Eliminating A Judgment

What should you do if you are a judgment debtor? One obvious choice is to pay the judgment owner the total amount owed. What if one cannot afford to pay the full amount to satisfy the judgment?

Every judgment is actually a judgment condition. Some of the parameters include which state a judgment is lodged in, where you live now, the assets you have, who your judgment owner is, and the creditor's situation and attitude.

The first judgment stopper is bankruptcy. Filing for bankruptcy protection invalidates most (however not all) judgments. When you are considering filing for bankruptcy protection, ask a BK lawyer first, to verify if going bankrupt will likely cancel the judgment(s) you owe on.

Certain judgment debtors only caution that they will file for BK protection, to convince their judgment owner to go away, or to settle for pennies on the dollar. Making fake bankruptcy threats is not reliable, because many creditors use PACER to check BK situations, and will not be fooled for long by false claims of filing for bankruptcy.

Assuming you can't, or do not wish to file for BK protection, a low effort way to get rid of a judgment is to at least temporarily, wait. Some creditors don't try to recover their judgments, or may stop trying; and all judgments eventually expire, unless the judgment owners consistently get them renewed.

If the judgment against you was by default, and you were really not properly served, you might be able to get your judgment vacated. This does not always work, and even when it does, the original creditor can easily sue you once again. If they do, you will not be able to claim you were not properly served.

Judgment recovery and settling a judgment, is like a strategy game. If you don't have any non-exempt income or assets, there is not much a creditor can do (that makes sense) to try to enforce a judgment against you. When you have many assets and income, the creditor has an infinitely better bargaining position.

One could attempt to compromise with the judgment creditor. Most judgment owners will probably need to give up fifty percent, to have their judgment recovered, so maybe settling for 50% seems fair.

Certain judgment owners place their principles above common sense, and a few believe that judgments are warranted. They will never compromise for even a dollar less than the maximum theoretical amount, including interest and costs. Many times, those beliefs increase the chances a creditor may never get paid.

Surprisingly, even if a judgment is near expiration, or the debtor has no ability to pay the judgment, some creditors still won't compromise, as they retain too many bad feelings.

Particularly when your creditor is still angry, one idea might be to contact a judgment broker. They will locate the right judgment enforcer to attempt to buy your judgment from the creditor. The goal is to save money paying off the judgment against you. This does not always work. When it works, it only will work if your judgment owner is a small company or a person.

Credit cards, big companies, banks, and collection agencies; almost never will deal with 3rd-parties wanting to buy one of their judgments. When you want to compromise, you will always have to try with them, or their lawyer or collection agency.

When the creditor is a person or a small company, a judgment broker or recovery specialist may be able to help in some cases. As an example, if a debtor politely contacted the judgment owner, and a judgment owner's feelings thwarted an agreement.

A judgment recovery specialist can be a judgment buyer, and might be able to make an offer to purchase the judgment owner's judgment for a sharp discount. This is not easy, and sometimes the same creditor that previously told you "no", might say yes to a third-party judgment buyer.

When one make an agreement with a judgment buyer, and they are able to make a purchase from the original judgment owner, it may satisfy your judgment with a discount for you. When the judgment enforcer makes their profit and you save a lot, this might happen.

When you pay off a judgment, be sure to ask for court-stamped satisfaction of judgment. Be aware this does not happen instantaneously, because the satisfaction is a document that must be calculated and filled out, notarized, and filed and stamped by the original court.

Once you get your satisfaction of judgment, you may file a certified copy of it with the county recorder, or show a copy of the satisfaction to a credit reporting agency, or to anyone else that requires proof that you paid off the judgment.

http://www.JudgmentBuy.com - Judgment Enforcement. Referring Judgments Nationwide. The easiest, best, and fastest way to be the most money for your judgment. Mark Shapiro, an expert on judgments. I pay for leads, and have the best no obligation free judgment referral leads for collection agencies, enforcers, and contingency collection lawyers.

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