Andrew L. Quiat (“Andy”)

What Are My Chances Of Being Successful In Collection Of My Judgment?


People whom professional con artists prey upon, and who obtain a judgment, are in the smaller percentage of people who are ripped off. For a professional con artist, crime often does pay, and the bulk of the people they rip off never go through the trouble of obtaining a judgment. Just because you have obtained a judgment, doesn’t mean that it has to be paid, and fraudsters don’t generally come forward willingly to pay.

The chances of obtaining realization upon your judgment depends on your case. When you first walk into my office, I know nothing about you, and I know nothing about your debtor. You know far more than I at that point. We can determine the facts, but we can’t make them up. In this current political environment, that’s challenging for some people, but we can investigate. Depending upon the facts, we can ascertain where the debtor is, what the debtor has, and what the debtor claims he or she does not have but in fact controls. Then, together with you, we can assess a likelihood of recovery, and propose costs and timing. Every case is different for me. These are in essence custom crafted recovery efforts for you to realize upon the judgment you have had the diligence and tenacity to obtain already. If that doesn’t give you enough guidance in general, call my office or send me an email and we can start a discussion over your particular circumstances.

What Happens If My Debtor Files For Bankruptcy?

When we take any case, we always assume that during the course of a recovery effort to realize upon your judgment that the debtor will file for bankruptcy. We always do an assessment of your case from that context. A bankruptcy will sidetrack a recovery effort for up to 18 months. What we do in that circumstance is we want to know if we can file what’s called an adversary action, which is a separate lawsuit inside the bankruptcy. This asks the bankruptcy court to bar the debtor from either receiving a discharge of debt of any kind, or from discharging just your debt and letting them discharge everyone else. There are various reasons for doing one or the other, or both. We always make it very clear that a debtor may need to file for a bankruptcy.

There are times when we sit the debtor down, and tell them that they really do need to file for bankruptcy, but that they can’t afford to do it until they take care of us and then wait 90 days plus a day before filing bankruptcy. If they don’t do it that way, we are going to keep them from discharging any debt. There are other times when we say go ahead and file your bankruptcy, and we will file our adversary and bar them from discharging our debt. We’ll pick up the trail again in 18 months, and start learning what machinations and mischief they’ve been up to in the interim to gather assets from other people. We always make this assessment initially on the front end of the case. We always want to assess the quality of the facts of our case, with respect to the ability to prevail in that adversary action. If you just don’t have the necessary facts in your situation, the likelihood of our securing a recovery diminishes greatly, and we want you to know that on the front end. The other aspect of this is when we assess how long it’s been since the debtor filed his or her last bankruptcy, which the debtor can do once every seven years.

Disclaimer: This website contains general information about legal matters. The information is not legal advice, and should not be treated as such. Quiat Legal makes no representations or warranties in relation to the information on this website.

For more information on Chances Of Realizing A Judgment, an initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (720) 662-7192 today.

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