I won a judgement, now what?

[dbs]

My wife and I won a judgement for around $2500 against another person. The judgement was won about 6 months ago.
We waited awhile and began to check on the status, as a body attachment was ordered on the defendant, but we had never got any updates or new information. We first found out that our local count sheriff's office had faxed the body attachment on to the county sheriff's office, in the county where the defendant resides, being Clark County, Indiana; however, we were informed that Clark County does not accept faxes, only hardcopies. Thus, our county sheriff's office refaxed the info, and we waited again. After a month passed, we called Clark county and were told that they do not spend time processing body attachments, as they are too busy processing criminal matters, but that they would keep it on file and if the defendant were stopped for a traffic violation, or something like that, then she would be detained for the body attachment. What kind of deal is this? What can be done to pressure Clark County into pursuing the matter? What I don't understand is that during the whole small claims process, Clark County had to serve court appearance documents to the defendant at least 3-4 times, and that was done, but now that the end is near, everything is dropped. Anyway, I would like to know the quickest way to the endgate in this matter.

 

[JETX]

First, you need to understand that in most (if not all) civil litigation, the courts will NOT pursue collection of the judgment for you. This is partly due to our founding fathers deciding that courts will not have 'debtor prisons'.

So, with this in mind, you basically have two choices.

You can pursue the matter personally. This is both a time consuming and somewhat technical process. You will need to be tenacious and 'hound' the debtor until payment is eventually made. Additionally, you will need to be able to perform asset investigations and be able to use the legal processes (executions, Writs, seizure, garnishments, etc.).

Either that, or you could forego some of the value of the judgment and allow someone with specific expertise to pursue the judgment for you.

Please contact me if you need further information regarding Judgment Enforcement in your state, and you can find some further information on this at my website:
http://arise.to/JRofTexas