Writ of Garnishment + Foreign Judgment = Paid in Full

Some of our most interesting and successful work involves the enforcement and collection of foreign judgments issued by courts in other states. Relying on the Texas Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act, we regularly help clients enforce and collect foreign judgments with speed and efficiency.

Typically, debtors are unaware that we have even started the process of domesticating a judgment from another state. Even though they know the judgment has been entered, they are almost always surprised to learn that we have been quietly working behind the scenes to make sure our client gets paid.

One of our favorite (and most reliable) tactics is to file the foreign judgment in a Texas court before waiting a few minutes to file a separate writ of garnishment with the debtor’s bank. When we do this, the debtor has no idea what is coming since the writ of garnishment will be served on their bank before they even know that the judgment has been domesticated in Texas.

That’s the same model we used in one foreign judgment case by domesticating a judgment and filing a writ of garnishment back-to-back. We received a fax the next day from the bank’s lawyer confirming the amount of the foreign judgment and letting us know that the debtor had plenty of funds to cover the full amount.

Within an hour, the debtor’s lawyer called and asked that we dismiss our garnishment in exchange for a payout over 60 days. Naturally, we declined since we already had access to the funds, and it was a good thing we did. We later learned that the debtor had just borrowed a large sum of money to pay off another obligation, which had yet to be funded. Our garnishment froze the account, and the rest is history.

A major factor in this case was the fact that our client had kept copies of the checks from the debtor’s bank account and their credit application. With that information in hand, we collected the entire judgment in 72 hours.

This story provides an important lesson and a question we ask all of our collections clients: “Are you accumulating bank account information for your customers?”