50-State Surveys › Judgment Lien Duration & Renewal Requirements by State
Judgment Lien Duration & Renewal Requirements by State
Once a creditor wins a money judgment in this state, how long does the judgment, and any lien it creates on real property, last, and how do you renew it before it expires?
51 of 51 jurisdictions verified
every entry statute-checked, oldest 2026-07-08
What this survey covers
Winning a lawsuit is only the beginning. A money judgment doesn't collect itself, and it doesn't last forever: every state puts a clock on how long a judgment can be enforced, and a separate clock, sometimes the same number, sometimes not, on how long a lien recorded against the debtor's real estate stays effective. Miss either deadline and the judgment (or the lien) can become worthless, no matter how clearly the debtor owes the money. This survey answers one question, state by state: how long does the judgment itself last, how long does a recorded lien last, and what does a creditor have to do to renew both before time runs out? Each state's page states the rule in plain English, quotes the statute it comes from, and shows the date we last verified the statutory text.
How to read the table
Each column is one feature of the state's judgment-and-lien timeline, answered the same way for every state, with the statutory citation compressed into the cell. The single most important column to read carefully is whether the judgment's own life and the recorded lien's life are the SAME number, in many states they are, or two genuinely different clocks, as in states that treat the recorded real-property lien as its own, separately renewed thing. Click a state for the full plain-English page: the rule dimension by dimension, the practical traps people actually hit, and the verbatim statutory text with official source links.
The patterns across all 51 states
With all 51 pages built, a few real patterns stand out. Most states, roughly 30, tie the recorded lien's life 1:1 to the judgment's own enforceability period, so renewing the judgment automatically (or through one combined filing) keeps the lien alive too; California, D.C., and Georgia all follow this majority shape. A real minority instead run the lien as a genuinely separate clock, disconnected from the judgment's own life: Michigan's lien has its own freestanding 5-year (once-renewable-to-10-year) term with no relation to the judgment's separate enforceability period; Texas's lien dies the instant the underlying judgment goes dormant, even mid-term, with no filing required to kill it; and New York runs a shorter 10-year lien against a 20-year rebuttable-presumption judgment life. Reading the "how long the judgment lasts" and "how long the lien lasts" columns as if they were always the same number is the single most common way to misread this table.
Renewal mechanism is the most varied dimension of all. Most states use a routine court application or refiling. A handful (Kansas, South Dakota) allow a sworn self-help affidavit with no court order at all. Michigan renews the lien by pure re-recording, with no underlying court filing. Vermont is the lone true outlier requiring an entirely new, independent lawsuit to renew or revive a judgment, rather than a motion in the existing case. Several states use a dormancy trigger instead of a flat renewal deadline, but even among those, the outer window to fix a dormant judgment varies sharply: Kansas forces a judge to release a judgment of record after 2 additional dormant years, while Wyoming gives a creditor a full 10 years after dormancy to revive it. And a few states (Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire) have no affidavit or motion-based renewal at all, only a court-permission gate to clear.
Multi-jurisdiction recording is overwhelmingly county-based, but it isn't universal: Alaska records by "recording district" rather than county, D.C. has a single citywide recording office and no counties to file in at all, and Vermont and New Hampshire both record town by town. A creditor tracking a debtor's real estate across state lines within any of these four needs a fundamentally different mental model than the county-by-county norm. Debt-type-specific renewal caps remain rare rather than the norm, California's 2023 reform capping renewal to a single 5-year term for certain small medical or personal-debt judgments against an individual is the clearest example found in the survey, not a pattern other states have widely copied.
Get this answered for your state
This survey compares every state side by side. Ezel applies your state's law to your specific situation and answers with citations to the statutes.
Scroll sideways in the table to see all columns →
| State | Governing law | How long the judgment itself lasts | How long a recorded lien lasts | How to renew | Renewal window | Recent changes or debt-type limits | What ends the lien early | Recording in more than one county |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama verified 2026-07-09 | Ala. Code § 6-9-1 (10-year execution window from entry); § 6-9-191 (judgment presumed satisfied after 10 years); § 6-9-190 (revival barred after 20 years from entry); § 6-9-192 (revival procedure via motion or action under the Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure); §§ 6-9-210 and 6-9-211 (certificate of judgment creates the real-property lien, 10-year term from the judgment date) |
Not a hard cutoff like some states: Alabama uses a rebuttable presumption. § 6-9-191 provides: 'If 10 years have elapsed from the entry of the judgment without issue of execution or if 10 years have elapsed since the date of the last execution issued, the judgment must be presumed satisfied, and the burden of proving it not satisfied is upon the plaintiff.' A creditor can overcome that presumption by reviving the judgment, but § 6-9-190 sets an absolute outer limit: 'A judgment cannot be revived after the lapse of 20 years from its entry.' No revival is possible after that point regardless of circumstances |
10 years from the date of the judgment itself (not the date the certificate was recorded), per § 6-9-211: the lien 'shall continue for 10 years after the date of such judgment.' Alabama has a distinctive extension for a lien tied up in active litigation: if an action to enforce or foreclose the lien is started within the 10 years but not finished before the 10 years run out, filing a lis pendens notice in the probate office keeps that specific property's lien alive until the action concludes, 'as if said 10-year period had not elapsed' |
Revival by 'appropriate motion or action under the Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure' (§ 6-9-192), a court filing, not a simple clerk-recorded affidavit. Reviving the judgment rebuts the 10-year presumption of satisfaction under § 6-9-191. Because § 6-9-190 bars any revival after 20 years from the ORIGINAL entry date (not 20 years from the revival), a judgment revived close to its 10-year mark has little to no time left for a second revival before hitting that absolute 20-year ceiling, in practice, this means a judgment can typically be meaningfully revived only once. An assignee who received the judgment in writing may revive it in their own name the same way (§ 6-9-196(d)) |
The revival motion needs to be filed before the 10-year presumption of satisfaction takes hold, but a federal court applying Alabama law has held that if the revival motion is filed within the 10-year period, the judgment doesn't lose its validity just because the court's ruling on that motion comes later, as long as the delay isn't the creditor's fault (Radiance Capital Receivables Twelve, LLC v. Campbell, No. 1:13-cv-238-TFM-C (S.D. Ala. 2024), applying §§ 6-9-190 and 6-9-191). The hard outer boundary is 20 years from the judgment's original entry: no revival is available past that point no matter what |
No debt-type carve-out was found in Alabama's judgment-lien statutes, and no pending 2025-2026 legislation touching judgment duration, revival, or the certificate-of-judgment lien scheme turned up in a state-bill search. The core §§ 6-9-1, 6-9-190, 6-9-191, 6-9-210, and 6-9-211 framework traces back largely unchanged to Alabama's 1975 Code recodification |
Payment: the creditor files a satisfaction of the judgment, and because the lien itself is created by a certificate recorded with the probate judge, clearing it from a specific property requires separately recording a release of that lien with the same probate judge's office, paying the underlying judgment alone doesn't automatically clear the probate-office record. Bankruptcy is notably NOT automatic here: § 6-9-211 states plainly that 'No insolvency proceedings or declaration of insolvency shall affect or impair such lien, except bankruptcy proceedings instituted within four months after the filing of the certificate of judgment for record', meaning a bankruptcy filed more than four months after the certificate was recorded does not, by that statute alone, wipe out an already-perfected Alabama judgment lien. Simple non-renewal also ends it: once 10 years pass with no revival, the judgment (and the lien tied to it) is presumed satisfied |
Yes. § 6-9-210 lets the judgment owner file a certificate 'in the office of the judge of probate of any county,' and § 6-9-211 makes clear the resulting lien covers only the property in the county where that specific certificate was filed. A certificate recorded in one Alabama county creates no lien on property the debtor owns in a different county: the creditor has to record a separate certificate with the probate judge in every county where lien coverage is wanted |
| Alaska verified 2026-07-09 | AS 09.30.010 (recording a judgment creates a real-property lien capped at 10 years from entry), AS 09.35.020 (court order required to execute after 5 years of inaction), AS 09.10.040(a) (10-year limit to sue on a judgment as a new cause of action), AS 09.30.300-.310 (satisfaction and its recordation) |
No fixed 'expiration': the judgment itself survives until satisfied, but two procedural gates control practical enforceability: after 5 years with no execution issued, no further writ may issue 'except by order of the court,' granted only if the court finds 'just and sufficient reasons for the failure to obtain the writ of execution within five years' (AS 09.35.020); separately, a brand-new lawsuit 'upon a judgment' is barred unless 'commenced within 10 years' (AS 09.10.040(a)) |
A recorded lien 'continues during the time execution may issue on the judgment or decree but for not more than 10 years from date of entry of the judgment' (AS 09.30.010): capped to the judgment's own 10-year outer limit rather than running as its own independent clock |
No self-help affidavit or routine motion exists. Two separate court-permission routes apply instead: (1) after 5 years with no execution issued, a motion showing 'just and sufficient reasons' for the delay is required before a new writ can issue (AS 09.35.020, Civil R. 69(d)); (2) once the lien's 10-year cap fully runs, 'the court may grant leave for issuance of execution,' and recording that leave order together with the judgment creates a brand-new lien dated from that recording (AS 09.30.010) |
No early filing window is set by statute for either gate: the 5-year mark is a threshold that triggers the need for a court motion (not a deadline with an earlier opening), and after the 10-year lien cap runs out, leave to execute may be sought at any time with no stated window |
No dollar-figure or debt-type carve-out was found. The one structural carve-out is by TYPE OF DEBTOR, not debt: judgments against 'a borough, city, or other public corporation' skip execution entirely: the creditor instead presents a certified copy for payment 'at any time within 10 years of the date of the judgment' (AS 09.30.040). No pending 2025-2026 legislation touching this scheme was found |
Satisfaction, entered either 'upon an execution returned satisfied, or upon an acknowledgment of satisfaction filed with the clerk' (AS 09.30.300(a)); a creditor who doesn't deliver that acknowledgment within the statutory window after a written demand is liable for damages plus a $100 statutory forfeiture (AS 09.30.300(b)). If the lien was created by recording a certified copy under AS 09.30.010, the satisfaction acknowledgment must separately identify the recording book/page or serial number to actually clear the lien of record (AS 09.30.310). Simply letting the 10-year lien cap run without a court-ordered revival also ends it |
Alaska has no counties: its recording unit is the 'recording district.' A certified copy 'may be recorded with the recorder of a recording district,' and the lien attaches only to property 'that is in the recording district' where it was recorded (AS 09.30.010); reaching property in another recording district takes a separate recording there, with no single statewide filing |
