Alright, so two months have gone by, and your friend has been mysteriously absent. You've called his house and left several increasingly anxious messages - which he doesn't return. Just to make the story more interesting, imagine you've heard from a second-hand source that Dan has received a hefty sum of cash from a recently departed relative, so you know he has the money to repay your loan.

Now six months have gone by and Dan seems to be doing well enough, but he still won't pay you back. You do what the average, law-abiding citizen does, and you take the son-of-a-gun to Small Claims Court. And besides, you could really use the money to put braces on your kid, John Jr.

The Court Clerk and the Judicial Court System:

After paying your filing fee you are met with an onslaught of foreign looking forms that must be completed before you can proceed.

You take these forms home and puzzle them out, return to the court and hand them over to the court clerk, who promptly tells you they're not filled out correctly and hands them right back.

I'm sure you're confused by this point, so you ask the clerk to explain where the problem lies. Now, getting information out of a court clerk can be like pulling teeth if you don't know the right questions to ask. So likely, if you get any information at all, you're more turned around than when you asked in the first place. But, somehow, you manage to get it done correctly and you schedule your court hearing date.

Your day in court arrives (finally) and - wonder of wonders - Dan doesn't even show up and the judge awards you the judgment by default. You breathe a big sigh of relief and go home waiving your piece of paper in triumph and tell your wife to go ahead and shedule that orthodontist appointment for John Jr.

A month goes by.

No word from Dan. No word from the court either. You're thinking there must have been some hiccup in the legal process and that's why you haven't received a big, fat check in the mail yet. Naturally, you call the court clerk - that lovely fountain of information - to ask why you haven't received your check yet.

Now comes the big surprise.

A real whopper.

It's totally up to you to make Dan pay. The court can't help you. So sorry. Have a nice day.

You can garnish Dan's wages, but do you know where he's working? What if he's working under the table? You can seize Dan's bank account, but do you know which bank? You can make the sheriff take that used car and sell it, but do you know how, or where the car is? Probably not any of the above. Back to square one, which is nowhere, by the way.

Can you see the need for a judgment recovery specialist here? Someone who not only knows what court procedures to use to enforce the judgment, but how to get the information needed to implement them.

Enter the Judgment Recovery Specialist:
(Horns and Trumpets...)

One day, a couple of years later, while grumbling over all the bills in the mail, you notice an official looking letter from Statewide Judgment Recovery. Now, believe it or not, you had really forgotten all about the judgment you won against Dan. Of course, this letter sparked your curiosity, so you open it.

It isn't exactly what you expected, but the next best thing. This company is telling you that they'd run across your judgment down at the courthouse and noticed it hasn't been paid. They want to know if you would be interested in letting them enforce the judgment. Since the judgment recovery company is willing to pay for all of the fees associated with the collection of the judgment up front, no money will have to come out of your pocket.

Figuring you have nothing to lose, since it seems like pigs are going to fly before Dan pays up on his debt, you call the judgment recovery company. You take a minute to review your case with a friendly, and - big surprise - helpful person on the other end of the line.

The person on the phone tells you they'd be willing to do all of this for you in exchange for 50% of whatever is collected. It really just turns out to be a simple matter of signing a couple of agreements and turning the judgment recovery specialist loose on Dan. God speed.

Now, let's give this faceless judgment recovery person an identity. Let's call her Beverly. Beverly is a highly trained, specialized kind of bull dog. She's equipped with everything she needs and all the tricks of the trade to make sure you get your money.

After Beverly receives your signed agreements, she files them with our esteemed court clerk, who is actually on good terms with Beverly because they deal with each other all the time. Then the real work begins.

The chase is on! Since you didn't really have very much information to give Beverly about Dan when you signed the agreements, it is now up to her to find Dan and his assets. No problem for Beverly, she eats cases like this one for breakfast. In no time at all she nailed down where Dan was banking and was ready to get the ball rolling.

I feel I should explain to you about what happens when a judgment holder assigns a judgment over to someone like Beverly. Beverly becomes, in the eyes of the law, the judgment creditor. She has exactly the same rights of enforcement that you had to use the powerful legal remedies provided by law to force Dan to pay the debt he owes. Actually, Dan now owes the debt to Beverly.

Beverly filed a form with the court and sent the sheriff, who acted as her levying officer, over to the bank to seize the account. When she received the check, she reimbursed herself for the fees she incurred (around $7 for a credit report and $35 for court filing and levying fees).

Any filing fees that Beverly spends are reimbursable as costs after judgment, so Beverly is able to add the amount of these fees to the judgment. Dan will ultimately pay for them. Then she kept half for herself, wrote a check for the remainder and mailed it to you.

The ending to this story is a happy one. You received a substantial chunk of the money that Dan owed you and Beverly got a hefty well-deserved sum as well, and John Jr. got those braces he really (really) needed.

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