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Recovering judgments usually is strongly affected by the economy. In 2012, the overall economy continues to be weak, and that means that many judgment debtors are now broke. One choice is to scale back or close your judgment recovery business. Choice two is to work more and accept tough judgments, while becoming more hesitant to spend money attempting to recover them. You might also outsource certain judgments, so you can recover judgments further away, even in other states. Judgment brokers help judgment recovery specialists, collection agencies, and collection lawyers because they help reduce judgment shoppers, and brokers screen each judgment owner and debtor (with public data records) for every judgment referral lead. This article is my opinion and is not, legal advice. I'm not a lawyer. If you ever want a strategy to use or legal advice, you should contact a lawyer. In 2012, 99% of judgments are tough. Certain recovery specialists, collection agencies, and contingency lawyers may see this article and laugh, and would say they never accept anything but easy to recover judgments. With our current economy, simple judgments are getting rarer, and you might go a long time without seeing one. If there are realistic expectations, more contingency recovery professionals will probably have to take some B-grade and grade C-D judgments to remain active; being careful not to spend money on hopelessly debtors. Most judgments have poor judgment debtors, and certain judgments have sneaky judgment debtors who have hidden their assets. For either kind of tough judgments, some useful ideas are often the same: 1) Everyone must reduce their expectations. Collection is a long shot, often takes a long time, and a fraction of a recovery can be a success. Just recovering six percent of what's owed can often be considered a win. 2) There is nothing wrong with taking a tough judgment if you don't waste much money with broke judgment debtors. When you have poor judgment debtors, simply verify them every year or so, to see if they come to own some available assets. Difficult judgments shouldn't use up too much time. Over time, some available assets may appear within a group of difficult judgments. How can you enforce judgments with poor debtors? One idea is to check to see if the debtor's parents own real estate. If so, record and keep renewed a real estate lien, that will probably attach if your debtor some day inherits real estate. One more idea is to check annually for jobs judgment debtors may have gotten. In the current stinky economy, I do not recommend looking for judgment debtor's bank accounts, unless you learn that they are earning or receiving income. When your judgment debtor hid their available assets; by definition, that's a difficult judgment. Almost without any exceptions, every judgment owner vastly underestimates how costly and difficult it is to discover and undo fraudulent transfers; and how short the time limit is, to try to undo a fraudulent transfer. For sneaky debtors, you could either: A) Hire PIs and schedule and have served judgment debtor and third-party exams and document requests, to deeply explore, and attempt and discover their assets and the method to reach those assets. B) Do nothing besides reevaluate the judgment debtor's status each year, to determine whether they've gotten careless, and have some available assets showing. C) Especially if the creditor is complaining, or you cannot afford to dig deep, return the judgment. On big judgments with fraud debtors with hidden assets, the strategy could be similar to that for poor debtors, except perhaps checking for bank accounts a few times a year is a good idea; and judgment debtor exams with document production requests may be a good bet. If there are concealed available assets, money invested trying to recover a judgment is speculative, however there's a possibility for recovery. Occasionally defendant business entities terminate, or are now, or were, merely empty shells. The original judgment creditor should have sued people, or a parent company, or another company. With these types of judgment situations, one must prove alter ego, or attempt some other expensive and complex legal procedures (or return their judgment). This could make sense when there is a real reason to attempt to tie alter-ego to the judgment, and when a potential alter-ego have assets. Again, I'm not an attorney, only a reminder that many judgment collections require expenses, and extra hassles. Almost all judgment recovery specialists have judgments creditors assign judgments to the enforcer. Yet, some don't file their assignment at the court until after they order a credit report on a debtor. Most often, when you own a judgment, you get the right to run a credit report on the debtor. If you pull a credit report and do not like what it shows, you can return the assignment of judgment papers to the judgment owner, and explain you cannot help. It's a good idea to explain to the judgment owner the reason that you turned down their judgment, to help prevent them from over-shopping their judgment. Check out the constantly improving site: http://www.JudgmentBuy.com - Judgment Recovery. The easy, free, fastest, and best way to begin getting some money back from enforceable judgments. (Mark D. Shapiro)
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