A post I was recently reading mentioned a collection agency searching property records on behalf of a client attempting to collect a money judgment. The information in the post was information with which I am pretty familiar. Still, reading it reminded me of the link between judgment enforcement and property searches.
That link starts with civil litigation. In civil court, judges and juries do not render verdicts. Instead, they render decisions of liability, legal rights and responsibilities, etc. Their decisions are known as judgments. Furthermore, judgments have to be enforced.
When Money Is Awarded
When money is awarded in a civil court case, the resulting judgment is known as a money judgment. Enforcement of that judgment boils down to collection. A typical debt collection case is the perfect example.
Consider a utility provider suing a homeowner over an outstanding bill. Assume the utility provider wins, resulting in a monetary award ordered by the court. That award includes the amount past due, plus legal fees and any applicable interest and penalties. Enforcing the judgment would involve collecting the entire sum from the homeowner.
Enforcement Left Up to the Creditor
Enforcement is one of the things that differs considerably between civil and criminal proceedings. In a criminal case, a court enforces a guilty verdict by imposing a sentence. But in civil cases, courts are only involved in enforcement efforts indirectly. Enforcement is largely left up to judgment creditors.
It is the judgment creditor’s responsibility to collect the outstanding debt. Whenever possible, creditors work with debtors to come up with some sort of amicable payment plan. But when debtors do not cooperate, creditors need to look at other ways to collect. That is where the property search comes into play.
Leveraging Property to Pay
A court will get involved on a limited basis when judgment debtors fail to pay. One of the ways they do so is issuing writs of execution against debtor property. Imagine you are a judgment creditor trying to collect from a debtor who has no intention of paying their bill. You could obtain a writ of execution against a piece of real estate he owns.
How would you learn about that real estate? By conducting a property search. Believe it or not, property searches are easy to conduct if you know what you’re doing and where to look.
All Sorts of Available Records
Judgment Collectors is a Utah collection agency located in Salt Lake City. Collecting outstanding judgments is their specialty. They say that running property searches is fairly simple, at least in principle, because there are so many different types of records they can look at.
The starting place is county property transaction records. Counties are required by law to publish information about every real estate transaction. All that information now is available online. So if a debtor buys or sells a piece of property while he still owes money on a judgment, a collection agency will know about it.
Property tax records are also quite helpful. They reveal property a debtor owns but has failed to disclose. Such records are especially helpful because they tell a collection agency exactly how much a property is worth.
Property Searches Are Leverage
Property searches are extremely valuable to judgment creditors because they represent leverage. Find a piece of property that the judgment debtor doesn’t want to lose and you have an advantage in getting him to pay up.
It is no wonder agencies like Judgment Collectors place so much emphasis on property searches. Their success as agents working on behalf of judgment creditors depends on it.