| Arizona verified 2026-07-09 | A.R.S. § 12-1551 (the judgment's own 10-year enforceability period and exemptions); § 12-1611 (renewal by filing a new lawsuit on the judgment); § 12-1612 (renewal by affidavit, the common path); § 12-1613 (docketing the renewal affidavit to renew the JUDGMENT, and separately recording it to continue the LIEN); § 33-961 (recording a judgment to create the lien in the first place); § 33-964 (the lien's own duration, homestead treatment, and satisfaction) |
10 years from entry, and renewable an unlimited number of times: each successful renewal restarts a fresh 10-year clock (A.R.S. § 12-1551(A)-(B)). This was only 5 years before an Aug. 3, 2018 amendment (2018 H.B. 2240) doubled it to 10; a judgment entered on or before Aug. 2, 2013 could only be renewed if that renewal happened by Aug. 2, 2018, or it's permanently expired now (§ 12-1551(D)(2)). Certain judgments never expire at all and need no renewal: criminal restitution orders, child support/spousal maintenance orders, and civil judgments obtained BY the state of Arizona itself (entered on or after Sept. 13, 2013, or already current on that date) (§ 12-1551(E)) |
The same 10-year NUMBER as the judgment (from 'the date it is given,' not from recording, per § 33-964(A)), but a genuinely separate mechanical clock, not automatically tied to the judgment's own renewal. Arizona's courts have squarely held that renewing the underlying judgment (by affidavit or by lawsuit) does not by itself extend an already-recorded lien: Hall v. World Sav. & Loan Ass'n, 189 Ariz. 495, 943 P.2d 855 (App. 1997). A civil judgment lien held by the state of Arizona, or a support judgment lien, has no expiration at all and 'remain[s] in effect until satisfied or lifted' (§ 33-964(A)) |
Two ways to renew the JUDGMENT: (1) filing a new lawsuit on it ('renewal by action,' § 12-1611); or (2) far more commonly, filing a sworn renewal affidavit with the clerk of the court that entered judgment (§ 12-1612): docketing that affidavit renews the judgment immediately, and 'an order of the court, or other action by a judge, is not necessary to complete the renewal' (§ 12-1613(B)). But renewing the JUDGMENT this way does not renew the recorded LIEN. To keep the lien alive, the creditor must separately record a certified copy of that same renewal affidavit with the county recorder in each county where the lien is recorded: 'No lien on or against the real property of the judgment debtor shall be continued by an affidavit of renewal until a copy of the affidavit, certified by the clerk of the court, is recorded in the office of the county recorder' (§ 12-1613(C)) |
For the affidavit path, the creditor may file 'within ninety days preceding the expiration of ten years from the date of entry of such judgment' (§ 12-1612(B)), and the same 90-day-before-expiration window applies to every later successive renewal, measured from the prior renewal's own filing date (§ 12-1612(E)). For the lawsuit path, § 12-1611 allows filing 'at any time within ten years after the date of the judgment': a full 10-year window, not just the last 90 days. Either way, once the judgment lapses without a timely renewal there is no statutory revival mechanism |
The single biggest recent change is already fully in force, not pending: 2018 H.B. 2240 (eff. Aug. 3, 2018) doubled Arizona's judgment/lien/renewal periods from 5 years to 10 across §§ 12-1551, 12-1611, 12-1612, 12-1613, and 33-964, and simultaneously exempted civil judgments obtained by the state of Arizona from any expiration or renewal requirement at all. A separate 2021 reform (H.B. 2617/S.B. 2617, eff. Jan. 1, 2022) raised the homestead exemption from $150,000 to $250,000 and, notably, reversed the older rule that a judgment lien could never attach to homestead property at all: judgments recorded before 2022 now DO attach to homestead property on any sale, transfer, or refinance completed on or after Jan. 1, 2022, subject to a detailed payment-priority and partial-release procedure (§ 33-964(B), (G)-(H)). No currently pending Arizona bill touches the core duration/renewal statutes; the only 2025-2026 bills mentioning 'judgment lien' concern HOA assessment liens, an unrelated subject |
Full payment, recorded affirmatively: the judgment creditor (or attorney) must record 'a satisfaction of judgment with the county recorder of the county in which the judgment is recorded' and separately enter 'a notation of satisfaction on the docket of the clerk of the superior court' (§ 33-964(E)): both steps, not just one. Simple non-renewal also ends it: because the lien's own 10-year clock runs independently of the judgment (see above), failing to separately record a renewal affidavit with the county recorder lets the lien lapse even if the judgment itself was properly renewed. Arizona also has a homestead-specific extinguishment path found in no other state surveyed so far: on a homestead property's sale, if the debtor's net proceeds would be at least 80% of the homestead exemption amount, a title insurer can send the judgment creditor a formal notice and, absent a timely objection, record a 'notice of partial release' that extinguishes the lien on that specific property (§ 33-964(B)) |
Yes. A judgment becomes a lien only in the county (or counties) where 'a certified copy of the judgment' is filed and recorded with that county's recorder (§ 33-961(A)): a creditor tracking a debtor's property across county lines must record separately in each one. The same rule carries over to renewal: a certified copy of the renewal affidavit 'may be recorded with the county recorder of any county wherein the original judgment has been previously filed or docketed' (§ 12-1613(E)), meaning the lien-continuing recordation has to happen separately in every county where the lien exists, not just the county where the case was filed |
| Arkansas verified 2026-07-09 | Ark. Code Ann. § 16-56-114 (10-year limitations period to sue on the judgment itself); § 16-65-117 (creates the real-property lien from docketing/filing and sets its own 10-year duration, expressly NOT extended by anything that tolls § 16-56-114); § 16-65-501, as rewritten by 2025 Act 986 (HB 1959) (the notice-based revival mechanism, replacing the former writ of scire facias) |
10 years from accrual to bring an action on the judgment (§ 16-56-114). Unlike the lien, this period is tolled and restarts with a new 10 years whenever the debtor makes a payment on the debt or the creditor causes process or execution, including a writ of garnishment, to issue (Primus Automotive Financial Services v. Wilburn, 2013 Ark. 258, 428 S.W.3d 480 (2013)) |
Also nominally 10 years from the date of the judgment, but a genuinely separate and stricter clock: § 16-65-117(d)(1)(B) states directly that 'an act or circumstance that may toll or renew the limitations period provided by § 16-56-114 for the underlying judgment shall not revive or extend the duration of a lien': a payment or execution that resets the judgment's own 10 years does nothing for the lien. The lien can only be extended by formally reviving it under § 16-65-501 before it expires (§ 16-65-117(d)(1)(A)(ii)) |
Since 2025 Act 986, revival is a filed notice, not a lawsuit or writ. The judgment creditor files a notice identifying the judgment debtor and creditor, the court and case number, the current balance after all payments and credits, and a statement that the creditor intends to maintain the lien (§ 16-65-501(a)). A copy goes to the judgment debtor by first-class mail at their last known address (§ 16-65-501(b)); if the debtor's whereabouts are unknown, the notice is posted at the county courthouse door for 4 weeks instead (§ 16-65-501(c)). This replaced the former 'scire facias' process, which required suing out a formal writ and, if the debtor couldn't be found, a court order and published notice |
No defined early window like some states use: the notice may be filed 'at any time before the expiration of the lien of a judgment' (§ 16-65-501(a)(1)). The hard outer limit is 10 years: a judgment may not be revived except within 10 years of its original rendition, or, if already revived once, within 10 years of the last revival notice's filing date. A timely-filed notice 'relates back' to its own filing date for measuring the next 10-year period |
2025 Act 986 (HB 1959, 95th General Assembly) is itself the recent reform: it abolished the writ of scire facias as the means of reviving a judgment lien and replaced it with the filed-notice process described above, effective in 2025 and already fully in force well before this page's verification date. No debt-type-specific carve-out (comparable to some other states' consumer-debt caps on renewal) was found in current Arkansas law, and no further bill on judgment-lien duration or revival was found pending; Arkansas's legislature does not hold a full regular session in even years |
Satisfaction of the judgment ends it: once satisfaction is entered in the judgment book, either automatically after execution, or within 60 days by the creditor's own written entry, or by court order compelling it, that entry 'shall forever discharge and release the judgment or decree' (§ 16-65-602), extinguishing the lien along with it. The other route is simple non-renewal: let the 10-year period (or the 10 years following the last revival) lapse with no timely notice filed, and both the judgment's enforceability and the lien end |
Yes. A judgment is only a lien on real estate in the county where it was rendered, and only automatically if the rendering court's clerk keeps permanent judgment records there; to reach a debtor's property in any OTHER county, the creditor must file a certified copy of the judgment with that county's circuit clerk, who dockets and indexes it to create the lien there (§ 16-65-117(a), (b), (c)). On revival, a judgment recorded in more than one county needs the new revival notice separately recorded in each additional county's real property records: otherwise the revival isn't effective there and the lien in that county can't be continued (§ 16-65-501(f), as added by Act 986) |
| California verified 2026-07-08 | CCP §§ 683.020 (judgment life), 697.310 (real-property lien), 683.180 (lien renewal) |
10 years from entry; unlimited renewals unless the debt-type carve-out applies (CCP § 683.020) |
10 years from entry, extended only if the judgment is renewed AND a certified copy of the renewal is separately recorded in that county (CCP § 697.310(b), § 683.180(a)) |
File an Application for Renewal of Judgment with the court that entered it; to keep a real-property lien alive, also record a certified copy of that renewal application with the county recorder (CCP §§ 683.120(a), 683.180(a)) |
No fixed early window: file any time before the current 10-year period runs out; miss the deadline by even a day and the judgment cannot be renewed (CCP § 683.130(a)) |
Since 1/1/2023: a judgment against a natural person for medical debt under $200,000 or personal debt under $50,000 (excluding tort, fraud, or unpaid-wage judgments) can be renewed only once, for 5 years (CCP §§ 683.110(c), 683.120(c)) |
Recording a satisfaction, release, or subordination extinguishes the lien as a matter of record; it also simply lapses if not timely renewed (CCP §§ 697.400, 697.310(b)) |
Yes: an abstract must be recorded separately in every county where the debtor owns real property, and renewed separately in each one (CCP § 697.310(a)) |
| Colorado verified 2026-07-09 | C.R.S. § 13-52-102 (creates the lien via recorded transcript, sets its 6-year duration, and splits judgment enforceability into 20 years for district court vs. 6 years for county court); Colo. R. Civ. P. 54(h) (district court revival procedure); Colo. R. County Ct. Civ. P. 354(h) (near-identical county court revival procedure) |
A district court judgment may be enforced by execution for 20 years from entry; 'after twenty years from the entry of final judgment in any court of this state, the judgment shall be considered as satisfied in full, unless so revived' (§ 13-52-102(2)(a)). County court judgments entered on or after July 1, 1981 get only 6 years before the same 'considered satisfied in full' rule applies (§ 13-52-102(2)(b)(I)): a genuinely shorter track than district court judgments, not just a shorter lien |
6 years from the judgment's ENTRY date, not from when the transcript is recorded (§ 13-52-102(1)). A district court judgment's lien (6 years) is therefore a genuinely shorter, separately-running clock than the judgment's own 20-year enforceable life; for a county court judgment the two numbers happen to match at 6 years each. The lien itself doesn't exist at all until a certified transcript is actually recorded in a specific county, 'from the time of recording such transcript, and not before', but delaying that recording still eats into the same 6-year window measured from entry, it doesn't extend it |
File a Motion for Revival of Judgment alleging the judgment's date and the amount that remains unsatisfied (Rule 54(h)/354(h)). The clerk then issues a Notice to Show Cause requiring the debtor to respond within 14 days of service; if the debtor answers, the court tries and resolves any issue raised; if not (or if the debtor's challenge fails), the court enters an Order for Revival. Getting that order revives the JUDGMENT, but doesn't by itself keep the LIEN alive: the creditor still has to record a certified transcript of the revived judgment with the clerk and recorder in the same county 'before the expiration of such lien' to continue lien coverage there for another matching period: a two-step process (court revival + county recording), similar in spirit to states that separate renewing the judgment from renewing the lien |
