Collecting Judgments in Texas

Collecting a Texas judgment: You have a judgment, what comes next? How should you proceed?

Once you have a Texas judgment, you have an advantage, some leverage. Once a judgment is obtained, you have the court’s permission to really get the judgment debtor’s attention. That’s when the hard cases usually resolve.

Very often we see debtors who have resisted other creditors. So they are comfortable just ignoring you. And then ignoring us. But once we have a chance to collect your Texas judgment, frequently things change. Very often we see a change of heart in the debtor when they realize a Texas judgment means they are committed by law to the following:

1. answer questions about their activities;
2. prepare and produce documents for our review;
3. face writs of garnishment or writs of execution
4. come to our office for a deposition; and
5. if they fail to cooperate fully: appear before a judge or face jail time

These are explained more fully in the pages below. So you have leverage with a judgment. Perhaps more than you realize. As a result, we collect Texas judgments in the same manner that we obtain judgments. We have a plan and we work that plan. Listed below are the steps we will generally take in collecting your judgments. However, we need your input regarding the debtor to make sure the approach we normally follow makes sense in your case. Like all of our cases, we need the client to provide as much analysis as they can to make the process as efficient as possible.

In other words, this approach is not fool-proof nor etched in stone, but it is the template we generally follow. The process is outlined in the pages below: