Chances are you have heard the term 'alter ego'. In legal terms, finding alter ego gives the court cause to pierce the corporate veil and hold individual shareholders personally liable for debts of the corporation. For a creditor with an outstanding judgment, alter...
California Commercial Debt Collection Blog
Is Any Property Outside a Creditor’s Reach?
If a debtor voluntarily paid his/her judgment, there would be no need for a collection attorney. Since the failure to pay a creditor back happens more often than not, should a creditor want to enforce a judgment, he needs a competent collection attorney. One of the...
Motion to Vacate a Judgment
An experienced collections attorney can attest that, generally speaking, the most common basis for moving to vacate is that the defendant claims he/she/it was not served in the origin state. A motion to vacate is a request to the court to withdraw a previous order or...
The Importance of Judgment Debtor Exam
An experienced commercial collections attorney is always interested in watching the interplay between state court creditor remedies and how they are interpreted in federal proceedings. A recent 9th Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel (BAP) ruling has reminded those of...
Collecting an Out of State Judgment
What happens if you have a money judgment against someone that was entered in another state and the defendant moves to California? Is that judgment enforceable? Fortunately, the answer is: Definitely! The United States Constitution provides that a judgment from a...
Alter Ego and the Jugdment Debtor
Alter ego...what is it? In Latin it means the second I (i.e., a second self). And if you a creditor and have an outstanding judgment, you should familiarize yourself with the legal doctrine of alter ego. Legally speaking, an alter ego is where the court finds a...
What Happens When a Debtor Stops Making Payments?
Generally speaking, the creditor / debtor relationship starts out on good terms.Perhaps someone decides to loan someone else some money, maybe a friend, maybe a relative, maybe a small investment into a friend's business.Or maybe it is a business entering into a...
Collecting on a Judgment
As we have discussed, obtaining a money judgment in your favor is just the first step in the debt collection process. While the judgment is great news - you have a legal document stating that the other party owes you the money and you have a right to collect it - your...
Future Creditors and Asset Protection
In the world of post-judgment collection, creditors frequently encounter a debtor who in an effort to shield his/her assets transfers those assets to a trust for "asset protection." While creditor's counsel can generally enforce the judgment against the revocable...
What is an Affirmative Defense in a Collections Matter?
An affirmative defense is an allegation for justification for the defendant have acted or not acted as is alleged in the complaint. The defendant is simply arguing that he has a good reason for having done what is alleged in the complaint, and therefore should be...