More examples of judgments:
The incident or loss that
Turn to Appendix 1 at the back of this course. This is gave rise to the lawsuit and
an example of a typical small claims judgment in the State the judgment:
of California, where judgments are good for 10 years, and 1. Failure to pay back
renewable. Take a minute to look it over. Look at the top to see in loan
which court the judgment was rendered. What is the date of the 2. Auto accident
judgment? What is the amount? Are costs included? Is it against 3. Rent not paid
4. Insurance company
one defendant or two? Does it have the phone number of the wouldn’t pay for
plaintiff who is now the “creditor”? Does it look to you like the the home fire
defendant might have assets? Has the judgment expired? Etc. There’s probably a
million different “causes of
Turn to Appendix 2. This is a medium-size judgment, action.”

about 32K. Again, locate the court, the date of the
judgment, the amount, and so on. This is a well-written judgment, because it really details
the decision of the court.

Turn to Appendix 3. This is a Wisconsin Judgment, and it’s quite sizeable,

which may be good or bad. Sometimes smaller and medium-sized judgments are the
best. Again, look at the particulars on this judgment. Did the defendant show up? Or is it
by default? Note that the judgment amount is actually handwritten. Sometimes judgments
can be quite informal. (Note: See 2 more sample judgments on the Forum under “Peter’s
Course Files” #13 and #14.)

80% aren’t enforced? Is that really true?

Have you heard that nearly 80% of judgments are never collected at all? Well, yes, it is
true. Why are they never collected? In many cases the judgment debtor (the JD) is
banking on the probability that the creditor won’t know what to do with the judgment, and
will probably give up after a while, and go away.
80%? Yes, it’s true, but judgment, and not able to pay the money right
remember that there’s a then. However, things can change. A year or so

good reason why so few later, when a Judgment Enforcer takes over the
are enforced. judgment, the JD may well have the money to

pay. But the creditor has no way of knowing that.
In other cases, the JD may simply be angry at the creditor, and refuse to pay. Or, let's face

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