Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Virginia

Re: promissary note

There are a number of things you would want: an enforceable confession of judgment (cognivit) provision; security (a lien on assets); guarantees; waivers of various sorts; etc. If this is enough money to worry about, have a lawyer draw up the papers at the expense of the borrower, just as a bank would do.

Re: promissary note

Thanks to the fact that the Uniform Commercial Code has been enacted in every state, now, you can be pretty well assured that a properly written promissory note will be enforceable anywhere in the U.S. There are a couple of things to watch out for, though. Just because your note is valid everywhere doesn't mean you can sue on it anywhere - a court has to be able to get jurisdiction over the person who signed the note. That means that you either have to sue in the state where the note was signed or where the debtor lives (unless the debtor agrees to waive his right to rely on the venue provisions of his own state and agrees to submit to the jurisdiction of some other state as part of the note). The other thing, a minor consideration in this case, is the fact that each state that has adopted the U.C.C. has made variations in it, but since the concept of the promissory note has such a long history in the common law, that's one part of the code that really is pretty much "uniform".