When you have troublesome tenants, sometimes you have no choice but to get them evicted. More often than not, this means that they leave owing you several months of rent money. Most landlords have no idea that this money can be recovered and the best part about it is that it can even be recovered years later.
What you need is something called a Court-ordered Money Judgment. The actual name of this particular document may change from state to state, but the job it does remains the same. When you file for eviction in a court and the case is decided in your favor, you can also get a money judgment. But this depends on either one of the following crucial things happening:
1. The court papers must have served to the tenant and the tenant must have received it personally
or
2. The tenant should have appeared in court.
Basically what this means is that the tenant must personally acknowledge that he has been accused of a violation of the law. If the court documents were mailed to the tenant or posted on the door of the property in question, the courts will not give you a money judgment.
The money judgment can then be used to extract money from the tenant. The document gives you the right to get whatever money that is owed to you from the evicted tenant’s assets. This can include bank accounts, wages, etc. Basically, any non-exempt asset is a fair target. In some states, the spouse’s assets also can be targeted. The document also helps you to record the judgment in county records which in turn, means that the evicted tenant will not able to buy any property in that county without settling their debt to you first.