Plaintiffs in civil court cases win judgments all the time. It’s par for the course. Oftentimes, those judgments include monetary awards. We call them money judgments in the industry. Let us say you win one and now have to get on with collection efforts. Here are two things that will pay off in huge dividends: persistence and patience.
Judgment creditors (the winning parties in money judgment cases) come and go. Far too many of them don’t follow through. They go to the trouble of filing a civil lawsuit and putting together a solid case. But when they win, they do not put in the time and effort necessary to collect.
That is too bad. A failure to collect is a failure to hold losing parties, also known as judgment debtors, accountable. That only encourages some of them to continue doing whatever it was that originally landed them in court.
Success Requires Persistence
Persistence and judgment collection success go hand-in-hand. Judgment Collectors, a Utah collection agency that specializes in judgments, explains why this is so. Their first point is that judgment debtors are not known for their eagerness to cooperate.
Think about why you might end up in court as a plaintiff. You are already dealing with another party known to cause you trouble. Winning a judgment against that party doesn’t guarantee that he or she will suddenly turn over a new leaf. If the party was less-than-cooperative before, plan on even less cooperation after the fact.
There Are Procedures in Play
Another thing to consider is that there are procedures in play. A judgment creditor cannot simply go to the debtor’s home and start removing items he wants to sell. Everything from wage garnishment to asset seizure is governed by procedures. And sometimes the procedures force creditors to jump through hoops.
A successful creditor needs to be as willing as the debtor to persist. The one who holds out longer tends to be the winner. Any creditor unwilling to be persistent is not going to get very far in his collection efforts.
Success Requires Patience
Persistence has a companion in the judgment collection game. That companion is patience. Let’s go back to those procedures we just talked about. They all take time to complete. Some of them require further court action. It could take a judgment creditor 30-60 days just to complete a single procedure. Multiply that by dozens of procedures and you have a lot of time on your hands.
Above and beyond the procedures, think about something like searching for assets. According to Judgment Collectors, the professionals run asset searches it hopes of accounting for every asset a debtor owns. The professionals look at income sources, bank accounts, securities, real estate, collectibles, and anything else they can think of.
Once again, asset searches take time. They can be especially time-consuming when a debtor is actively trying to hide assets. But assets are the creditor’s best leverage. So a creditor unwilling to put in the time to find assets is likely to wind up the loser.
It’s Not Easy
The bottom line is that collecting a money judgment is not easy. Sure, there are those rare cases when a judgment debtor is prepared to pay in full as soon as the case has been resolved. But such cases are not the norm. They are truly a rarity.
Anyone hoping to take another party to civil court should be prepared for a long and complicated collection process. Only the persistent and patient come out winners in the end. That is just the way the system works.