No earliest-filing window is set, a revival motion can be filed any time the judgment remains enforceable. Colorado's own court instructions (form JDF 112) stress filing well ahead of the deadline because 'the Court must rule on the revival at least one day prior to the expiration date,' and the debtor has a full 14 days to respond to the show-cause notice before that can happen. Rule 54(h) contemplates serial revivals, 'Revived judgments may themselves be revived in the manner herein provided', with each revival itself required to be entered within a further specified window tied to the judgment it revives |
No 2025-2026 legislative amendment found to § 13-52-102 or to Rules 54(h)/354(h). No debt-type-specific carve-out (medical debt, small personal-debt judgments, etc.) was found in Colorado's judgment-lien duration or renewal rules: unlike some states, the same 6-year lien/revival framework applies uniformly regardless of the underlying debt type |
Satisfaction of the underlying judgment: 'The lien of any judgment shall expire if the judgment is satisfied or considered as satisfied as provided in this section' (§ 13-52-102(1)): tying the lien's end directly to payment or to the judgment being deemed satisfied by law. Simple non-renewal also ends the lien on its own at the 6-year mark, even if the underlying judgment (on its separate, longer district-court track) remains enforceable by other means. Judgments for child support/maintenance liens and restitution liens are expressly carved out to their own separate governing statutes rather than this section |
Yes. The lien attaches only 'in the county where such transcript of judgment is recorded' (§ 13-52-102(1)): a creditor must record a certified transcript separately in every county where the debtor owns or later acquires property. On revival, Rule 54(h) requires the SAME county-by-county discipline: the certified transcript of the revived judgment must be filed 'in the register of actions with the clerk and recorder of the appropriate county' before the old lien in that particular county expires, or continuous lien coverage there is lost |
| Connecticut verified 2026-07-09 | Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-598 (the judgment's own enforceability period, execution and action deadlines, plus a capped revival motion); § 52-380a (creates the real-property lien via a certificate recorded with the town clerk, and separately sets the LIEN's own 20-year/10-year expiration and foreclosure-based extension); § 52-380c (automatic extinguishment once § 52-380a's time limit runs); § 52-380d (voluntary release). Connecticut runs the judgment's own life and the recorded lien's life as genuinely separate clocks, each with its own distinct extension mechanic, neither is simply 'renewed' by filing a form |
20 years from entry to issue an execution, 25 years from entry to bring an action based on the judgment (10 and 15 years, respectively, for a small-claims judgment) (§ 52-598(a)-(b)). A 'motion to revive' can be filed with the Superior Court before the applicable period runs out, but revival is capped hard: no order reviving a judgment may extend enforceability beyond the original 20/25-year ceiling set by the statute: unlike states that let renewal restart the clock indefinitely, Connecticut's revival motion can only confirm the judgment is still alive within its one fixed lifespan, never extend that lifespan itself |
A separate clock from the judgment's own outer limit: a recorded lien 'shall expire twenty years after the judgment was rendered, except any judgment lien recorded with respect to a small claims action shall expire ten years after the judgment was rendered' (§ 52-380a). For an ordinary judgment the lien's 20-year figure happens to match the judgment's own 20-year execution deadline, but the two are extended through completely different mechanisms (see renewal_mechanism), so they are not the same clock in any functional sense |
Not a filing, litigation. The lien statute offers no renewal affidavit or renewal motion; the only way to extend a lien past its 20-year (or 10-year small-claims) deadline is to affirmatively commence an action to FORECLOSE the lien, handled 'in the same manner as mortgages on the same property' (§ 52-380a(c)), and record a notice of lis pendens on the town land records before the deadline hits (§ 52-380a). Separately, the underlying judgment can be kept enforceable by a 'motion to revive' filed with the Superior Court before its own 20/25-year deadline, a different filing protecting a different clock, and, as noted above, one that can't push the judgment past its own hard ceiling either |
No early-filing floor for either clock. For the lien, the foreclosure action and lis pendens simply must happen before the 20-year (or 10-year) mark runs out. For the judgment itself, the revival motion must be filed 'prior to the expiration of any applicable period of time to enforce such judgment': again no earliest date, just a hard 20/25-year (or 10/15-year) backstop with no grace period, and critically, no ability to push past that ceiling even with a timely, granted revival motion |
No recent change to the duration figures themselves. The most recent amendment to the lien statute, 2024's P.A. 24-108, restructured § 52-380a's subsections and extended the state's Ezequiel Santiago Foreclosure Mediation Program notice requirements to judgment-lien foreclosures (previously limited to ordinary mortgage foreclosures): a procedural consumer protection, not a timing change. The small-claims 10-year/15-year figures (shorter than the ordinary 20-year/25-year rule) are the one debt-type-style distinction built into both § 52-380a and § 52-598. No pending bill touching either section was found for the current session |
Three routes. (1) Automatic extinguishment: once § 52-380a's time limit runs with no timely foreclosure action and lis pendens on file, the expired lien 'is automatically extinguished,' and the statute specifies that a stale, unreleased lien still sitting on the land records 'in no way affects the record owner's title nor the marketability' of the property (§ 52-380c). (2) An affirmative release: the creditor or their attorney can sign a written release instrument, which the town clerk notes and indexes (§ 52-380d). (3) Redemption: because a judgment lien forecloses like a mortgage, a debtor can redeem the property to end the lien the same way a mortgage debtor would (§ 52-380a(c)) |
Connecticut has no counties for land-records purposes: real property recording is organized by TOWN. A judgment lien 'may be placed on any real property by recording, in the town clerk's office in the town where the real property lies' (§ 52-380a(a)), so a creditor tracking a debtor's property across multiple Connecticut towns needs a separate certificate recorded in each one. A narrow relation-back rule applies: if the lien is recorded within 4 months of judgment on property already attached earlier in the same lawsuit, the lien's priority dates back to that earlier attachment (§ 52-380a(b)) |
| Delaware verified 2026-07-09 | 10 Del. C. §§ 4711 (10-year real-property lien and its renewal), 4713 (execution on real estate barred once the lien is lost), 5072 and 9581 (5-year limit on issuing execution without reviving the judgment by scire facias) |
No fixed statutory expiration on the judgment itself, but an execution can't issue more than 5 years after the judgment was entered (or after the last execution, or after an installment fell due) unless the judgment is first revived by a writ of scire facias (§§ 5072(a), 9581(a)) |
10 years from the day the judgment is entered or recorded in Superior Court (or from when the money becomes due, if later); a general lien, including one for costs or one favoring the state, is capped the same way unless renewed (§ 4711(a), (b)) |
Either (1) a written agreement extending the lien for another 10 years, in the statute's own suggested wording ("It is agreed that the lien of this judgment shall be extended for the term of 10 years"), signed by the parties, and by anyone who bought the land from the debtor after judgment, and filed with the prothonotary, or (2) suing out a writ of scire facias before the 10 years run out (§ 4711(a)) |
No early filing window is set: the agreement or scire facias must happen before the current 10-year term expires; if a scire facias is already pending when the 10 years run out, the lien continues until that proceeding is finally decided (§ 4711(a)) |
Since October 21, 2022, an automatic real-property lien created by a criminal restitution judgment runs on its own shorter clock: it expires 7 years after the convicted person sells, transfers, or otherwise loses ownership of that specific parcel, rather than the ordinary 10-year civil-judgment term (§ 4711(c), (d)) |
If not renewed by agreement or scire facias before the 10 years run out, the lien is simply lost, and real estate can no longer be seized on execution for that judgment after that point (§ 4713); this subchapter doesn't set out a separate satisfaction-of-judgment recording step |
Yes: the lien attaches automatically only to real estate in the county where the Superior Court judgment was entered; reaching a debtor's property in another county takes obtaining a writ of testatum fieri facias and recording it with that county's prothonotary (§ 4709(a)) |
| District of Columbia verified 2026-07-09 | D.C. Code § 15-101 (12-year enforceable period for the judgment itself), § 15-102 (recording a judgment with the Recorder of Deeds creates the real-property lien, lasting as long as the judgment is in force), § 15-103 (a revival order extends both the judgment and its lien together for another 12 years) |
12 years 'from the date when an execution might first be issued thereon, or from the date of the last order of revival thereof' (§ 15-101(a)); time during which enforcement is stayed by agreement, court order, or an appeal doesn't count against the 12 years. At expiration, 'the judgment or decree shall cease to have any operation or effect': no new suit on it, no revival, no execution (§ 15-101(b)) |
Tied directly to the judgment's own life, not a separate clock: a lien created by recording 'continue[s] as long as the judgment, decree, or recognizance is in force or until it is satisfied or discharged' (§ 15-102(b)) |
A motion to revive filed with the court that entered the judgment, not a sworn self-help affidavit and not a separate re-recording. A single 'order of revival' granted on that motion 'extends the effect and operation of the judgment or decree with the lien thereby created and all the remedies for its enforcement for the period of twelve years from the date of the order' (§ 15-103), one filing revives both the judgment and its real-property lien together |
No early filing window is set by statute: a motion to revive can be filed any time before the 12-year period runs out. The D.C. Court of Appeals has held the 12-year period is a waivable statute of limitations, not a jurisdictional cutoff, and that a revival motion filed before the deadline is timely even if the court doesn't actually sign the revival order until after the 12 years expire, so long as the creditor allowed the court a reasonable time to act (National Bank of Washington v. Carr, 831 A.2d 393 (D.C. 2003), following Michael v. Smith, 221 F.2d 59 (D.C. Cir. 1955)) |
No debt-type or dollar-amount carve-out was found in D.C. Code Title 15, Chapter 1. A search of the current D.C. Council period's legislation for 'judgment lien' and 'judgment execution' turned up nothing touching this scheme |
Satisfaction or discharge of the underlying judgment ends the lien 'as long as the judgment...is in force or until it is satisfied or discharged' (§ 15-102(b)); in practice a satisfied judgment is cleared of record by filing a praecipe of satisfaction with the court and recording it with the Recorder of Deeds. Simply letting the 12-year period lapse without a timely revival motion also ends both the judgment and the lien |
Not applicable in the way most states structure it: the District of Columbia has no counties. A single certified copy recorded in the one Office of the Recorder of Deeds of the District of Columbia creates a lien reaching all of the debtor's qualifying real estate anywhere in the District, present or later-acquired (§ 15-102(a)) |
| Florida verified 2026-07-08 | Fla. Stat. §§ 55.081 (20-year outer limit on any lien), 55.10 (10-year recorded lien, renewable once), 95.11(1) (20-year limitations period for an action on the judgment itself) |
An action on the judgment may be brought for 20 years from entry (§ 95.11(1)); no dormancy or periodic writ-of-execution requirement shortens or resets this |
