Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Illinois

If you got a default judgment, it can still be opened. But regardless, to garnish you need to know who owes the judgment debtor money -- an employer, a bank where there may be a bank account, etc. So if you don't know for sure, the first step usually is a "CDA" or Citation to Discover Assets, which is a court supplemental proceeding to discover who if anyone may owe the judgment debtor money; you summons the judgment debtor to court and examine him/her about his/her assets. If they show they may have nothing. If they don't show you have to go farther with rules to show cause and eventually an attachment (arrest) order..... Once you find out if there is any asset to garnish, then you file the proper garnishment papers and if there's any money owed, the garnishee must report it, you then must go in for a "turnover order" to serve on the garnishee, and then you can get the money. You can add the court costs related to these additional proceedings plus judgment interest to the total amount owed, but as you can see these are intricate and time consuming proceedings - and the CDA is particularly critical if you don't know what you're doing. If you got your judgment pro se, it may be worth your while to considering hiring an attorney for the collection end of this, unless you want to go into collections or law and want to spend the time doing this for yourself. May depend on how much is involved.