In my job, I get a lot of calls and emails with questions about judgment-related paperwork and contracts. Every judgment buyer, judgment enforcer, collection agency, or collection lawyer must use paperwork in their business. This article is my opinion, and not legal advice. I am a judgment broker, and am not a lawyer. If you ever need any legal advice or a strategy to use, please contact a lawyer.

While judgments can be, almost no judgments are traded in card games. Judgments are legal documents, and judgment purchases and recoveries always require contracts or agreements, and sometimes other paperwork as well.

I have had the same kinds of discussions and experiences with judgment owners about a hundred times a week. It seems everyone wants to find a buyer for their judgment. Everyone starts out wanting to be paid top dollar. However, every judgment is actually a judgment situation involving the circumstances of the judgment debtor. Most creditors start out wanting far more money upfront than what anyone is willing to pay them for their judgment situation.

Most people who send me judgments, tell me their judgment debtors are doing well or are rich. However, usually, when I check their debtors out using public data records, I do not see any obvious available assets. Judgment buyers are interested only in the judgment debtor’s currently available assets.

When I run most judgment situations past several judgment buyers, usually they all say they are not interested, or they are only willing to pay a tiny amount for the judgment. When I break that news and reality to the creditors, most then start their mission to prove me wrong; and they almost never succeed, unless their judgment debtors later get more available assets.

I want to help every creditor sell their judgment, or get it recovered. I make my living giving people the right judgment referrals, that leads to them getting money for their judgment. The only way I can get paid is if my referrals help judgment owners get paid.

However, I refuse to waste anyone’s time, especially my own. When I find a judgment buyer that offers a judgment owner (e.g.) 3% of their judgment’s face value, few judgment owners are going to be happy with that offer (at least for the first few years of trying to get a cash upfront offer). When this happens, I then offer to find the creditor a 50/50 future payment recovery solution. Many say no, and then they start their quest to try to get more cash upfront for their judgment, and they usually never get any money for their judgment.

Some judgment owners that are not satisfied with an (e.g., 3% cash upfront purchase offer, the most anyone will pay for their specific judgment situation), then accept my recommendation to go with a future payment contingency recovery expert. If that recovery expert later gets the creditor (e.g) 50% of what is recovered over the next year, the creditor will be happy, and I will get paid a small referral fee from the judgment recovery expert’s potential profit.

Every judgment owner that finds, or is referred to a judgment buyer or a future-pay contingency recovery expert; must sign their paperwork. Sometimes judgments are assigned, sometimes they are recovered with an attorney’s retainer agreement, and sometimes an enforcer or a collection agency recovers the judgments, after the creditor signs their contracts.

Many judgment recovery experts grow tired of creditors who will not sign their paperwork. When creditors see future-payment judgment recovery paperwork for the first time, often they refuse to sign it. When this happens, most creditors go elsewhere, and over the next year or two, they get judgment-quote related paperwork from (e.g.) ten other companies, only to find all ten of the other company’s paperwork is even worse (more complex) than that first company.

Judgment (recovery and purchase) paperwork is fairly standard, and is usually based on what works best in their state. Usually, purchase contracts are much simpler than future payment recovery contracts. All judgment sales require a notarized assignment of judgment.

I know thousands of people and companies that recover or purchase judgments. Every one of them requires paperwork. Some have simple paperwork, and others have more complex paperwork. Often there are trade-offs, sometimes the right solutions have the most complex paperwork.