Collecting a judgment after winning your case is a separate process from the lawsuit itself. The court has declared that the other side owes you money, but no one at the courthouse will pick up the phone and demand payment on your behalf. To actually get paid, you have to locate the debtor’s assets, obtain a writ of execution from the court, and direct the sheriff or marshal to seize wages, bank funds, or property. Done right, the tools are effective. Done slowly, they lose ground to a debtor who has time to move money around.
The Clock Is Already Running
Interest starts accruing on the balance the day the judgment is entered and runs until the debt is paid in full. In federal court, the rate is tied to the weekly average one-year Treasury yield, calculated daily and compounded annually.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1961 – Interest2District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands. Post Judgment Interest Rates State courts set their own rates, typically somewhere between about 2% and 10% per year. When you finally collect, you’re entitled to the original judgment plus every dollar of accrued interest, so the balance grows in your favor while you wait. What waiting costs you is opportunity: a debtor who has months to spend down a bank account or transfer a car to a cousin is a harder target than one you moved against last week.
Find Out What the Debtor Owns
Enforcement tools are only as good as the information behind them. You need to know where the debtor works, what banks they use, and what they own before you can point a sheriff at anything.
Debtor’s Examination
A debtor’s examination is a court-ordered hearing where the judgment debtor must appear and answer questions under oath about their finances. You can ask about employment, bank accounts, real estate, vehicles, and anything else of value. The goal is specific, actionable detail: an account number, an employer’s address, the location of a vehicle title. A debtor who refuses to show up can be held in civil contempt, which may lead to fines or a bench warrant.
Information Subpoenas
An information subpoena is a set of written questions the debtor must answer in writing and under oath. You can also send subpoenas to third parties who might hold the debtor’s money, such as banks or brokerage firms, and they must respond within the timeframe set by local court rules. This is a cheaper alternative when you already suspect where the assets sit and just need confirmation before spending money on a levy.
Asset Searches
When formal discovery falls short, some creditors hire private investigators or asset search firms. They work from public records: property holdings, business affiliations, vehicle registrations. They can’t use illegal surveillance or trespass, but a thorough search often surfaces assets the debtor forgot to mention under oath.
Get a Writ of Execution
The writ of execution is the document that turns your judgment into an enforceable order. It directs a law enforcement officer to seize the debtor’s non-exempt property and, if necessary, sell it at auction to satisfy your judgment.3Legal Information Institute. Writ of Execution In federal court, execution follows the law of the state where the court sits.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 69 – Execution
You request the writ from the court clerk, who issues it under the court’s seal. You then take it to the sheriff’s or marshal’s office in the county where the assets are located, along with specific written instructions about what to seize and where. The officer may require an advance deposit to cover estimated expenses.5U.S. Marshals Service. Writ of Execution Sheriff service fees vary widely by jurisdiction, commonly running from under a hundred dollars to several hundred, with complex seizures costing more. These enforcement costs are generally recoverable from the debtor as part of the judgment balance.
You cannot personally seize a debtor’s property, no matter how clear the judgment. The sheriff’s authority is also limited to their own county. If the debtor has a bank account in one county and a vehicle in another, you deal with two separate sheriff’s offices, pay two service fees, and provide separate written instructions to each. The sheriff does not investigate assets on your behalf. Vague or incorrect instructions mean a failed levy and a service fee you still owe.
Pick the Right Collection Tool
Once you have a writ, you can pursue multiple strategies at once. Which ones make sense depends on what the debtor actually has.
Wage Garnishment
Wage garnishment intercepts part of the debtor’s paycheck before they see it. After the sheriff serves the writ on the employer, the employer withholds money from each paycheck and sends it to the sheriff’s office for payment to you.
Federal law caps garnishment for ordinary debts at the lesser of two figures: 25% of the debtor’s disposable earnings for that pay period, or the amount by which those earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1673 – Restriction on Garnishment With the federal minimum wage at $7.25 per hour, that 30-times threshold works out to $217.50 per week.7U.S. Department of Labor. State Minimum Wage Laws Weekly disposable earnings at or below $217.50 can’t be garnished at all. Many states impose stricter limits than the federal cap, so check your state’s garnishment statute before assuming you’ll get the maximum.
Bank Levies
A bank levy reaches money sitting in the debtor’s bank account. You provide the writ to the sheriff with instructions identifying the debtor’s bank. The sheriff serves the levy, the bank freezes the account up to the judgment amount, and the debtor has a short window (usually a few weeks depending on the state) to claim any exemptions. After that window closes, the bank sends the non-exempt funds to the sheriff, who forwards them to you.
Timing is everything. A bank levy captures only what’s in the account the moment it’s served. If the debtor spent the money last week or the balance is low when the sheriff arrives, you may recover little. Some creditors deliberately serve levies just after a debtor’s typical payday.
Property Liens
Recording an abstract of judgment with the county recorder creates a lien against the debtor’s real estate in that county.8Legal Information Institute. Abstract of Judgment A lien doesn’t force an immediate sale. It attaches to the property and blocks the debtor from selling or refinancing without paying you first. If the debtor owns property in multiple counties, record the abstract in each one. Recording fees are usually modest, in the range of $25 to $100.
This is a long-game strategy. Judgment liens typically last five to twenty years depending on the state, and most states allow renewal. Where the debtor has significant equity, a lien can also be enforced through a forced sale, though courts generally treat that as a last resort when other methods have failed.
