California Civil Code Section 945.5

It is a good idea to stay on top of who your judgment belongs to. Whoever is the original judgment creditor, or the judgment's assignee of record, get the right to try to recover the judgment themselves or pick some other enforcement option. When a debtor has assets, an unrecorded assignment of judgment should not be left dangling.

When your debtor has successfully discharged the judgment with a bankruptcy filing, or has died, or moved out of the US, or is chronically broke without any chance of inheriting anything; then it probably does not matter if there is a loose judgment assignment. However, what if the debtor has, or could get some assets in the future? ?


A worst case scenario might start if you notarized and sent your assignment of judgment to a judgment recovery specialist who then spaced out. For example, the enforcer cancelled their PO box, changed their phone, and never filed your assignment to them with a court.

Later, you chose to either try to recover your judgment yourself, have someone else try to enforce the judgment, or assign your judgment to another entity. There is a small possibility that your previously incompetent judgment enforcer, might choose to file your old assignment at your court; and then that flaky enforcer would then own the judgment, and be the only one that could recover money from your judgment.

The chance of the scenario above happening to you are small. However, the bigger your judgment is, and the larger the available assets the debtor wins, earns, or inherits, the bigger chance that a loose assignment of judgment might quickly get filed. My articles are my opinions and are not, legal advice. I am a judgment broker, and not an attorney. If you ever want legal advice or a strategy to use, you should contact a lawyer.

What if you are in that type of situation, where you previously assigned your judgment, and your assignment was not ever filed with the court. How could you fix this? A easy way is to assign your judgment to someone else, because the first assignment recorded with the court wins. One other easy way, if you can locate the formerly incompetent enforcer, is to get your original copy of your notarized assignment, from the previous enforcer.

What if you cannot get the previous assignment of judgment returned to you, and don't want to once more assign your judgment? This gets more complicated then, as as far as I know, there is not any such thing as a "declaration to never let my judgment get assigned" which you could file at the court. One solution is to get your judgment recovered (by yourself, with a lawyer, or some other collection solution) as quickly as possible, perhaps settling with the debtor. After a judgment has been satisfied, it does not matter who owns your satisfied judgment.

Courts usually get things right, and occasionally get things wrong. I have heard that a few courts accept assignments which weren't notarized, which is not right. Notarizing an assignment gives it additional status. There can be more than one judgment assignees, however there may be only one assignee of record at a time.

In California, civil code of procedure (CCP), section 673 states an assignee of record must file with the court, an acknowledgment of assignment of the judgment. This acknowledgment needs to be made in the manner of an acknowledgment of a conveyance of real property, which means that an acknowledgment of assignment of judgment must be signed in the presence of a notary public, with a California all-purpose acknowledgment or the equivalent.

California Civil Code sections 945 and 945.5, specify how such assignments occur, and other statutes indicate the "first in time, first in right" concept. The filing of an acknowledgment of assignment is not required in order to create a valid transfer of the interest in the judgment. However, the filing of an acknowledgment of assignment of judgment gives the person that files it first, priority over all other assignees.

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