FAQ’s Frequently Asked Questions
Can I hire an attorney to collect my judgment?
Sure, if you are ready to write a check for $1,000 to $5,000 for a retainer. Some attorneys will agree to an hourly rate. Most attorneys in Southern California have an hourly minimum ranging from a hard-to-find low of $195 to an average of $350. Many charge FAR more. That’s not the whole story. They will generally insist on you paying up-front for a ‘block of hours’ in advance: typically 10-hours.
That translates to $1,195 – #3,500 UP FRONT – given the typical span of hourly rates. Moreover, paying those fees does not mean any money will be collected for you. Here at Quarrystone Financial Services, you pay absolutely NOTHING other than a mandatory $10 notary fee to get us started collecting your judgment. We pay ALL collection expenses – even if we fail to collect. We do not get paid, unless you get paid!
Are you Attorneys?
No. We are Judgment Recovery Specialists. Judgment Collection IS ALL WE DO. Interestingly, almost 70% of our judgment collection clients ARE ATTORNEYS.
Attorneys are good at winning judgments in court, but generally don’t have the skills, investigators, process servers, asset locating specialists, time nor patience to chase down judgment debtors. Besides, their clients wouldn’t want to fund their pricey hourly rates with no guarantee of collection success. Since we are not licensed attorneys, we cannot offer our clients any legal advice.
Do you provide legal advice?
No. We are not attorneys and cannot provide any legal advice.
Do you provide clients legal services?
No. We are not attorneys and do not provide any legal services. Moreover, we don’t have “clients” in the sense of a law firm. People who come to us wanting to get some money collected on their judgment will assign their judgment(s) to us. Our relationship with our customers is governed by two documents:
- Acknowledgment of Assignment of Judgment – You assign your judgment to us using an “Acknowledgment of Assignment of Judgment,” an Court standard document. Your judgment then becomes “our judgment” for a length of time so we can we can appear in court, work with the court and the Sheriff’s office to collect from the debtor.
- Simple Agreement – The 2nd document is a simple agreement that outlines what we do and is written to protect both parties.
Do you work with attorneys?
More than 2/3’s of our collection assignments come from attorneys. Attorneys are our largest category of customer.
Quarrystone Financial Services will hire attorneys to represent our interests in the judgment in Court on occasion, but these attorneys are working for Quarrystone Financial Services and not for our customers. That said, any Courtroom successes made in Court by our attorneys almost always benefit our customers.
Why not use a collection agency?
Collection agencies are good in some situations, but judgment recovery is not one of them. You should not use a debt collection company. Frankly, you will be wasting precious time, good money after bad, and the chances of your ever recovering money with a collection agency are slim at best.
Collection agencies send letters and make phone calls to the debtor. What is in your mail box these days? Ours are filled unwanted coupons, real estate fliers, and credit card offers. Debt collection letters mailed to home addresses will be tossed unopened in the trash with the other unopened “junk” mail! Yes, collection agencies can report your judgment debtor to the credit bureaus, but that doesn’t really help you collect your money.
Collection agencies usually focus on collecting pre-judgment debts – not judgments. Unless they are experienced in using all the legal tools available to judgment recovery specialists, all they will do is waste your time, money, and allow grass to grow under your debtor. Better to hire professionals who will aggressively hunt down your debtor, their assets and USE THE LEGAL system to seize/garnish/lien the assets of the deadbeat who refuses to pay you!
Following the passage of the FDCPA Fair Debt Collection Practices Act way back in 1979, debtors can tell a third party debt collector to simply STOP CALLING, and they must comply… Then guess what, ALL phone calls cease, and your debtor simply tosses all their letters into the trash can unopened. ANY debt collection is stalled indefinitely. And the weeks, months, and years, roll by.
Is there a Guarantee that you will be successful?
No. Frankly, sometimes we discover there are no assets to seize following an exhaustive asset location search. However, if assets, a new employer, or other sources of income are uncovered, you can be confident we will do our best to enforce the judgment. Remember, we are extremely motivated! If you don’t get paid, we don’t get paid! This gives us a huge incentive to SUCCEED!!!!
Can you locate my debtor? — I can’t!
As professional judgment recovery specialist, licensed process servers in Los Angeles County, licensed private investigators on our team, we have access to specialized databases and information sources that provide all possible information about the Judgment Debtor and their assets. We are highly skilled in finding your Judgment Debtor if they have changed addresses or are hiding, locating their assets and seizing assets to satisfy your judgment.
OK, I’m interested. What kind of assets can you seize?
We can seize bank accounts, garnish wages, place liens on real estate or seize personal property such as automobiles, trucks, RVs, boats, jet skis, planes, and the like.
What if you can’t find any Judgment Debtor assets?
If there are no assets available, we can attempt to contact the debtor and negotiate a monthly payment plan. If that doesn’t work, we will check on the debtor again after a few months or so and see if their situation has improved, or be so annoying that they’ll want to begin paying their judgment debt just to make us “go away.”
Do I have to pay you any money up front?
No. All fees, costs and expenses incurred are covered by us…
PERIOD. The only cost to you is a mandatory $10 notary fee for the documents that we must file with the court.
How long till I see results?
There is no honest answer to that question. When and whether we recover anything depends on many different things. Among them are, whether or not the Debtor:
- Owns property
- Has a job and/or has a history of long employment
- Is married
- Has money in a bank account
- Is a “Deadbeat”, good for nothing/druggie with no aspirations for success in life
The potential factors that affect our ability to recover the judgment are so variable to make any speculation a wild guess at best.
That said, in many of our cases we see results as early as 2 to 3 months. The total time to recover an entire judgment can easily run 3-6 months to years. Each case is different, just like the people who are “judgment debtors”.
Please keep in mind. If the debtor was inclined to pay you what he owed, he would have already paid you what he owes you! The bottom line is, that the speed of the recovery process depends on how determined the you debtor is to resist fulfilling his obligation to pay. You are probably better able to answer that question than we are, because you have experience with this debtor.
Chances are we will be in your debtor’s face FAR MORE than you ever were following winning your judgment in court. Your debtor is going to get extremely tired of us — often to the point where they might just pay us (and you) to “go away”. That end result happens a lot for those we pursue.
How does judgment Recovery work with Quarrystone?
What are the mechanics of me hiring you? First we enter into a simply contract that details the specifics of the “purchase” of the your judgment. Then, you assign the judgment to us making us the “ASSIGNEE OF RECORD”. Once we file the assignment in Court, we have the legal right to investigate the judgment debtor and proceed with judgment recovery / enforcement. We then make payments to you based on funds recovered from the debtor per our agreement.