Cash Businesses
When the debtor runs a business that takes cash, specialized tools let the sheriff seize money at the point it’s generated. In one form, the sheriff enters the business and takes whatever is in the register. In another, an officer is stationed at the business for a set period and collects receipts directly from customers as they come in. The disruption itself is often enough to push a debtor toward voluntary payment.
What You Cannot Touch
Federal and state exemption laws shield certain income and property from seizure so debtors can maintain a basic standard of living. Ignoring these rules wastes money on enforcement actions that produce nothing and can expose you to sanctions.
On the income side, the federal garnishment cap protects at least 75% of a debtor’s disposable earnings. Several categories of government benefits are entirely off-limits to ordinary judgment creditors: Social Security and Supplemental Security Income cannot be garnished, levied, or attached for ordinary debts.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 407 – Assignment of Benefits Veterans’ benefits, unemployment compensation, and public assistance payments carry similar protections under federal law. This matters for bank levies too: if the account you levy holds a direct deposit of exempt benefits, those funds may still be protected once they’re in the bank. Many states require banks to trace deposits and identify exempt funds before releasing money to the sheriff.
On the property side, every state has its own list of exempt personal property, and the specifics vary dramatically. Common categories include:
- Homestead protection covering some amount of equity in the debtor’s primary residence, ranging from modest amounts to unlimited protection in a few states.
- One vehicle up to a set equity value, often somewhere between $2,500 and $7,500.
- Ordinary household goods, furniture, clothing, and appliances.
- Tools of the trade the debtor uses to earn a living.
- Retirement accounts. Employer-sponsored plans like 401(k)s are broadly protected under federal law, and IRAs receive protection under federal bankruptcy law up to a set dollar limit.
- A “wildcard” exemption in many states that the debtor can apply to any property not covered elsewhere, typically worth a few thousand dollars.
The practical effect is that some debtors can shield most of what they own even from a large judgment.
When the Debtor Currently Has Nothing
Sometimes the debtor is effectively judgment-proof. Their income falls below the garnishment floor, their account holds only exempt funds, they don’t own real estate. That doesn’t erase the judgment or forgive the debt. It just means collection isn’t possible right now.
A debtor who is judgment-proof today may not be next year. A new job, a home purchase, an inheritance, all of these become reachable. The lien you recorded still attaches to any real estate they later buy in that county. A garnishment order can be reissued to a new employer. Creditors in this situation focus on keeping the judgment alive through timely renewal and periodically running fresh asset searches to see whether things have changed.
If the Debtor Is Moving Assets
Some debtors try to put property beyond reach by transferring it to family members or selling assets at a fraction of their value. Nearly every state has adopted some version of the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act, which gives creditors a path to claw back these transfers.
Courts look at whether the debtor intended to defraud creditors or whether the transfer happened without fair consideration. A debtor gifting their car to a relative or selling their house to a friend for a dollar right after losing a lawsuit is the classic pattern. Transfers made before the lawsuit can also be challenged if the debtor was already insolvent or became insolvent as a result. A successful claim lets the court void the transaction and pull the asset back into the pool available for collection. Move quickly if you suspect this is happening: statutes of limitations on fraudulent transfer claims typically run two to four years.
If the Debtor Is in Another State
A judgment from one state doesn’t automatically work in another. You have to “domesticate” it by registering a certified copy with a court in the state where you want to enforce it. The U.S. Constitution requires every state to honor the judicial proceedings of other states.10Constitution Annotated. ArtIV.S1.3.2 Modern Doctrine on Full Faith and Credit Clause
The mechanics are governed by the Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act, adopted by almost every state. You obtain a certified copy of your judgment from the original court, file it with the clerk in the new state, and serve the debtor with notice. After a waiting period that varies by state (typically 20 to 30 days), the domesticated judgment carries the same force as one entered locally, and you can use every standard tool: garnishment, levies, liens, seizures. Debtors sometimes challenge domestication by arguing the original court lacked jurisdiction or that service in the original case was defective. Those challenges rarely succeed when the original judgment was properly obtained, but they can add months to the timeline.
Don’t Let the Judgment Expire
Judgments don’t last forever. Every state sets a time limit, commonly five to twenty years, after which the judgment expires and becomes unenforceable. Let that deadline pass without action and you lose the right to collect the remaining balance.
Most states let you renew a judgment before it expires, which resets the clock for another full term. Renewal usually means filing a motion or application with the court that issued the original judgment, often with a modest filing fee. Track the deadline years in advance. Missing the renewal window is one of the most common and avoidable mistakes in judgment collection. Some states allow revival of expired judgments under limited circumstances, but the process is harder and not guaranteed to succeed. The same principle applies to judgment liens on real estate: a lien not renewed before its statutory expiration drops off, freeing the debtor to sell or refinance without paying you.
After You’re Paid
Once the judgment has been paid in full, including post-judgment interest and any recoverable costs, you are generally required to file a satisfaction of judgment with the court. This signed document confirms the debt has been satisfied. Filing it clears the judgment from public records and releases any liens against the debtor’s property.
Failing to file after receiving full payment can create liability. Many states impose penalties on creditors who delay, and the debtor can petition the court to force the filing. Beyond the legal requirement, it closes the case cleanly and prevents future disputes about whether the debt was actually paid.