10 years from recording (7 years if first recorded 7/1/1987-6/30/1994), but never beyond 20 years from the judgment's own entry regardless of renewal (§§ 55.10(1), 55.081) |
Re-record a certified copy of the judgment, together with a simultaneously recorded affidavit stating the lienholder's current address, before the existing lien expires; the extension's clock runs from the re-recording date (§ 55.10(2)) |
No early filing window specified: re-record any time before the current lien (or its one extension) expires; the 20-year-from-entry ceiling in § 55.081 applies no matter when re-recording happens (§ 55.10(2)-(3)) |
No debt-type carve-out found for the real-property lien; 2022-2024 legislative activity (HB 27/Ch. 2023-300, SB 984/Ch. 2024-233) instead reformed the separate PERSONAL-property judgment lien certificate system (§ 55.202 et seq.), outside this survey's real-property scope |
Satisfaction of the judgment, or simply letting the 10-year term (or its one 10-year extension) lapse without timely re-recording; a lien never attaches at all if the required address or address affidavit is missing (§ 55.10(1), (3)) |
Yes: a judgment 'becomes a lien on real property in any county when a certified copy of it is recorded' in that county's official records, and each county's lien (and its renewal) runs independently (§ 55.10(1)) |
| Georgia verified 2026-07-09 | O.C.G.A. § 9-12-80 (a judgment's general dignity, binding property from the judgment date); § 9-12-86(b) (a real-property lien specifically requires recording in the county where the property sits); § 9-12-60 (7-year dormancy trigger); § 9-12-61 (3-year window to revive after dormancy); § 9-13-80 (canceling/marking an execution satisfied) |
No flat expiration written into the statute. A judgment 'shall become dormant and shall not be enforced' once 7 years pass after entry without a qualifying renewal action, an execution issued and entered, a levy entry, or a bona fide public enforcement effort filed (§ 9-12-60(a)), and each such action 'shall institute a new seven-year period' (§ 9-12-60(b)), so successive renewals can keep a judgment alive indefinitely. If it DOES go dormant, the window to fix it is comparatively narrow: revival 'by an action or by scire facias' must happen 'within three years from the time it becomes dormant' (§ 9-12-61), Georgia courts have read §§ 9-12-60(a)(1) and 9-12-61 together as creating a 10-year outer limit for a judgment that was never renewed even once |
Georgia's general rule says a judgment 'shall bind all the property of the defendant ... both real and personal, from the date of such judgment[]' (§ 9-12-80), but for REAL property specifically, that's overridden: 'No judgment ... or any writ of fieri facias ... shall in any way affect or become a lien upon the title to real property until the judgment ... or writ of fieri facias is recorded in the office of the clerk of the superior court of the county in which the real property is located' (§ 9-12-86(b)), confirmed by Synovus Bank v. Kelley, 310 Ga. 205 (2020) (the lien's priority dates from recording, not from the judgment). Once recorded, the real-property lien runs on the same 7-year dormancy clock as the underlying judgment (§ 9-12-60), there's no separate, shorter lien-only duration |
Any one of three acts keeps a judgment, and its recorded real-property lien, from going dormant: issuing a writ of execution ('fi fa') and entering it on the county's general execution docket, having an officer's levy entry made and dated on that docket, or filing (and having the clerk docket) written notice of a bona fide public effort to enforce it (§ 9-12-60(a)). If dormancy has already set in, none of those work anymore, the creditor instead has to formally renew or revive the judgment 'by an action or by scire facias' (§ 9-12-61) |
For a judgment that hasn't gone dormant yet, a qualifying § 9-12-60(a) action must occur before 7 years elapse from the judgment (or the prior renewal), there's no separate early-filing window. For a judgment that HAS already gone dormant, revival by action or scire facias must happen 'within three years from the time it becomes dormant' (§ 9-12-61), a notably shorter post-dormancy grace period than states like Ohio (10 years) or Illinois (up to 20 years from original entry) |
No debt-type-specific renewal cap comparable to Illinois's 2026 consumer-debt reform was found. Georgia's one built-in carve-out runs the other direction: the dormancy rule 'shall not apply to judgments or orders for child support or spousal support' (§ 9-12-60(d)): those obligations aren't subject to the 7-year dormancy clock at all |
Once the debt is fully paid, 'the plaintiff in execution or his or her attorney shall timely direct the clerk to cancel the execution and mark the judgment satisfied,' due 'not later than 30 days following the date upon which the execution was fully satisfied' (§ 9-13-80(a)); missing a 60-day outer deadline gives the debtor a private right of action, with presumed damages of $100 (actual damages up to $500) plus possible attorney's fees (§ 9-13-80(b)). Short of a filed satisfaction, the lien also simply lapses on its own once the judgment goes dormant under § 9-12-60 without a timely renewal |
Yes. A judgment/writ of fi fa only becomes a lien on real property in the specific county where it's recorded with that county's clerk of superior court (§ 9-12-86(b)); reaching a debtor's property in a different Georgia county requires recording the writ of fi fa there too, and each county's recording is tracked separately for dormancy-prevention purposes |
| Hawaii verified 2026-07-09 | Haw. Rev. Stat. § 636-3 (creates the real-property lien by recording with the Bureau of Conveyances; ties its duration directly to the underlying judgment's own enforceability, and covers satisfaction); § 657-5 (the 10-year presumed-paid rule for the judgment itself, the extension procedure, and the absolute 20-year ceiling); § 657-5.5 (exempts child-support judgments from § 657-5 entirely) |
Every judgment is 'presumed to be paid and discharged' 10 years after it was rendered, unless the creditor gets a court-granted extension (§ 657-5). No action to enforce the judgment can be commenced after that 10-year mark (or after an extension's own 10-year period) runs out. Hawaii courts treat this as a conclusive presumption once it applies: the judgment, and everything that comes with it, is legally dead, not just harder to collect (Fisher v. Fisher, 82 Haw. 197, 921 P.2d 117 (1996)). One major carve-out: judgments for child support, including arrears, are enforceable until paid in full, with NO 10-year or 20-year limit at all (§ 657-5.5) |
No separate number: the lien's life is expressly tied to the underlying judgment's own enforceability: 'No such lien shall continue beyond the length of time the underlying judgment, order, or decree is in force' (§ 636-3). So the lien lasts exactly as long as the judgment does under § 657-5's 10-year (or extended) window, and dies automatically the instant the judgment itself lapses, with no separate lien-specific filing or expiration event |
A court motion to extend the judgment, not a self-executing affidavit or a separate lien-renewal filing. The creditor files either a non-hearing motion or a hearing motion asking the court to extend the life of the judgment or decree, and Hawaii courts require the debtor be given notice of that motion before an extension can be granted, even a defaulted or non-appearing debtor is entitled to notice under § 657-5, which controls over the general civil-procedure notice rules (Enos v. Pacific Transfer & Warehouse, 120 Haw. 1, 200 P.3d 370 (2008)). There's no separate act needed to renew the real-property lien itself, because the lien's life is defined entirely by reference to the judgment's own life under § 636-3, extending the judgment automatically extends the lien too |
An extension may be sought any time, but 'No extension of a judgment or decree shall be granted unless the extension is sought within ten years of the date the original judgment or decree was rendered' (§ 657-5), so the motion has to be filed before the running 10-year window (from the ORIGINAL judgment, not the most recent extension) closes. There is a hard outer ceiling regardless of how many extensions are sought: 'A court shall not extend any judgment or decree beyond twenty years from the date of the original judgment or decree.' Hawaii courts have held that where a judgment is later amended, the extension clock runs from whichever version of the judgment actually 'created the rights' being extended, a materially amended judgment restarts the calculation, but a merely technical or non-substantive amendment does not (Fujimoto v. Au, 121 Haw. 59, 214 P.3d 598 (2009)) |
One debt-type carve-out is already built into current law, and it's a significant one: child-support judgments, including judgments for reimbursement or other arrears, are exempt from § 657-5 entirely and remain enforceable until paid in full, with no 10-year or 20-year cutoff (§ 657-5.5, added 1997 and amended 2021). No bill affecting §§ 636-3, 657-5, or 657-5.5 was found pending in a live legislative bill search |
Satisfaction: once a judgment, order, or decree is fully paid, the creditor (or the creditor's attorney of record) must, at the debtor's expense, 'execute, acknowledge, and deliver to the debtor a satisfaction thereof,' which the debtor can then record with the Bureau of Conveyances (§ 636-3). Beyond satisfaction, the lien simply expires on its own the moment the underlying judgment's own enforceability period runs out under § 657-5: letting the 10-year (or extended, up to the 20-year ceiling) window close ends the lien automatically, with no separate release needed to make that happen |
No, and Hawaii is a genuine outlier here because it doesn't have county-by-county real-property recording at all for this purpose. A judgment lien is created by recording a certified copy of the judgment with the state's single, centralized Bureau of Conveyances (§ 636-3), one statewide recording covers the debtor's real property everywhere in Hawaii, unlike the county-recorder systems most other states use. A separate, narrower rule applies only to land registered in the Torrens-style Land Court system: recording there follows chapter 501's own registration procedure (§§ 501-241 to 501-248) rather than the Bureau of Conveyances process, but it's still a single statewide system, not a per-county one |
| Idaho verified 2026-07-09 | Idaho Code § 10-1110 (creates the real-property lien by recording a transcript or abstract in a county, sets its 10-year duration); § 10-1111 (the court-ordered renewal mechanism, extending the lien 10 more years per renewal); § 5-215 (the separate 11-year statute of limitations on suing to enforce the underlying judgment); § 10-1115 (an additional, statutory way to pay off and satisfy a judgment directly through the court clerk) |
11 years from entry, under the general civil statute of limitations for 'an action upon a judgment or decree of any court of the United States, or of any state or territory within the United States' (§ 5-215(1)). This is a genuinely different number than the LIEN's own life (10 years): Idaho is a state where the two clocks don't match on their own. An order renewing judgment resets both: it restarts the lien's 10-year clock from the order's date AND, per § 10-1111, 'begins anew the time limitation for an action upon a judgment set forth in section 5-215' |
10 years from the date of the underlying judgment for an ordinary money judgment, not from when it's recorded (§ 10-1110). Two debt-type variations exist within the same section: a child-support lien continues until 10 years after the death or emancipation of the last child owed support (not a flat 10 years from judgment), and a lien from a recorded crime-victim restitution order continues for 20 years, double the ordinary term. A renewal under § 10-1111 creates a fresh 10-year lien running from the renewal ORDER's date, not the original judgment date, though the renewal order 'maintains both the date of the original judgment and the priority of collection thereof,' so the lien keeps its original place in line even as its expiration date moves forward |
A court motion, not a self-executing filing. Before the lien (or its most recent renewal) expires, the creditor moves the court that entered the judgment for an 'order renewing judgment' (§ 10-1111(1)). A parallel, separate motion procedure exists for child-support judgments (§ 10-1111(2)), which doesn't change how the underlying support judgment is enforced but does renew its own lien the same way. Once granted, 'the order renewing judgment may be recorded in the same manner as the original judgment', so recording the new order in the county recorder's office is the second, separate step that actually re-establishes the lien there |
