Page 122 - Judgment Enforce Course_Neat
P. 122
Judgment Enforcement – The Step-by-Step Course
5. Divorce Records!
This is #5 on this list, but it could also be #1. Divorce records are a veritable freakin’
goldmine. If your debtor is divorced, he’s already been run through the mill by his spouse
and his spouse’s attorney. Everything he got to keep in the divorce will be in the records at
the divorce court. All the other assets will likely be laid out too. It takes only a little bit of
work to get the divorce records. I’ve done it a lot, especially in large cases where someone
is trying to hide their assets.
A Peter Story: I was given a $300,000 judgment against a
well-known professional athlete whose vehicle had been
involved in a terrible accident. But the judgment was old and
the guy claimed it was somebody else on the vehicle’s
registration. He had never even appeared in court.
To make things more difficult, his name was a common one
and he said he had never actually lived at the address shown on
the registration. “He kept saying – It’s not me, It’s not me, and I
never lived at that address!”
I checked county records, but the property records for the
address on the police report were somehow missing!
I thought the guy was going to get out of paying this
judgment, but then I went to Family Court and pulled his
divorce records. Besides revealing a ton of assets, in his divorce
the JD acknowledged the property was his, and that his soon-to- Though
be-ex-wife was getting the property. not the
whole
300K
I had him. He got caught in his own lie. And I collected on the
judgment.
6. Bankruptcy Records
A lot of JD’s have filed for bankruptcy before. Some even do it habitually and then drop
out of the proceedings after the creditors are notified and stop going after them. The
bankruptcy petition will have lots of good information for you. It may reveal property,
vehicles, bank accounts, boats, watches, and more.
You can pull the debtor’s bankruptcy records from the comfort of your computer chair.
Go to https://www.pacer.gov/ . You’ll have to fool around with it to figure out how to use
122 | P a g e