Legal Question in Business Law in California

If you are a creditor holding a court judgment against a debtor, you can summon the person to appear in court to answer questions under oath about their assets. You would probably need the assistance of a lawyer to accomplish this. If there is an active lawsuit, the subpoena process is sometimes useful.

Many lawyers, myself included, subscribe to on-line information services that have data bases of information about individuals' assets. If you are not a subscriber, you can log on and use some of these services using a credit card, but searching something like WestLaw is complex and you can quickly run up a big bill unless you know how to use the service. Also, some of the data bases are off limits to the general public.

The best way to get the information you need may be to hire a private investigator (detective) or retain a lawyer who does collections work.

Finally, check the Secretary of State's Web site at www.ss.ca.gov and see if they can search their LLC filings records for individual's names. This used to be possible but I'm not sure it still is, with all the concern about privacy, identity theft, etc,