No early-filing floor, the statute allows the renewal motion 'at any time prior to the expiration of the lien created by section 10-1110... or any renewal thereof,' so a creditor can move for renewal any time during the running 10 years. The hard cutoff is letting the lien (the current one, whether original or already-renewed) actually expire; miss it and there's nothing left to renew. Because the judgment's own 11-year enforceability window is longer than each 10-year lien term, a creditor who lets the lien lapse without renewing still has, in principle, roughly a year of the underlying judgment's life left to sue on it directly, but the real-property lien itself is gone for that stretch unless a fresh renewal order is obtained and recorded before the next deadline |
Idaho's 10-1111 renewal statute was substantially rewritten by 2018 Idaho Session Laws ch. 284 (S1225), effective 2018-07-01 and already long in force: it added the separate child-support-judgment renewal track in subsection (2) and clarified that a renewal order preserves the original judgment's date and collection priority. No bill affecting §§ 10-1110, 10-1111, or 5-215 was found pending in the current (68th Legislature, 2026 Second Regular) session via a live bill search. Built-in debt-type carve-outs already in current law: child-support liens run to 10 years past the last child's emancipation or death (not a flat 10 years from judgment), and crime-victim restitution liens get a flat 20 years, double the ordinary term |
Satisfaction of the underlying judgment ends the lien: § 10-1110 itself says the lien continues for its term 'unless the judgment be previously satisfied.' Idaho also gives a specific statutory payment-and-release route: § 10-1115 lets anyone who owes the judgment, or anyone with an interest in property the judgment liens, pay the amount due directly to the clerk of the court that rendered it; the clerk must then 'release and satisfy such judgment upon the records of said court and the county,' and if the judgment was also docketed in another county, a certified copy of that release can be recorded there too. This supplements, rather than replaces, the ordinary satisfaction procedure under Idaho court rule. Beyond satisfaction, the lien also simply expires on its own at the end of its 10-year term (or a renewed term) if the creditor never seeks a renewal order, and a stay of enforcement pending an appeal separately suspends the lien's running under § 10-1110's own text |
Yes, the lien is created only in the county where a transcript or abstract of the judgment is actually recorded ('may be recorded with the recorder of any county... and from the time of such recording, and not before, the judgment so recorded becomes a lien,' § 10-1110), so a creditor tracking a debtor's property across county lines has to record a separate transcript in each county. Renewal follows the same per-recording logic: § 10-1111 says the renewal order 'may be recorded in the same manner as the original judgment,' and § 10-1115's satisfaction procedure explicitly contemplates a judgment 'entered in the records or docketed in any other county than the county in which it was rendered', confirming Idaho treats each county's recording as its own independent lien that needs its own renewal filing there, not one statewide act |
| Illinois verified 2026-07-09 | 735 ILCS 5/12-101 (7-year real-property lien on recording); § 12-108 (7-year enforcement limit, extendable by revival); § 2-1602 (revival procedure, including the consumer-debt-judgment carve-out added by P.A. 104-120, eff. 2026-01-01); § 13-218 (20-year outer limit on revival, also carved out for consumer debt judgments) |
Ordinary judgments: no flat expiration as a debt, but the judgment becomes dormant (unenforceable) 7 years after entry unless revived, and a revival petition may be filed 'at any other time within 20 years after its entry', so successive revivals can keep it alive up to a 20-year outer limit from the original entry (735 ILCS 5/12-108(a), 2-1602(a), 13-218). Consumer debt judgments (a natural person's personal/family/household debt, excluding bodily-injury judgments and judgments jointly owed with a business) follow a different, newer schedule effective 2026-01-01: one entered 2020-2025 may be revived only within 10 years of entry; one entered 2026-01-01 or later cannot be revived at all and is simply enforceable for a flat 15 years (735 ILCS 5/2-1602(a-5), (a-10)) |
7 years from the date a transcript, certified copy, or memorandum of the judgment is recorded with the county recorder, regardless of debt type: reviving the judgment and recording a new memorandum before the old one lapses extends the lien for another 7 years (735 ILCS 5/12-101). The consumer-debt revival limits above cap how many times a consumer-debt judgment's lien can be refreshed this way, but the 7-year length of each recorded lien period itself doesn't change |
Two separate steps: (1) revive the underlying judgment by filing a petition to revive in the original case, with notice served under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 106 (735 ILCS 5/2-1602(a)-(c)); then (2) record a new transcript, certified copy, or memorandum of the revival order with the recorder in each county where the lien is to continue, to extend the real-property lien for another 7 years (735 ILCS 5/12-101) |
An ordinary judgment 'may be revived ... in the seventh year after its entry, or in the seventh year after its last revival, or in the twentieth year after its entry, or at any other time within 20 years after its entry if the judgment becomes dormant' (735 ILCS 5/2-1602(a)): unlike states with one hard cutoff, Illinois lets a creditor revive even after the judgment has already gone dormant, any time up to the 20-year outer limit, though the lien's priority against later lienholders then dates from the revival's recording, not the original judgment. Consumer debt judgments entered 2020-2025 must be revived within 10 years of entry with no 20-year fallback; those entered 2026 or later cannot be revived under any window at all |
Yes, a major and very recent one. Effective 2026-01-01 (P.A. 104-120), Illinois created a 'consumer debt judgment' category: a judgment against a natural person arising from debt for personal, family, or household purposes, excluding bodily-injury/wrongful-death judgments and judgments where a business is jointly liable. A consumer debt judgment entered before 2020-01-01 isn't treated as one at all and follows the ordinary 20-year/7-year-dormancy rule; one entered 2020-01-01 through 2025-12-31 can be revived only within 10 years of entry; one entered 2026-01-01 or later cannot be revived AT ALL and is instead simply enforceable for a flat 15 years from entry (735 ILCS 5/2-1602(a-5), (a-10)) |
A judgment creditor who has been fully paid must, on the debtor's request, deliver a written release; if the creditor refuses after a tender of full payment, the debtor can petition the court to enter an order 'satisfying the judgment and releasing all liens based on such judgment' (735 ILCS 5/12-183(a)-(b)). Absent a filed release, the lien also simply lapses on its own once its 7-year recorded term runs out without a timely revival and re-recording |
Yes. A judgment is a lien on real estate 'in any county in this State, including the county in which it is entered, only from the time a transcript, certified copy or memorandum of the judgment is filed in the office of the recorder in the county in which the real estate is located' (735 ILCS 5/12-101), so a creditor must separately record, and later separately re-record on each revival, in every county where the debtor owns or later acquires property |
| Indiana verified 2026-07-09 | Ind. Code § 34-55-9-2 (creating the 10-year real-property lien by docketing the judgment); § 34-11-2-12 (the 20-year presumption that a judgment is satisfied); § 34-55-1-2 (requiring leave of court to execute more than 10 years after entry of judgment or the last execution) |
Indiana doesn't use a flat expiration date, the judgment itself is never technically extinguished. Ind. Code § 34-11-2-12 provides that 'every judgment and decree of any court of record of the United States, of Indiana, or of any other state shall be considered satisfied after the expiration of twenty (20) years', a REBUTTABLE presumption, not an automatic bar (Lewis v. Rex Metal Craft, Inc., 831 N.E.2d 812 (Ind. Ct. App. 2005)). Separately, § 34-55-1-2 requires the creditor to get a court's leave before issuing any new execution more than 10 years after the judgment was entered OR after the last execution issued, whichever is later, so the judgment can keep being actively enforced indefinitely with periodic court permission, well past 20 years, if the creditor can still prove the debt is unpaid |
10 years from 'rendition of the judgment' (Ind. Code § 34-55-9-2), a genuinely SHORTER, separate clock than the judgment's own 20-year presumption-of-satisfaction window. The lien exists automatically once the judgment 'has been duly entered and indexed in the judgment docket,' with no separate recording step required. The 10-year count excludes 'any time during which the party was restrained from proceeding on the lien by an appeal, an injunction, the death of the defendant, or the agreement of the parties entered of record', those periods pause the clock rather than counting against it |
Not a simple renewal affidavit. Once 10 years have passed since the judgment was entered OR since an execution last issued (whichever is later), 'an execution can be issued only on leave of court, upon motion, after ten (10) days personal notice to the adverse party' (§ 34-55-1-2(a)), unless the debtor is absent, a nonresident, or can't be found, in which case notice can be by publication. Critically, 'leave shall not be given unless it is established by the oath of the party or other satisfactory proof that the judgment or part of the judgment remains unsatisfied and due' (§ 34-55-1-2(b)), the creditor has to affirmatively prove nonpayment, not just ask. Indiana courts have separately held that once the 10-year LIEN itself has expired, a creditor who wants to foreclose or execute on real estate must obtain this same leave of court before doing so (Chitwood v. Guadagnoli, 230 N.E.3d 932 (Ind. Ct. App. 2024)) |
There's no fixed early-filing window described in the statute, the leave-of-court requirement under § 34-55-1-2 simply kicks in once 10 years have elapsed since judgment entry or the last execution, and a creditor can seek it at that point (or, practice shows, proactively just before that 10-year mark to avoid any gap). Indiana's own courts have noted that 'because of the confusing complexity of execution and proceedings supplemental, and the added uncertainty caused by [long delays], most sophisticated judgment creditors renew their judgments shortly before the expiration of the first (and each successive) decade after judgment' (Chitwood, quoting a legal treatise), a best-practice observation, not itself a hard statutory deadline. If the lien has already lapsed when the creditor finally seeks leave, the court can still grant it, but any intervening buyer or lienholder may have already gained priority in the gap |
No recent legislative amendment found to the 10-year lien statute, the 20-year satisfaction presumption, or the leave-of-court execution statute. A 2024 Indiana Court of Appeals decision, Chitwood v. Guadagnoli, is the most significant recent development: it confirmed that a judgment creditor whose 10-year lien has expired cannot simply proceed to foreclosure and must first obtain leave of court, even though the underlying judgment (governed by the separate 20-year rule) had not itself expired. No currently pending Indiana bill touches the core duration, renewal, or leave-of-court statutes in this survey |
Payment in full ends the underlying obligation and, with it, the basis for the lien; Indiana courts have not been shown (in this cell's research) to require a separate recorded release document the way some states do, since the lien arises automatically from docketing rather than from a stand-alone recorded instrument. Simple non-renewal also ends the LIEN specifically at the 10-year mark, even though the judgment itself does not expire at that point: as Chitwood confirmed, an expired lien requires leave of court before any further execution or foreclosure against the real estate, and courts have described a lien that lapsed during a stay (such as a bankruptcy automatic stay) as tolled rather than permanently dead, extending its 10-year clock by the length of the stay |
Yes, but the mechanism is simpler than a formal deed-style recording. The lien only reaches real estate in the county where the judgment 'has been duly entered and indexed in the judgment docket.' If the debtor owns property in a different Indiana county than where judgment was entered, the creditor can get the judgment 'duly entered and indexed' there simply by mailing or delivering a certified copy to that county's clerk for a nominal fee: there is no need to separately record the judgment with the County Recorder in either county, unlike states that require a formal deed-registry filing |
