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In judgment discovery situations, to try to locate a debtor's assets; in the majority of states you may schedule a judgment debtor exam at the court, and then subpoena records from 3rd-parties having knowledge about your debtor's assets. When your judgment debtor is a person, in certain states; their personal information is known as a consumer record, when the info is court-ordered with a served subpoena upon a 3rd-party bank, employer, school, utility company, attorney, accountant, dentist, etc. This article is my opinion and is not, legal advice. I'm a judgment matchmaking expert, and not a lawyer. When you need a strategy to use or legal advice, you should contact an attorney. In certain states, for example California and maybe Indiana; before any 3rd-party can release any of the debtor's private info, they must have proof that your debtor got served your "notice to consumer", included in your subpoena package served on the third-party. While Federal courts, and most states, do not currently mandate consumer notices before subpoenaing third-party witnesses; this might change some day soon, to increase the use of consumer notices. Within California, laws covering consumer notices (for example Code of Civil Procedure 1985.6 and CCP 1958.3), are sometimes judgment debtor-friendly because they let a person or partnership/company with fewer than five members; enjoy even more advance warning that the judgment owner is curious about their finances, possibly giving them more time to transfer or hide their available assets. Naturally, if you already know where your judgment debtor banks or works, you could avoid tipping them off, and just begin a levy procedure with your Sheriff. Consumer notices might slow judgment creditors down a bit. In places that require them, before third-parties may share any private debtor info, the creditor's notice to the consumer gets served first upon the judgment debtor. In California, you must wait five days when your notice (Judicial Council Form SUBP-025) was personally served, and ten days if the process service was performed by first class mail. After that waiting period, you add the notice and the proof of service for it, within the subpoena paperwork which gets served on your third-party witness. In California, a witness are entitled to witness fees as defined in California Evidence Code 1563; so add your check to the third-party with your subpoena paperwork that you provide to your registered process server. At places which mandate consumer notices, most give third-parties twenty days to supply the specific information requested within the served subpoena on them, that has your proof of service of the notice to consumer. Although subpoenas can get first class mailed to 3rd-party witnesses (within California there is Code of Civil Procedure 2020.410), serving the witness by mail gives the witness 5 extra days in which to respond. And, if subpoenas are not served personally served, there isn't any possible recourse when somebody ignores a subpoena that was mailed to them. If your personally served subpoena gets ignored by the 3rd-party, or you do not get anything except for a written complaint you'll probably need to sue them to get the debtor's information. In California, this is either covered by CCP 1992, or perhaps you will need to file your motion in court to compel (force) the witness to appear and then provide the subpoenaed documents. With Federal court judgments (including bankruptcy courts, are where subpoenas are governed with FRCP 45 and FRCP 9016), there seems to be no law mandating that a notice to consumer to be sent. In spite of that, in a couple of judgment recovery cases in Federal courts in California, a judgment debtor's lawyer has brought up CCP 1958.3 and the need to serve a consumer notice first; and more than once, a Federal court judge in California has agreed with them, and that doesn't make much sense to me, as Federal law generally outranks state law. If you have a judgment in Federal court, or inside the states that haven't any subpoena-related consumer notice laws, that also means there's isn't any time constraints if you decide to include such a consumer notice anyway. Even when not required by law, it may occasionally end of being a good idea to add a consumer notice within your judgment debtor exam subpoena documents served upon your debtor. Mark D. Shapiro of: http://www.JudgmentBuy.com - Your fastest and easiest free method of finding the best professional to recover or buy your judgment.
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Notices To Consumer, consumer notices, consumer records and judgments, third parties and consumer notices,
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