Guide · Litigation

Enforcing a Money Judgment: A Comprehensive Guide to Discovery, Liens, Levy, and Fraudulent Transfer

28 U.S.C. § 1961

Type
Guide
Jurisdiction
National
Date
2023-11-09
Topic
Litigation

A complete practitioner's treatment of turning a money judgment into money. Part I covers the judgment itself, finality, post-judgment interest, the automatic stay on execution, and supersedeas. Part II covers creating liens on real and personal property and registering federal judgments in other districts. Part III covers post-judgment discovery under Rule 69, the debtor examination and its document rider, third-party subpoenas, and the worldwide scope confirmed by Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital. Parts IV through VII cover the seizure tools in order of usefulness: execution and levy, garnishment of banks, wages, and receivables, charging orders against LLC and partnership interests and why they are so hard for creditors, and turnover orders and receiverships enforced by contempt. Part VIII covers the exemption regime that shelters homesteads, wages, retirement accounts, public benefits, and entireties property. Part IX works the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act in full, including both fraud theories, the badges, remedies against transferees, and the repose period. Part X covers alter ego, reverse veil piercing, and successor liability, with the jurisdictional trap of Peacock v. Thomas. Parts XI through XIV cover interstate and international domestication, renewal and dormancy, the bankruptcy interface, and the ethical and FDCPA constraints on collection practice.

Enforcing a Money Judgment: A Comprehensive Guide to Discovery, Liens, Levy, and Fraudulent Transfer

Litigation > Judgment Enforcement | Published 9 November 2023 - Updated 6 April 2026 | UpLaw - uplaw.us

In brief. Judgment enforcement is state procedural law applied through a federal rule that adopts it wholesale. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 69(a)(1) provides that execution "must accord with the procedure of the state where the court is located." That sentence means there is no federal law of judgment enforcement worth speaking of — there are fifty of them, and the practitioner must know the one in front of them. What generalizes is the sequence: create liens immediately, find the assets through discovery, take what is not exempt, and pursue what was moved.

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