| Iowa verified 2026-07-09 | Iowa Code § 614.1(6) (the general 20-year statute of limitations on an action to enforce a judgment); § 614.3 (a wait-then-sue mechanic, a creditor generally can't sue on their own judgment to renew it until 9 years pass, absent court leave); § 624.23 (creates the real-property lien and sets its own, separately-run 10-year term, plus the homestead and bankruptcy carve-outs); § 624.24 (when and in which county the lien attaches). Iowa runs the judgment's 20-year enforceability and the lien's 10-year term on two genuinely different clocks, and 'renewal' here isn't a motion filed in the old case, it's an entirely new lawsuit |
20 years from rendition to bring 'an action... founded on a judgment of a court of record' (§ 614.1(6)): with a carve-out removing the time limit ENTIRELY for a judgment for child support, spousal support, or distribution of marital assets. Renewal doesn't restart this clock by filing a form; it happens by suing on the existing judgment in a brand-new lawsuit, which produces a brand-new judgment with its own fresh 20-year window |
A separate, shorter clock: 10 years from the date of the judgment (§ 624.23(1)), regardless of the judgment's own 20-year enforceability window. Because a fresh 'action on judgment' produces a fresh judgment, successfully renewing the underlying judgment also resets the lien's 10-year clock, but only once that new judgment (and any new recording) actually happens |
Litigation, not a filing. Iowa's version of 'renewal' is a brand-new lawsuit, an action on the judgment itself, using the existing judgment as the cause of action, which if successful produces an entirely new judgment with its own fresh 20-year life and 10-year lien. There's a genuine floor built in: § 614.3 bars bringing that new action 'within nine years after the rendition' of the original judgment 'without leave of the court for good cause shown,' so an ordinary creditor generally has to wait until year 9 before suing to renew, though a court can allow it earlier for good cause |
A real floor AND ceiling, unusual among the jlien states built so far. The floor: no new action on the judgment before 9 years have passed, absent a court's leave for good cause (§ 614.3). The ceiling: the new lawsuit still has to be brought within the original judgment's own 20-year enforceability window under § 614.1(6), since a lapsed judgment can no longer support a lawsuit on it. That leaves roughly an 11-year practical window, years 9 through 20, for an ordinary renewal lawsuit without special court permission |
No recent amendment to the core duration figures, § 624.23's 10-year lien term and § 614.1(6)'s 20-year action deadline are both long-settled. The carve-outs are structural rather than new: § 614.1(6) removes any time limit at all for a child-support, spousal-support, or marital-asset-distribution judgment; § 624.23(4) extends full faith and credit to an OUT-OF-STATE support judgment's lien on Iowa real estate for the same 10 years as an in-state one, running prospectively from when the interstate lien notice is filed; and § 624.23(2)(b) gives a homestead owner an affirmative tool, serving written demand that gives the creditor just 30 days to levy execution against homestead-claimed property or lose the lien on it entirely |
More routes than most states. (1) Simple non-renewal: let the 10-year lien term run out (or the judgment's own 20-year window close) with no new action brought. (2) The 30-day homestead-demand mechanism: a homestead owner can serve written demand forcing the creditor to levy execution within 30 days or forfeit the lien on that property, and can even obtain an immediate court order releasing the lien by posting a cash bond of 125% of the outstanding balance (§ 624.23(2)). (3) Bankruptcy: the lien doesn't attach to real estate the debtor acquires AFTER a bankruptcy discharge of personal liability, though property already subject to the lien isn't automatically freed (§ 624.23(3)). (4) For a lien against a CITY specifically, the city can discharge it early by posting a bond for the judgment amount with the court (§ 624.23(5)) |
Yes. The lien attaches automatically, with no separate filing, only in the county where the judgment itself was entered and docketed; reaching a debtor's property in any other county requires filing 'an attested copy of the judgment... in the office of the clerk of the district court of the county in which the real estate lies,' and the lien there only attaches once that copy is filed (§ 624.24) |
| Kansas verified 2026-07-09 | K.S.A. 60-2202 (creates the real-property lien from the judgment, effective from the filing of the underlying petition, up to 4 months before judgment; sets the county-by-county filing rule); K.S.A. 60-2403 (the dormancy mechanism: what keeps a judgment/lien alive, and what happens if nothing is done for 5 years); K.S.A. 60-2404 (revivor of an already-dormant judgment); K.S.A. 60-2803 (satisfaction and release) |
No flat expiration date. A judgment stays fully enforceable as long as a renewal affidavit is filed, or execution/garnishment/a support-enforcement proceeding is undertaken, at least once every 5 years from entry (or from the last such act). Miss that 5-year window and the judgment becomes 'dormant', not dead, but non-lien and largely unenforceable, and Kansas courts have held a dormant judgment not revived within the law's own window becomes 'absolutely extinguished and unenforceable' (Cyr v. Cyr, 249 Kan. 94, 97, 815 P.2d 97 (1991)) |
The lien exists automatically once the judgment is entered (or, in another county, once a copy is filed there) and lasts only as long as the judgment stays non-dormant under § 60-2403, there's no separate lien-specific number. The instant the judgment becomes dormant, it 'shall cease to operate as a lien on the real estate of the judgment debtor,' even though the underlying judgment itself may still be revivable for 2 more years. Two debt types are carved out from ever going dormant at all, child support judgments (as of 7/1/2007) and judgments for court costs, fees, fines, or restitution (as of 7/1/2015), but even for those, the REAL-ESTATE LIEN specifically still lapses on the same 5-year timetable as if dormancy had occurred, just without the judgment itself dying or being released of record (§ 60-2403(b)) |
Two ways to keep a judgment out of dormancy, and a different mechanism once it's already dormant. Before dormancy: file a 'renewal affidavit', a sworn statement by the judgment creditor or their attorney, filed in the same case, stating the balance due, or simply pursue execution, garnishment, a proceeding in aid of execution, or a support-enforcement proceeding; any of these resets the 5-year clock, with no court hearing needed. After dormancy: the creditor must file a formal 'motion for revivor' plus a request for immediate execution if granted, with notice given like a summons; the court must grant it absent a showing of good cause not to. A judgment can also be revived without any motion at all by a written stipulation signed by all affected parties |
No early-filing restriction: a renewal affidavit or execution can happen any time within the running 5 years. The hard cutoff is simply letting 5 years pass with no such act. Once a judgment IS dormant, the creditor has a separate, harder deadline: a motion for revivor must be filed within 2 years of the date the judgment became dormant (or, for a child-support judgment, within 2 years of the later of the child's emancipation or the dormancy date) for the court to be required to grant it. Kansas case law treats a dormant judgment never revived within that window as permanently extinguished, not just harder to collect (Cyr v. Cyr; Clark v. Glazer, 4 Kan. App. 2d 658, 659, 609 P.2d 1177) |
Two debt-type carve-outs are already built into current law: child support judgments entered on or after 7/1/2007 never go dormant for enforcement purposes, and judgments for court costs, fees, fines, or restitution entered on or after 7/1/2015 never go dormant either: though, in both cases, the real-estate LIEN specifically still lapses on the ordinary 5-year schedule unless renewed. Section 60-2403 was last amended in 2022 (L. 2022, ch. 31, § 5); no bill affecting §§ 60-2202, 60-2403, 60-2404, or 60-2803 was found pending in the current session |
Satisfaction: once a money judgment is paid off, the creditor (or their assignee) must file a satisfaction and release within 21 days of a written demand sent by restricted mail, with the court where judgment was entered AND every other court where the judgment was separately filed; refusing or neglecting to do so makes the creditor liable for $100 plus the debtor's reasonable attorney's fees (§ 60-2803). Beyond satisfaction, the lien also simply ends at dormancy, 5 years of inaction ends it immediately, and if the judgment itself is never timely revived, a court has a duty to formally release it of record 2 years after it went dormant |
Yes for the lien itself: it only reaches real estate in the county where judgment was rendered automatically; to reach a debtor's property in any other county, the creditor must file an attested copy of the journal entry (plus a statement of costs) with that county's clerk, who dockets and indexes it, and the lien there runs from the date of THAT filing (§ 60-2202(a)). But renewal is NOT a per-county act the way some states require: the renewal affidavit or revivor motion is filed once, 'in the proceedings in which the judgment was entered,' and dormancy under § 60-2403 is phrased as a single, judgment-wide test, so one timely renewal affidavit in the original case keeps the lien alive in every county where a copy has been filed, without a separate re-filing in each one |
| Kentucky verified 2026-07-09 | KRS 413.090(1) (15-year limitation on an action upon a judgment, computed from the date of the last execution, the judgment's OWN enforceability track); KRS 426.720 (a separate, freestanding judgment-lien statute, created in 1988 and substantially rewritten by 2023 Ky. Acts ch. 177 (HB 83), effective 6/29/2023, the real-property lien has nothing to do with 413.090's execution-based clock) |
15 years, but computed from the date of the LAST EXECUTION on the judgment, not from entry: KRS 413.090(1) covers 'an action upon a judgment... the period to be computed from the date of the last execution thereon.' Practically, that means each fresh execution effort resets the 15-year window, so a creditor who keeps executing periodically never needs a separate 'renewal' filing to keep the underlying judgment itself enforceable. This is a genuinely different mechanism from the judgment LIEN's own hard 10-year cap below |
Not automatic, and on its own separate clock from the judgment. A lien only exists once the creditor files a 'notice of judgment lien' with a county clerk (KRS 426.720(1)); once filed, the lien 'shall expire ten (10) years after the date the final judgment was entered by the court of record' for liens created on or after June 29, 2023 (KRS 426.720(2)(b)). Liens created before that date get a savings-clause rule: they expire on the earlier of the old KRS 413.090 limitations deadline, or 10 years after June 29, 2023 (KRS 426.720(2)(a)) |
Two distinct ways to keep a lien alive past its 10-year mark, added by the 2023 reform. First, filing an actual court enforcement proceeding: if the creditor files a proceeding to enforce the lien before expiration AND separately lodges a 'notice of the judgment lien enforcement proceeding' with the same county clerk, the lien's expiration is postponed until that proceeding ends in a final judgment or dismissal (KRS 426.720(3)(a)), within 10 days of that happening, the creditor must file a further notice stating the lien's new expiration date. Second, a simple renewal filing: a 'notice of judgment lien renewal,' containing the same information as the original notice plus the remaining unsatisfied balance, extends the lien, but ONLY ONCE, and only for up to 5 more years past the original 10-year expiration (KRS 426.720(3)(b)). There is no second renewal available under current law |
The one-time renewal notice must be filed 'not less than one hundred twenty (120) days prior to the date of expiration' (KRS 426.720(3)(b)1.): a defined early window, not 'anytime before expiration.' The enforcement-proceeding route has no early-filing floor, just a hard deadline: both the proceeding and the notice of it must happen 'at any time prior to the date of expiration' (KRS 426.720(3)(a)1.) |
The single biggest recent change in this survey for Kentucky: 2023 Ky. Acts ch. 177 (HB 83), effective June 29, 2023, rewrote KRS 426.720 to shorten the judgment lien's term (previously tied to the 15-year KRS 413.090 window) to a flat 10 years, and, for the first time, capped renewal at exactly one 5-year extension. Before this reform, practitioners describe lien renewal in Kentucky as effectively open-ended; HB 83 closed that off. No 2025-2026 pending legislation touching KRS 413.090 or 426.720 was found |
