subject: Why Judgment Enforcers Make No Progress [print this page] I am not an attorney, I am a judgment and debt referral expert (Judgment and Collection Agency Broker). This article is my opinion, based on my experience in California, and laws are different in every state. If you need legal advice or a strategy to use, please contact a lawyer.
You located, or were referred to, a professional judgment recovery specialist, collection agency, or a contingency collections lawyer. They were highly recommended to you, yet they have not made any progress on recovering your judgment in a month.
You gave the judgment enforcer valuable information like where the judgment debtor worked, and the debtor's banking information. However, the "recovery expert" still has not collected any of your money. How could they not make any real progress when they have worked on your judgment for a month?
It has been almost a month, and when you asked them what they were doing with your judgment, they told you there was already a prior levy to theirs, so their wage levy attempt didn't succeed. Or, that they are waiting for the sheriff to serve a levy. Or, that they still are hunting for assets. They say they are professionals, so why are they are not clever enough to get around such small roadblocks and force my judgment debtor to pay?
These kinds of questions hint that you don't know the realities of enforcing judgments. It sometimes takes a month for a sheriff to have time to perform a levy, or for a court to approve a form, and anything may happen to prevent or delay success when trying to enforce a judgment.
It's rare for any procedure to recover a judgment to provide a cash payout within one month. It can take that long simply to get a filed assignment of judgment or other documents back from a court. Often, a demand letter is sent if required by law, or where there are any doubts about having identified the correct judgment debtor. Often there is a 30 day waiting period for the debtor to contest a debt, even a judgment debt.
Yes, I know, a judgment is not just a debt, and perhaps your judgment was not even related to a consumer debt. However, the FCRA and FDCPA laws are so strong, that some recovery specialists follow them out of habit. Many also follow 30 day waiting periods by habit, and perhaps they are being a bit over-cautious. The laws protecting debtors are so strong, some believe that it is best to stay too cautious, than not sufficiently cautious.
There is much more expense, work, research, and waiting, than most people know about in judgment enforcement. Even when waiting for 30 days, many recovery specialists are looking for assets or recording liens. Among the several situations that can prevent a judgment from being recovered, there are 4 additional situations that can greatly slow down a judgment recovery.
1) A poor debtor - no recovery specialist can recover what is not there.
2) Slow courts and civil sheriffs - are downsizing like crazy and delaying response more than in the past.
3) Discovering available assets can take some time. Private Investigator reports sometimes takes weeks or longer, judgment debtor and third-party exams can take months, or years when judgment debtors and third parties are particularly stubborn or hard to serve.
4) debtors who don't care about anything may slow recovery down, as only legal methods may be used to enforce judgments. Some judgment debtors don't care if their driving license gets suspended, if there are civil warrants for their arrest, liens on their upside down property, or that a judgment shows up on their credit report. When served, some debtors do not care or show up at court, and in many places, contempt of civil court results in no repercussions for judgment debtors.
Many times, judgment owners that require assistance enforcing their judgment have previously tried to collect it themselves first. You might have already attempted to garnish the debtor's wages and bank account, and spent lots of time and money with little or no result. Don't be shocked if a judgment recovery specialist later tries the same actions, and again gets very little results, because there are not many cost-effective tools one can use to recover a judgment.
Most (especially screened) judgment enforcers are very good, with a long term record of recovering judgments. The problem is usually, you have a tough debtor. Judgment enforcers are not magicians, they can only use legal tactics to enforce judgments, and sometimes re-trying steps you already took, cannot be avoided.
If there is a previous ongoing wage levy in place before your levy attempt, your levy cannot attach. When a debtor doesn't care if their license is suspended, what could be done? If you catch them driving without their license and report that to a police officer, and even if the judgment debtor gets in trouble, that will not help get you get repaid faster.
When a debtor has no available assets showing, the best judgment enforcer in the world usually will not make progress, especially with small judgments when the judgment debtor is down on their luck, poor, does not care, or hides their assets.
If you get your judgment back from the judgment recovery specialist (the judgment is re-assigned back to you), it is unlikely you, or another judgment recovery specialist, could recover your judgment any faster. Judgment enforcers only get paid if they recover your money, so often the problem is your judgment debtor.
