How are money judgments enforced?
Get Legal Help Today
Secured with SHA-256 Encryption
|
Written by
Jeffrey Johnson
|
UPDATED: Jul 15, 2021
It’s all about you. We want to help you make the right legal decisions.
We strive to help you make confident insurance and legal decisions. Finding trusted and reliable insurance quotes and legal advice should be easy. This doesn’t influence our content. Our opinions are our own.
Editorial Guidelines: We are a free online resource for anyone interested in learning more about legal topics and insurance. Our goal is to be an objective, third-party resource for everything legal and insurance related. We update our site regularly, and all content is reviewed by experts.
The typical methods employed in enforcing money judgments include:
Voluntary Compliance – Very often a judgment debtor will pay the money owed to a judgment creditor and thus satisfy the money judgment. If the judgment debtor does not pay, the judgment creditor should contact him/her and ask for payment. Sometimes a simple telephone call or a short letter yields results, sometimes a lien or execution is required.
Judgment Lien – A lien is a charge, security or encumbrance on a piece of property. A judgment creditor can place a lien on both the real and personal property of the judgment debtor. When property subject to a lien is sold, either a portion of the proceeds are used to satisfy the outstanding lien or the property is sold subject to the lien.
Execution and Levy– Execution of a money judgment is obtained through a legal process of enforcing the judgment by seizure and subsequent sale of the property owned by a judgment debtor.
Wage Garnishment – a form of execution and levy, a legal process of enforcing a money judgment by directing the employer of a judgment debtor to pay a portion (typically up to 25% for a money judgment or up to 50% pursuant to a order of payment of support) of wages earned by the judgment debtor directly to the judgment creditor.
When a judgment debtor refuses to pay a money judgment, a judgment creditor typically will proceed with both judgment liens and execution to enforce the judgment.