Winning a court case and being awarded damages against a party does not necessarily mean that the court battle is over. Unless the losing party is willing to pay you on the judgment, you will have the obligation to collect it yourself. There are legal tools to help with the process, but there is no guarantee of success. The following is the general process for how you collect a judgment in Minnesota.

First, you need to docket the judgment. The court administrator enters your money judgment when the court orders it, and then dockets it once you take one more step. To get the judgment docketed, you (the judgment creditor) or your attorney files an affidavit identifying the judgment debtor: full name, occupation, place of residence, and post office address. On the Minnesota court forms this is the “Affidavit of Identification of Judgment Debtor” (Form JGM104). The court administrator then dockets the judgment upon that filing. From the time of docketing, your judgment becomes a lien on all real property the debtor owns (or later acquires) in that county. (Notice to the parties in the case that the judgment has been entered is a separate step: the court administrator sends a notice of entry under the rules of civil procedure.) Minn. Stat. § 548.09, subds. 1-2; Minn. R. Civ. P. 77.04.

After the judgment is docketed, you can ask the court administrator to issue a “Writ of Execution.” A writ of execution is a court order directed to the sheriff that enforces your judgment. In its most common form, it directs the sheriff to satisfy your money judgment, with interest, first out of the debtor’s personal property and, if that is not enough, out of the debtor’s real property. (The same statute also authorizes an execution for delivery of possession of specific real or personal property.) The execution may reach real property the debtor owned when the judgment was docketed in that county, or acquired at any time within ten years thereafter. To use the writ effectively, you need to know where the debtor keeps property and assets. Minn. Stat. § 550.02; Minn. Stat. § 550.04.

If you cannot find where the debtor’s assets are, you can obtain an “Order for Disclosure.” Once your judgment has been docketed in district court for at least 30 days and remains unsatisfied, you (through your attorney as an officer of the court) or the district court can order the debtor to disclose, on a form prescribed by the Supreme Court, the nature, amount, identity, and location of the debtor’s assets, liabilities, and personal earnings, including bank accounts. The debtor has only ten days after service to complete the form and mail it back to you. For a conciliation (small claims) court judgment docketed in district court, the parallel mechanism is Minn. Stat. § 491A.02, subd. 9. Minn. Stat. § 550.011.

If the debtor does not complete and return the form, you can seek a citation for civil contempt and ask the court for an “Order to Show Cause.” The court can hold a hearing and require the debtor to appear and explain the failure to disclose. If the debtor does not appear, the court may issue a warrant of arrest for constructive (civil) contempt. Because this is civil contempt for disobeying the disclosure order, and not imprisonment for the debt itself, the debtor can purge the contempt by completing and returning the form; where the omission is an act still within the debtor’s power, the debtor may be held until it is performed, and the debtor’s present ability to comply is the controlling issue. Where the underlying obligation is a consumer debt incurred primarily for personal, family, or household purposes and the contempt is a failure to comply with judgment-debtor disclosure, bail on a first violation must be set at $50 and returned to the debtor, so the debtor is released on that nominal bail rather than held until the form is done. Minn. Stat. § 588.04; Minn. Stat. § 588.12.

If you learn where the debtor banks, you can reach the account funds, but understand that Minnesota gives you two distinct remedies, not a single “Writ of Execution.” You can garnish the account by serving a garnishment summons on the bank as the third-party garnishee at any time after entry of the money judgment. Alternatively, you can obtain a writ of execution and have the sheriff levy on the bank funds, serving the writ on the financial institution with a third-party-levy notice and disclosure form. A writ of execution is the levy instrument; it does not itself garnish an account. You can also garnish nonexempt debts owed to the debtor, for example rent a tenant owes when the debtor is the landlord. Minn. Stat. § 571.71; Minn. Stat. § 551.04; Minn. Stat. § 571.73, subd. 3(2).

You can also garnish wages, but only within statutory limits. For an ordinary creditor judgment, Minnesota now caps wage garnishment on an income-based sliding scale of 10, 15, or 25 percent of disposable earnings, depending on the debtor’s weekly income relative to the minimum wage; this replaced the former flat 25 percent cap. Federal law independently caps garnishment at the lesser of 25 percent of disposable earnings or the amount by which weekly disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage. Minn. Stat. § 571.922; 15 U.S.C. § 1673.

Some things to keep in mind:

  • Some property and funds of the debtor are considered “exempt” and not subject to garnishment to satisfy a judgment, but you have to match the exemption to the right property. The debtor’s home is protected by the homestead exemption, which caps the homestead at 160 acres and currently protects up to $510,000 in value, or $1,275,000 if it is used primarily for agricultural purposes; those figures are inflation-indexed and adjust periodically. Minn. Stat. § 510.02.
  • Exempt funds and earnings (wages, need-based government assistance, traceable deposits of exempt funds, and certain retirement accounts) are instead protected by Minnesota’s property-exemption statute. Citing the homestead statute for exempt funds is a category error. Many of the dollar amounts in this statute adjust on July 1 of each even-numbered year, so confirm the current figures before relying on them. Minn. Stat. § 550.37 (and subd. 4a for the adjustment schedule); wage garnishment is further limited by Minn. Stat. § 571.922.
  • A judgment, and its lien, lasts ten years from the date the judgment is entered. Minn. Stat. § 548.09, subd. 1.
  • To extend it, you must commence a new action on the judgment against the debtor, and you must begin that new lawsuit within ten years after entry of the original judgment; a timely action yields a fresh judgment with its own ten-year life. Minn. Stat. § 541.04.
  • Once the judgment has been satisfied (paid in full), the court administrator enters the satisfaction in the judgment roll and notes it on the docket, discharging the judgment of record. Minn. Stat. § 548.15.