Daniel Gershburg

Many of my clients have a dilemma:  They have multiple judgments in their name and little or no money to pay them.  These judgments are usually several years old and have accrued thousands in fees and interest from the time the judgments were entered.  By the way, these judgments are “legitimate judgments”.  What I mean by that is the client isn’t disputing the amount or validity of the underlying debt and they were served with the court papers properly.  Instead the client know the judgments are accurate but they have little to no money to pay off these judgments.  In fact, many of them would not have done anything about the judgements, except for the fact that their bank accounts have been frozen or their wages garnished.  So what to do?  Well, one option is to try and settle with each creditor, however that solution is timely, costly, and many times leads to a default on the part of the client.  The other option is that the client simply file for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy.  The Bankruptcy is almost always cheaper than paying for the judgments, and the Bankruptcy itself will wipe the judgments off. Furthermore the client no longer has to deal with frozen bank accounts, wage garnishments, or the like as the Bankruptcy filing immediately stops all of the actions.  So before you decide to pay off those judgments, consider whether or not Bankruptcy may be a better option for you.