Texas Lawyers that combine writs of garnishment with foreign judgments will usually be more successful.
Foreign judgments (judgments issued by courts in other states and then given to us to domesticate in Texas) are interesting work for us. That's because the debtor is usually caught unaware once we start the process of domesticating the judgment. Even though they know a judgment has been entered against them in the foreign state, they are almost always surprised to learn that we domesticated the judgment.
One of our favorite things to do is to file the both the foreign judgment and the writ of garnishment within a few minutes of each other. This way the debtor has no idea what is coming as they won't have notice of the judgment domestication until well after the writ of garnishment has been served on their bank.
In one case we filed the foreign judgment and the writ of garnishment within a few minutes of each other one morning. The writ of garnishment was served within a few hours that afternoon. The next day we received a fax from the bank's lawyer confirming the amount of the judgment and letting us know the debtor had plenty of funds to cover the amount of the foreign judgment.
Within an hour the lawyer for the debtor called. He asked us to dismiss our garnishment in exchange for a payout over 60 days. Naturally, we declined.
It turns out that the debtor had just borrowed a large sum of money to pay off another obligation and that transaction had not closed. Our garnishment froze the account and the rest is history.
The client in this story had kept copies of checks and the credit application. With that information we were able to collect the judgment in 72 hours.
Are you accumulating banking information on your customers?
Your Legal Question
Please use the form below to ask any question. We will attempt to answer as quickly as possible.