Judgment Liens

What happens when judgments appear against a property? They’re certainly not going to get anything from the sale of the property right? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There is a document called Knox’s Judgement Lien Paradigm and I’ve included it in your book. It’s a little bit outdated, It’s good as of January 2008, and I’ll explain why it’s a little outdated in a minute. But here it is… it’s why I included it in your book.

What you do is you go through and answer all the questions: Is a certified copy of the lien recorded? Is the lien 20 years old? And you continue to follow the flow chart. If you end up on the far right hand side, it’s not a lien. If you end up in that little red octagon box, it is still a lien. Now one of the reasons it is outdated, you’ll notice, one of the first dates on there, is July 1 of ’87 and now October 1 of ’93. In Florida judgments are only good for 20 years, recorded judgments are only good for 20 years. We are now beyond 20 years from both of those dates. So that’s why this model is a little bit outdated, but this is what we look at when you all call us, and say “Hey Discover has a lien against this guy’s house, or hey such and such creditor, recorded a judgment lien against the house.

This is what we use to figure out is this a lien that needs to be addressed? Is it a lien that needs to be paid? Is it a lien that needs to be negotiated? Has it actually attached the house, this is how we do it. So the relevant dates July 1, October 1 of ’93, and July 1 of ’94 those are where we have different splits and different things we have to look at. Basically, the judgment needs to be recorded, creditors address needs to be in the judgment, and the judgment has to have been recorded, has to be less than 20 years old. In most cases, less than 10 years old unless it’s been re-recorded. This is how we determine that.