@NikJ4 wrote:
What exactly does this mean?
NOTICE: YOU MUST SIGN AND FILE A "RELEASE OF JUDGMENT" FORM if and/or whenever the Defendant pays off the full judgment owed to you. A release form can be obtained at this office.
I have a judment and this was listed on the site for our county. Does this mean once it is paid, they will remove it from my credit report? Do I still need to get a motion to vacate? Also I am trying to contact the collection agency to see about doing a PFD.
It is for a credit card(Best Buy) which Palisades is collecting. Also, they still show the collection account as well as the judgement. Isnt that a double negative?
Message Edited by NikJ4 on 02-25-2010 10:17 PM
It means that once the judgment is paid they will have it marked as "satisfied," but that does not remove it from your credit report. The only way to have it removed from your credit report is for either the reporting time period to expire or for the court to vacate the judgment.
My understanding is that when the judgment is satisfied and you no longer owe the collection agency / judgment creditor, the CA trade line will be removed from your credit report.
Now, as far as as having the judgment vacated you need to understand that simply satisfying (i.e. paying) a judgment does not usually give grounds for having the judgment vacated in any but housing courts in select jurisdictions. Generally speaking, there are but a couple of dozen legally valid reasons why a judgment should be vacated and virtually all of them pertain to the original court lacking jurisdiction over the matter in one form or another. Ordinarily the judgment creditor, for obvious reasons, would never have justification for attacking the jurisdiction of the court which granted them the judgment in the first place.
That said, some courts are prone to overlooking legal grounds for vacating a judgment and doing you a "favor" by entertaining a Motion to Vacate once the judgment is satisfied. Again, in all but a very few instances, the court has absolutely no obligation to vacate a judgment for you.
The general process in filing a Motion to Vacate goes something like this: If you can convince the judgment creditor to file a Motion to Vacate for you, you've hit the lottery. Ordinarily, and for obvious reasons, it is the judgment debtor who files the motion along with documentation from the judgment creditor stating that they do not object or at least a commitment from the judgment creditor not to contest your motion. So, once you have the judgment satisfied, you file your Motion to Vacate hoping for no opposition from the judgment creditor and praying you've landed before a sympathetic judge. if and when the judge grants your motion, you can have the judgment removed from your credit report.