KRS 426.720 itself doesn't spell out a separate satisfaction-and-release procedure for the lien; paying the judgment removes the debt the lien secures, but clearing the lien from the county clerk's lis pendens record requires a release consistent with Kentucky's general real-property recording practice. The statute is explicit about two other ways it ends: simple non-renewal (the lien 'shall expire' automatically at the 10-year mark, or at the end of any renewal period, if nothing further is filed), and dismissal of a pending enforcement proceeding: KRS 426.720(3)(a)2.b. sets the lien's expiration at 'the date the proceeding to enforce the judgment lien is dismissed,' ending the postponement immediately rather than reviving the original 10-year deadline |
Yes. KRS 426.720(1) creates the lien only 'in any county in which' a notice of judgment lien has actually been filed with that county's clerk: there is no statewide filing. A creditor tracking a debtor's property across county lines has to file (and later separately renew or postpone) a notice in every county where coverage is wanted; the county clerk records each notice in that county's own lis pendens records (KRS 426.720(4)) |
| Louisiana verified 2026-07-28 | La. Civ. Code art. 3501 (10-year prescription of a money judgment and repeated revival); La. Code Civ. Proc. art. 2031 (revival by ex parte motion, affidavit requirements, and interruption of prescription); La. Civ. Code art. 3300 (creation of the judicial mortgage by filing the judgment with the recorder of mortgages); arts. 3357 and 3359 (10-year duration of the recordation's effect); arts. 3362, 3364, and 3365 (method and timely or late effect of reinscription); art. 3355 (recording in multiple parishes) |
10 years from the judgment's signing if there was no appeal, or 10 years from when it became final if there was one (art. 3501). This is Louisiana's civil-law concept of 'prescription' rather than a common-law statute of limitations, but it works similarly: the judgment simply prescribes at that mark unless revived first. Critically, art. 3501 places NO cap on how many times a judgment can be revived: 'An interested party may have a money judgment rendered by a court of this state revived as often as he may desire' |
A genuinely separate clock from the judgment's own prescription. Under art. 3359, 'The effect of recordation of a judgment creating a judicial mortgage ceases ten years after the date of the judgment', counted from the judgment date, not the recording date, and independent of whether the underlying judgment itself has since been revived. Louisiana courts have confirmed these two issues, the judgment's own validity and the judicial mortgage's recordation, are 'clearly separated into two distinct areas' governed by separate rules with different consequences (Bank One Louisiana v. Lacobee, 811 So. 2d 164, 166 (La. App. 2 Cir. 2002)) |
Two SEPARATE actions are required, and doing one does not accomplish the other. First, reviving the judgment itself: an interested party files an ex parte motion in the court and suit in which the judgment was rendered, accompanied by the judgment holder's affidavit stating that the original judgment has not been satisfied (Code Civ. Proc. art. 2031). Second, keeping the judicial mortgage's recordation alive: a person 'may reinscribe a recorded instrument creating a mortgage... by recording a signed written notice of reinscription' with the parish recorder of mortgages, naming the judgment debtor and the original recording's registry information (Civ. Code art. 3362). Bank One Louisiana v. Lacobee, 811 So. 2d 164 (La. App. 2 Cir. 2002), shows the stakes: the creditor timely petitioned to revive the judgment but filed no notice in the mortgage records, so the court held that the judicial mortgage had not been validly reinscribed and reversed its priority over a later mortgage |
For judgment revival: no fixed early window, but file the ex parte motion before the 10 years from signing (or finality) run out; art. 2031 says filing the motion interrupts the judgment's prescriptive period. For mortgage reinscription: a notice recorded BEFORE the prior 10-year recordation effect lapses 'continues that effect for ten years from the date the notice is recorded' (art. 3364), so each timely reinscription buys a fresh 10 years measured from the reinscription date itself. Miss that window and art. 3365 lets a late notice again produce the effects of recordation, but 'only from the time that the notice of reinscription is recorded,' leaving a real nonretroactive gap |
Past-due child support follows a special rule. Under R.S. 13:4291(A)(1), each overdue payment is a judgment by operation of law, payments interrupt prescription, and prescription does not begin until the child reaches majority or the support obligation ceases; a judgment fixing the delinquent amount becomes a judicial mortgage only when final and recorded, and its recordation lasts 10 years unless revived and reinscribed. Acts 2025, No. 477 changes agency titles in this statute effective October 1, 2027 but does not change those timing rules. No pending 2025-2026 bill referencing Civil Code arts. 3501 or 3362, or otherwise matching judicial-mortgage reinscription, appeared in the current state-bill searches |
Three routes. First, a written cancellation request: the recorder of mortgages must cancel the recordation once given a signed written request that identifies where the instrument is recorded (art. 3366): this is how a paid-off judgment gets formally cleared. Second, simple non-reinscription: if no notice of reinscription is timely filed, the recordation's effect just lapses at the 10-year mark under art. 3359, regardless of whether the underlying judgment was separately revived. Third, a specific forced-cancellation route once BOTH have lapsed: art. 3368 lets any interested person force the recorder to cancel a judicial mortgage by presenting a written request along with either a clerk's certificate that no revival suit was filed within the art. 3501 period, or a certified copy of a final judgment that rejected a revival attempt |
Yes: Louisiana's parishes function like counties for this purpose. A judicial mortgage is created by filing the judgment 'with the recorder of mortgages' (art. 3300), and art. 3355 confirms an instrument affecting property in more than one parish 'may be executed in multiple originals for recordation in each of the several parishes,' with each recorded original needing to describe only the property within that specific parish. In practice, a creditor has to record (and later separately reinscribe) the judgment in every parish where the debtor owns or later acquires real estate |
| Maine verified 2026-07-09 | 14 M.R.S. §§ 4651-A (execution liens), 864 (20-year presumption of payment on the judgment itself), 4652 (1-year limit on first execution) |
No fixed expiration, actions on a judgment are exempt from the general 6-year limitations period (§ 752), but the judgment is presumed paid and satisfied after 20 years, rebuttable, except for child support (§ 864) |
Lien from a writ of execution recorded before 9/1/2020: 20 years, renewable once for another 20 years. Lien from a writ recorded on or after 9/1/2020: 10 years, renewable once for another 10 years (§ 4651-A(9), (9-A)) |
Record a renewal, pluries, or alias writ of execution with the registry of deeds the same way the original writ was recorded, and send the debtor the same notice required for the original lien (§ 4651-A(9-A), (5)) |
No early filing window is set: record the renewal writ before the current lien period expires and it relates back to the original filing date, keeping the lien continuous; miss the deadline and the lien lapses (§ 4651-A(9-A)) |
A 2019 reform (PL 2019, c. 622), effective 9/1/2020, cut the standard lien term in half going forward, 10 years instead of 20, for any lien created from a writ recorded on or after that date; liens from earlier writs stay on the old 20-year track |
Payment, discharge, or release of the judgment ends the lien; it also lapses automatically if not renewed before its term runs out (§ 4651-A(9-A)). A creditor who won't discharge a lien on property the debtor proved is exempt, within 15 days of notice, owes the debtor damages and possibly attorney's fees (§ 4651-A(8)) |
Yes: recording the writ with one registry of deeds only reaches real estate located in that registry district; a debtor with property in more than one county requires a separate recording, and a separate renewal, in each one (§ 4651-A(1)) |
| Maryland verified 2026-07-09 | Md. Rule 2-625 (judgment expiration/renewal mechanism); Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. (CJP) § 5-102(a)(3) (the underlying 12-year limitations period for a judgment as a 'specialty'); CJP § 11-402 (creates the lien on land once the judgment is indexed and recorded, including the 2025 medical-debt carve-out); Md. Code, Real Property (RP) § 14-203.1 (the medical-debt no-lien-on-residence rule itself) |
12 years from entry, or from the most recent renewal (Md. Rule 2-625), implementing CJP § 5-102(a)(3)'s 12-year limitations period for filing an action on a judgment as a 'specialty.' This is a hard expiration, not a rebuttable presumption: Maryland's courts have held 'a notice of renewal filed after the expiration of the 12-year period is ineffective because a judgment no longer exists to be renewed' (Won Sun Lee v. Won Bok Lee, 240 Md. App. 235 (2019)). One carve-out: CJP § 5-102(c)(1) exempts 'a specialty taken for the use of the State' from this 12-year limit entirely, so a judgment held by the State of Maryland itself does not expire even without renewal (State v. Buckingham, 214 Md. App. 672 (2013)) |
The SAME 12 years as the judgment, with no independent clock. Maryland's appellate courts have squarely held that 'when a judgment creditor's original judgment on which a lien is predicated expires, the lien is destroyed and neither the original judgment nor the lien it created may be renewed': Rule 2-625 renews the JUDGMENT, and the recorded lien simply rides along with (and dies with) it, rather than being its own separately renewable interest (Won Bok Lee v. Won Sun Lee, 466 Md. 601, 624 (2020)) |
The simplest mechanism found in this survey so far: the judgment holder files a 'notice of renewal' with the clerk, and 'the clerk shall enter the judgment renewed' (Rule 2-625): no motion, no court order, no show-cause proceeding, and no service on the debtor is required by the rule's text. Renewal restarts the same 12-year period; the lien on any already-recorded county continues automatically since it's tied to the judgment itself, not a separate instrument |
'At any time before expiration of the judgment' (Rule 2-625): there's no earliest-filing restriction, just the outer 12-year deadline running from entry or the last renewal. There is no grace period after expiration: once the 12 years lapse without a timely notice of renewal, Maryland case law treats the judgment as having ceased to exist, meaning a later-filed notice of renewal has nothing left to act on (Won Sun Lee, 240 Md. App. 235) |
A real, already-effective debt-type carve-out: 2025 Md. Laws chs. 497 & 498 (SB 439/HB 428), effective October 1, 2025, amended CJP § 11-402 to require a complaint seeking a money judgment to state whether the debt is medical debt and, if so, the defendant's home address, because RP § 14-203.1(b), added by the same legislation, provides that 'a lien on owner-occupied residential property may not be created by contract or as a result of a breach of contract for the payment of medical debt' at all. If one is created anyway, 'the court shall remove the lien' (RP § 14-203.1(c)). Separately, a proposed restructuring of Rule 2-625 into lettered subsections was recommended in the Rules Committee's 227th Report but was REMANDED by the Supreme Court of Maryland 'for further study' by order dated February 19, 2026, not adopted, so the single-paragraph Rule 2-625 quoted above remains the current, effective text |
Satisfaction: once an order of satisfaction is entered, or the judgment creditor files a written statement that the judgment has been satisfied, 'the clerk of the court shall make an entry of the word satisfied on the horizontal line in the judgment record where the lien is indexed' (CJP § 11-402(e)). Beyond that, simple non-renewal ends both the judgment and its lien together at the 12-year mark, since the lien has no independent life of its own. And since October 2025, a medical-debt judgment can't create a lien on the debtor's owner-occupied residence in the first place: if one is mistakenly recorded, a court must remove it (RP § 14-203.1(c)) |
Yes. A judgment automatically becomes a lien only 'on the judgment debtor's interest in land located in the county in which the judgment was rendered' (CJP § 11-402(c)). To reach property in a different Maryland county, the SAME judgment, once separately indexed and recorded there, 'constitutes a lien on the judgment debtor's interest in land located in a county other than the county in which the judgment was originally entered' (CJP § 11-402(d)). The practical mechanics differ by county: Maryland's own courts note that 'in Baltimore City, the court will record the lien without a request. In all other counties, the creditor has to file a request to record the lien in the circuit court' |
