How do judgments and liens work?

[CreditSlave]

What is the worst case scenario when you have assets and not file bankruptcy? Will they just get judgments incase we sell our house and that is if we ever sell? How do judgments and liens work? Are they able to Force us to sell our house to get their money or will they just get a judgment? I know that within 6 months or sooner we will definitely be garnished by at least one creditor for the max 25%. More than likely the others will get judgments and liens on our house as well. What are they allowed to do with your bank accounts? We are only behind on the CCs. Everything else is current. We just have too much equity in house at least 50K.

State VA 10,500 homestead exemption, not enough to protect home and cars

We really are looking for help in understanding our options from all you wonderful folks that have been thru this before.

[poorme]

Generally, the lien attaches to 'something' as in a car, home, piece of equipment - tangible goods. The lien holder can stand in line when that asset is sold and get their cut before you do. A judgment is a legal instrument against you, and allows the person/company to come after you and your possessions, usually enacted via a garnishment or attachment to your paycheck or bank account. Either way, creditors will not be likely toi give your credit (at least at good rates) because they can see through the public records that you officially owe others and they had to resort to court actions.

[BKTango]

To had to poorme's statement regarding your bank account. Please be aware that they can and will sieze the money in your accounts. It's typical if someone ends up with a judgement to start making sure their paychecks are paper checks and just cashing them and using money orders when necessary, as a creditor will take any funds that go into that account.

Also keep in mind most judgements will remain on your CR for 10 yrs and in most states it is renewable so they just file 1 piece of paper to renew it. Therefore it may never drop off until it's paid.

If you are worried about filing baknruptcy and cannot file a chapter 7 because of your equity and cars, you may want to look into filing a chapter 13. In a ch 13 all of your assets are protected because you are on a payback plan.