Judgments but $$$$ still in bank for 2 years!

[holycowe]

Just had a long conversation and brought up about debts with a very close friend face to face couple hours ago.
He is totally judgment proof. Lost all houses, a business and lots of cc (around 200k in cc alone). He is now running a small business for his mom and getting paid cash only.
He had at least 4-5 default judgments already (all more than a year ago). BUT he does have 1 checking acct with BOAmerica under his name only (no wife, kids on this acct) for 2 years already and always have at least $1000 on it. To verify, he called to check and yes, $2000 as of now because I couldn't believe they did not put a lien on it.
Been reading here a lot and explain him what should have happen as soon as they have a judgment against him.
According to him, he got served many times but he never signed any paperwork, never showed up in court.
I just don't understand WHY they didn't take the money in his checking account???

[AngelinaCatHub]

He simply lucked out. It could happen at any time. Perhaps he just kept a low profile but he is living on shear luck as that account could be scoffed up by any of the Judgment holders. 'Hub

[frogger]

They will, it's only a matter of time. Patience grasshopper..........

[chicagoannie]

He got lucky. Obviously he'd made no payments to any judgment creditors through this bank account. Eventually one of them will find it...and your friend will have an unpleasant surprise when the account is emptied without his knowledge.

[holycowe]

Thats what I though as well. But its been over a year already since the judgments.

[treehugger1]

I don;t believe it is necessarily true that if someone gets a judgment, they will act to enforce it. I have searched many of my local court records for a particular big cc/Bank corporation that files many suits and gets many default judgments. Some of these judgments are 5-8 years old, and no record of a garnishee response form in the records (they have never attempted to garnish.) The majority of the folks have jobs and are easy to find. I'm not sure why a OC would sue, get a judgment and not attempt garnishment, but they do. I suppose it could be that in oregon most judgments result in an automatic lien on real property. Perhaps the OC feels that eventually they will get their piece of the pie.

On the other hand, they could decide to enforce the judgment at any time.

Weird...

[ryan]

To the original poster, one day, your friend, the one with 5 judgments, WILL have every nickel that is in his bank account taken. He is playing with fire....and if he waited long enough, he will get burned. ..all it will take is one aggressive collector. I would NEVER do what he is doing.

[shark66]

..all it will take is one aggressive collector. I would NEVER do what he is doing.

+ 1

Unless you're in a state that doesn't allow bank account levy, keeping money in the bank while having judgments against you is not the way to go...

Not all creditors are smart, though. Some of them are downright lazy. I've had a judgment against me for about a year before I filed BK. They can't garnish my wages under the state law, but they could've gone after my bank account although I kept on changing banks on purpose...

Good luck to us all.

[ryan]

[FONT="Comic Sans MS"]+ 1

Unless you're in a state that doesn't allow bank account levy, keeping money in the bank while having judgments against you is not the way to go....

And to my knowledge the only state that doesn't allow bank levy's is Delaware.

[jwmc1]

Why wouldn't he just take the money out?

[holycowe]

Why wouldn't he just take the money out?

He's paying some bills with this checking account.
Because he believes if he didn't sign for any paperwork, nobody can touch him
I also showed him a court website and one of his cases showed "default judgment" back in 2008 and just renew again feb-2011.

I think it depends on the plaintiff if they are aggressive or not, know how to find bank account or not

[disconapper]

He's paying some bills with this checking account.
Because he believes if he didn't sign for any paperwork, nobody can touch him
I also showed him a court website and one of his cases showed "default judgment" back in 2008 and just renew again feb-2011.

I think it depends on the plaintiff if they are aggressive or not, know how to find bank account or not

So not true....five judgements....wow....has he filed for BK? What a scary situation to be in. I hope it works out for him, he really is playing with fire.

[GoingDown]

I don;t believe it is necessarily true that if someone gets a judgment, they will act to enforce it. I have searched many of my local court records for a particular big cc/Bank corporation that files many suits and gets many default judgments. Some of these judgments are 5-8 years old, and no record of a garnishee response form in the records (they have never attempted to garnish.) The majority of the folks have jobs and are easy to find. I'm not sure why a OC would sue, get a judgment and not attempt garnishment, but they do. I suppose it could be that in oregon most judgments result in an automatic lien on real property. Perhaps the OC feels that eventually they will get their piece of the pie.

On the other hand, they could decide to enforce the judgment at any time.

Weird...

I think this may be because some of these creditors or JDBs who sue are using the old splatter gun approach to suing every debtor without trying to figure out which ones are judgment proof and which ones are good prospects for a lawsuit. After they get the judgments, if they find any low hanging fruit, such as easily verifiable employment or a known bank account, they go after it. Otherwise, they sit back and wait for the judgment debtor to come to them when the debtor tries to sell their house and want to get the lien taken care of, or they apply for some loan, and are then informed they need to get this judgment debt taken care of before they can qualify for the loan, etc.

In this case, the person appears to be flying under the judgment creditor's radar-- not contacting them, not opening the door to process servers, not signing for certified mail. And the judgment creditor probably sees them as more of a bother than they are worth, and so they put them on the back burner.

But I would tell that friend of the original poster that he or she should never keep more money in a checking account than they are prepared to lose after someone gets a judgment against them. Nothing may ever happen. But if it does happen, and this person loses thousands of dollars, it may make it very difficult to pay the rent or the mortgage the next month. So, be careful.