Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in California

Hi!

We have a judgment, rendered in 1997 and renewed in 2007, whose debtor can not be found.

We attempted to garnish his wages in 1997, but his employer (and friend, who also has unpaid judgments on his record) claimed that the debtor was "no longer employed" by his company.

We have used all the public records available to private citizens to locate the debtor, but to no avail. We have his name, date of birth, social security number, and California driver's license number (from 1997), but all we have discovered is that his SSN is still active and that the only debt of record remaining is our judgment.

We have been informed by websites and message boards that we probably need to retain the services of a collection agency or a private investigator to find him, and then, we may not even be able to collect the judgment if the debtor has no attachable assets. It would appear that only 20-25% of judgments are ever collected, and that the debtors manage their finances without the aid of banks and credit cards by using cash only or stashing their assets outside of the country.

We'd like to be among the 20-25% of the successful collections.

Our questions are:

1. How can we locate the debtor?

2. How much can we expect to pay to find him?

3. Once located, how do we collect our judgment?

4. Is it worth the time, energy, and money to collect on a $10K+ judgment?

Thank you!


Asked on 10/04/09, 6:25 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Robert F. Cohen Law Office of Robert F. Cohen

So you've used public records? It might be worth the money to hire a private investigator to locate your judgment debtor. Also, don't forget that simple interest accrues at the rate of 10% per year, so your judgment already has doubled in value.

You can also ask the investigator to locate assets -- bank accounts, real property, employment, etc. The investigator's report will clue you in as to whether a collection attorney could meet with success.

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Answered on 10/04/09, 7:20 pm


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