Judgement collection - can't find defendant

What is the name of your state? Idaho

A while back my daughter's (now) ex-boyfriend wrecked her car. Since the car was in my name, I wound up taking him to small claims court to try to get the cost of repairs from him. After working through the process including mediation, in January of 2007 I was finally awarded a default judgement against him for a little under $3000. Unfortunately he has since dropped out of sight. He left the last job that I knew about shortly before the judgement, and he has apparently moved out of town, but from what my daughter has heard from friends he is still living in the state. He may have a job now, but I have no idea as to find out where.

I turned the judgement over to a collection agency, but they have essentially done nothing. I haven't heard anything from them for almost a year, and I don't think they have put any real effort into finding him or collecting from him.

So I guess I have two questions:
1: Can I / should I pull the judgement back from the collection agency since they haven't been any help?

2: Since the defendant probably doesn't have any assets, I probably don't have any hope of collecting right now. But I don't want the judgement to go away either. Is there anything that I need to do to keep the judgement active and make sure that it would show up on his credit report?

Can I / should I pull the judgement back from the collection agency since they haven't been any help?

That seems prudent. You’re a one-time client with a small claim. Don’t get your expectations too high. Either work it yourself, give it to a retail collection attorney for a similar or smaller fee or sell it.

Is there anything that I need to do to keep the judgement active and make sure that it would show up on his credit report?

It will show up on his CR as a result of the court judgment. It’s earning interest at 10.5% APR from date of entry. It’s good for 5 years and is renewable. You should renew at about 4.5-4.8 years. You can try to collect yourself using public record databases or pass it over to professionals. You could also retain a P.I., but the amount probably couldn’t justify that. You could record a real property lien, if that hasn’t been done, and hope that he bumps into it. If/when you find out where he is working, you can garnish wages.

You are going to find out why about 80% of all privately held judgments go uncollected.

dcatz - Thanks for the info. 10.5% is more than I would make with the money in the bank, so if I ever do collect, I'll in theory come out ahead. But as racer72 noted, I probably have little chance of that actually happening.

You mentioned filing a real property lien. Could you expand on that a bit? I thought he would have to have property that I could file against. Or is this something that would be filed against his name? Last I knew, he didn't have any property.

One other thought - I do have his driver's license number. Could I possibly use that to ask the state for any info that they may have on his current whereabouts?

Thanks again for the advice.

I thought he would have to have property that I could file against. Or is this something that would be filed against his name?

You record the judgment so that it is a lien against any property that he may sell or try to re-finance and is, in effect, a pre-existing lien against any property that he may try to buy. Not only will it have a negative impact on the cost of credit (bad in itself), but a prospective lender is not going to be happy with the idea that a lien in addition to their own exists on the property as soon as it is acquired.

I don’t know about your state’s license disclosure laws. As a general proposition, such information is not disclosed for that purpose. Information may be available for circumscribed purposes – eg. to trace an owner/driver involved in a hit-and-run – but not for general skip tracing. However, it’s dependent on state law. Check:
www.dmv.org

Online commercial sites for public records are useful, but I would expect that your collection agency has used one or more as a matter of course. If you take back the claim, you can ask them. Anything additional that was developed is their property, and they may or may not be helpful under the circumstances.