Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in California

Until you are in bankruptcy, there is no such thing as priority. Secured creditors may have rights to take property to satisfy the debt in whole or part that unsecured creditors would not, and judgment creditors can use enforcement of judgment tools that creditors who have not obtained judgments cannot use, but priorities and preferences are only relevant in a bankruptcy context. Lastly, I have to tell you that there is no such thing as a court ordered settlement. Either you have a voluntary settlement, which is no more binding than any other agreement, or you have a settlement that you failed to honor and it was turned into a judgment under the judicially supervised settlement rules. In which case they have a judgment just as if they had won the case in the amount of the settlement.