Did you know that approximately 80% of the civil judgments rendered in the U.S. are never fully enforced? It’s true. When judgments involve monetary awards, only 20% of the creditors ever get paid. There are several reasons explaining why, time being among them. The longer a creditor waits to get serious about collection, the harder collection becomes.

Judgment Collectors, a multi state collection agency that specializes in judgments, likes to say that time is the enemy in the collection game. Collection agencies prefer to get to work on judgments as quickly as possible so that judgment debtors do not have time to employ avoidance tactics. And employ them they do.

Ways to Avoid Paying

It is common knowledge among attorneys that most states apply statutes of limitation to civil judgments. On average, the statute of limitations for a domestic judgment is 7-10 years. If a creditor is unable to collect within that time frame, the judgment must either be renewed or allowed to expire. Now, think of that from the debtor’s perspective.

Judgment debtors look for ways to avoid paying. With the help of their attorneys, they look for ways to stall collection efforts in hopes of running out the clock. Unfortunately for creditors, debtors often succeed. Some are their favorite avoidance tactics include:

• providing incomplete or false employment information
• providing incomplete information about income and bank accounts
• being untruthful about current residency
• not providing accurate contact information
• moving and not providing or forwarding address
• not revealing or purposely hiding assets
• transferring ownership of assets to other people or entities.

Some of the avoidance tactics take time to implement. Therefore, it’s not unusual for debtors to be slow to cooperate in the early stages of collection in order to buy themselves time to employ the more complicated tactics, like transferring ownership of their assets.

A System that Protects Them

Judgment debtors have something else working in their favor: a system that protects them against aggressive collection efforts. The system is set up in such a way as to give debtors ample opportunity to delay. It gives them multiple opportunities to slow-walk any efforts they might make to appear as though they are cooperating. All the while, the creditor is left holding the bag.

Bringing in a collection agency from the very start minimizes the advantage debtors have. Here’s why: collection agencies with experience in judgments know the game just as well as debtors and their attorneys. They know all the tricks of the trade. They know all the avoidance tactics.

Where a creditor may not know how to search for hidden assets, collection agencies do. A creditor may not have any experience in skip tracing. Yet skip tracing is a normal practice for collection agencies.

Starting Fast Wins the Day

Collecting judgments is a lot like organized sports. You want to start fast and gain the advantage as early as possible. That is what wins the day. On the other hand, waiting to go after debtors with every available tool only makes collecting harder. The longer a creditor waits, the harder it gets.

Debtors count on creditors trying to be nice. They hope and pray creditors will be patient in the early stages of the collection process. And when they get what they want, they are granted time to start employing avoidance tactics. A creditor waiting too long gives the debtor a substantial head start that can be nearly impossible to overcome later on. The lesson here is don’t wait. As soon as the gavel falls, get working on collection.