How to effectively collect your court order judgment

If the court has ruled in your favor and you have won the judgment for the amount owed to you, the court is not going to collect your debts on your account. What this implies is that the default judgment is merely an order by the court to the debtor to pay the debt. Nonetheless, it does not indicate that they actually will.

Retrieving your debt from an unwilling person can entail significant efforts, time and legal knowledge. Here’s how you can collect on the judgment by yourself.

Contact the debtor directly

The first action that you can take is to contact the debtor directly. You can address the debtor to encourage them to pay. You must demand that the communication is maintained in writing so that you have a record of everything that follows, should you need it in the future. In your mail to the debtor, you can include your address where they can advance payment, forms of payments you will accept, offer rebates or draft an installment plan. You should try to come to terms with a plan that’s feasible for the debtor because they can only pay you if they can afford it.

File a writ of execution

Once you have obtained your judgment and still have not been paid in full, you can get a writ of execution from the court which authorizes the sheriff of the county to seize any assets of value the debtor may possess. These assets may include bank accounts, earnings, equipment, business shares, securities, and leasehold and company rights. After you have obtained a writ, you can have the sheriff to enter defendant’s residence or business premises to seize their various marketable assets.

It’s important to know that the debtor may request for a period of up to 30 days to vacate the judgment. Only after these 30 days have been passed, you can start to secure the debtor’s personal assets.

But what if you have no information about the location of the debtor’s assets?

Before you can proceed to seize your debtor’s assets, you must tell the sheriff where the assets are located, naturally. You can file a petition in the court to assemble information on all of the debtor’s assets. The court can then order the debtor to appear in court to reveal where their assets are and how they can be identified.

Obtaining a judgment is one thing, and judgment enforcement is another. All of your hard work and money can go in vain if you’re not able to recover what you’re owed. However, with some legal knowledge and effective tools such as a writ, you can adequately pursue the debtor to pay you back.

At the Law Offices of Alan M. Cohen LLC, we aggressively approach commercial debt collection in Massachusetts. With more than 30 years of experience, we take whatever legal steps are necessary to collect for you as much of your delinquent account as