| Massachusetts verified 2026-07-09 | M.G.L. c. 235, § 17 (timing for issuing an original and successive executions); § 19 (getting a new execution by court motion once the as-of-right period lapses); c. 260, § 20 (the 20-year rebuttable presumption that a judgment is paid); c. 223, § 114A (duration and 'bringing forward' of a real estate attachment recorded at the registry of deeds); c. 236, §§ 4, 49A (depositing an execution's levy notice at the registry, and its own 6-year/bring-forward duration) |
Massachusetts doesn't use a flat expiration date the way most states do. An execution issues 'as a matter of right' only within 1 year after judgment (c. 235, § 17). After that, the creditor must ask the court by motion for a new execution (c. 235, § 19): discretionary, and reviewed with 'a level of process and judicial scrutiny commensurate with... motion practice,' per First Nat'l Bank of Boston v. Bernier, 50 Mass. App. Ct. 756 (2001). The practical outer boundary is 20 years: c. 260, § 20 creates a REBUTTABLE presumption that any judgment 'shall be presumed to be paid and satisfied' once 20 years have passed, meaning a creditor can still collect past 20 years but bears the burden of overcoming that presumption |
There's no single 'record the judgment for X years' lien. Two different real-property liens can exist, each running on its OWN 6-year clock at the registry of deeds: (1) a pre-judgment real estate ATTACHMENT, which 'expire[s] by operation of law at the end of six years from the date of filing' unless brought forward (c. 223, § 114A); and (2) a post-judgment EXECUTION's levy on real estate, deposited at the registry under c. 236, § 4, which similarly becomes 'void as to any land within such registry district' if not completed by sale or set-off, or brought forward, 'within six years from the date on which notice of the execution was deposited' (c. 236, § 49A). If the execution is recorded promptly after an existing attachment, it can take over that attachment's original priority date rather than starting fresh |
'Bringing forward', a written request by the plaintiff or their attorney asking the register of deeds to re-enter the attachment or levy notice 'upon the books' before the current 6-year period runs out (c. 223, § 114A; the same mechanism is cross-referenced for executions by c. 236, § 49A). It is not automatic and not court-supervised: no judge or court order is involved, but the register must actually perform the bring-forward act within the deadline, filing the request in time is not enough by itself if the register doesn't complete the entry before expiration. Separately, to get a new EXECUTION once the 1-year as-of-right window has passed, the creditor files a motion with the court that entered judgment (c. 235, § 19), not a recording act |
For bringing forward an attachment or levy at the registry, the request must result in the register actually re-entering it 'within said [six-year] period': there's no early-filing restriction, but courts and title practice treat the register's completed act, not just a timely-filed request, as what counts (a bring-forward request filed in time but processed late can still let the lien lapse). This can be repeated indefinitely: 'at the expiration of six years from the time of any such first or subsequent bringing forward, such attachment shall expire... unless within such period it is again brought forward.' For a NEW execution after the first year, no statutory filing window is specified beyond the general 20-year presumption-of-payment ceiling in c. 260, § 20 |
No recent amendment found to the core statutes governing execution timing, the 20-year presumption, or the attachment/levy bring-forward mechanism. A search of pending Massachusetts legislation for bills referencing 'judgment lien,' 'execution,' or 'attachment' of real estate turned up nothing currently pending that would change this survey's rules |
Satisfaction, returned promptly: once a judgment is paid, the execution 'shall be returned to the court issuing them within ten days after their satisfaction or discharge,' with the satisfaction entered on the court's own records (c. 235, § 17); a discharge can also be filed if the original execution can't be located. Beyond satisfaction, simple non-renewal ends a registry-recorded lien on its own: an attachment or execution-levy notice that isn't brought forward before its 6-year deadline 'expire[s] by operation of law' (attachment, c. 223, § 114A) or becomes 'void as to any land within such registry district' (execution levy, c. 236, § 49A): no separate release document is needed for either to lapse |
Yes. An attachment or an execution's levy notice only affects land within the specific 'registry of deeds in the county or district where said land or some part of it is situated' (c. 223, § 114A), Massachusetts registries are organized by county, and several counties (e.g. Bristol, Middlesex, Worcester) are further split into separate northern/southern registry DISTRICTS. A creditor pursuing a debtor's property that spans more than one county or registry district must record, and separately bring forward, in each one; a bring-forward request filed in one registry has no effect on a lien recorded in a different registry district |
| Michigan verified 2026-07-09 | Two separate statutes: MCL 600.5809(3) governs how long the underlying judgment or decree itself remains enforceable; the freestanding Judgment Lien Act, MCL 600.2801-600.2819 (added 2004 PA 136, eff. 2004-09-01), creates and governs a distinct recorded lien on real property that has nothing to do with the judgment's own separate enforceability period unless and until the judgment itself expires |
10 years from the date of entry, and a party 'shall not bring or maintain an action to enforce' the judgment after that unless a new action is timely filed (MCL 600.5809(3)). Within that same 10-year window, 'an action may be brought upon the judgment or decree for a new judgment or decree,' and 'the new judgment or decree is subject to this subsection' too: meaning a Michigan judgment can in principle be kept alive indefinitely through successive 10-year lawsuits, unlike the one-time-only cap some neighboring states impose |
A judgment lien is NOT automatic and is a wholly separate mechanism from the judgment's own life: it 'expires 5 years after the date it is recorded' (MCL 600.2809(1)), UNLESS the underlying judgment itself expires sooner, in which case 'the judgment lien expires on the date that the judgment expires' (MCL 600.2809(3)): the lien can never outlive the judgment, but it can easily die years before the judgment does if it isn't rerecorded |
Two different actions for two different clocks. To extend the judgment itself, the creditor files a new lawsuit 'upon the judgment or decree for a new judgment or decree' before the 10-year period runs (MCL 600.5809(3)), a court action. To extend the judgment LIEN specifically, no lawsuit is needed: the creditor records 'a second notice of judgment lien that has been certified by the clerk of the court that entered the judgment' with the register of deeds (MCL 600.2809(4)), a pure recording act. The lien can be rerecorded 'only once' |
For the judgment itself, a new lawsuit must be filed before the 10-year period runs out (MCL 600.5809(3)), with no stated earliest-filing restriction. For the judgment lien specifically, rerecording must happen 'not less than 120 days before the initial expiration date' (MCL 600.2809(4)), an early window, not an anytime-before-expiration rule, and can be done only that one time; there is no third recording |
No debt-type-specific renewal cap was found in the current statute text. A pending 2025-2026 bill, MI HB 4628, would amend several sections of the Revised Judicature Act, including MCL 600.2807, part of the Judgment Lien Act, but only to make existing pronoun references gender-neutral; it does not change any duration, renewal, or debt-type rule |
Six specific recorded documents extinguish a judgment lien under MCL 600.2809(6): a signed discharge of judgment lien, a certified copy of a filed satisfaction of judgment, a certified court order discharging the lien, or a copy of the debtor's bankruptcy discharge together with the bankruptcy schedule listing the debt (unless a nondischargeability order is separately recorded). On payment in full, the creditor 'shall record a discharge of judgment lien' within 28 days (MCL 600.2811); simple non-rerecording also ends the lien on its own once the 5-year (or rerecorded 5-year) period runs |
Yes. A judgment lien 'attaches to a judgment debtor's interest in real property if a notice of judgment lien is recorded ... in the land title records of the register of deeds for the county where the property is located' (MCL 600.2803): a creditor tracking a debtor's property in more than one Michigan county must record (and later separately rerecord) a notice of judgment lien in each county |
| Minnesota verified 2026-07-09 | Minn. Stat. § 548.09 (creates the lien on docketing, sets the single 10-year judgment-and-lien clock); § 541.04 (the 10-year bar on maintaining any action on a judgment: the same statute creditors use to obtain a fresh 'renewal' judgment by suing again); § 548.091 (a separate, more lenient scheme specifically for child support, maintenance, and county-reimbursement judgments) |
10 years from entry, and it's a hard bar rather than a rebuttable presumption: 'No action shall be maintained upon a judgment or decree... unless begun within ten years after the entry of such judgment' (§ 541.04). Section 548.09 independently confirms 'the judgment survives... for ten years after its entry': both statutes point to the same flat 10-year figure, not a presumption a creditor could rebut by proving the debt is still owed |
The SAME 10 years as the judgment, running together from the judgment's ENTRY date, not the docketing date: 'the judgment survives, and the lien continues, for ten years after its entry' (§ 548.09 subd. 1). The lien attaches automatically to ordinary ('Abstract') real property once the judgment is docketed, but for Torrens-registered land, docketing alone is not enough: the statute says the docketed judgment 'is not a lien upon registered land unless it is also recorded pursuant to sections 508.63 and 508A.63,' an extra filing step with the county's Registrar of Titles |
None of the usual mechanisms exist here, no renewal affidavit, no motion for revival, no show-cause hearing. Minnesota's courts have held that the only way to extend an unpaid judgment past its 10-year life is to bring an entirely new civil lawsuit, based on a claim for the debtor's failure to pay the existing judgment, before the original 10 years expire. The Minnesota Supreme Court confirmed in Dahlin v. Kroening, 796 N.W.2d 503 (Minn. 2011) (affirming 784 N.W.2d 406 (Minn. App. 2010)), that this can be done SERIALLY, without a one-renewal-only limit, rejecting an argument that a previously-renewed judgment can't itself be renewed again the same way. Winning the new lawsuit produces a genuinely new judgment with its own fresh 10-year clock, which then has to be separately docketed to create a new lien, getting the new judgment doesn't by itself revive any lien tied to the old one |
No early-filing window exists: the new lawsuit just has to be 'begun,' not resolved, before the existing judgment's 10 years run out (§ 541.04). Because this route requires filing and serving a full new lawsuit rather than a simple motion, Minnesota's own courts recommend starting the process with enough lead time to allow for service of process and litigation before the deadline actually hits |
A real, longstanding debt-type carve-out for child support, maintenance, and county-reimbursement judgments (§ 548.091): rather than a lawsuit, these can be renewed through a simple administrative process, serve notice on the debtor, and 'the court administrator shall administratively renew the judgment for child support without any additional filing fee... in the same court file as the original child support judgment,' and 'child support judgments may be renewed multiple times until paid' (subd. 3b), far simpler than the new-lawsuit route ordinary civil judgments require. Separately, effective August 1, 2022, interest stopped accruing on child support and genetic-testing-fee judgments entirely (subd. 1a). No 2025-2026 legislative amendment was found to the core duration or renewal rules for ordinary civil judgments |
Satisfaction: the judgment creditor files a Satisfaction of Judgment, due within 10 days of receiving payment (30 days if paid in non-certified funds) per Minnesota's own courts' guidance; if the creditor can't be located or won't sign, the debtor can instead get a Motion and Affidavit Requesting Satisfaction resolved by the court. A federal bankruptcy discharge does NOT automatically clear a Minnesota judgment of record: the debtor has to separately apply to the state court to have the judgment discharged. Simple non-renewal also ends both the judgment and its lien together at the 10-year mark, since they share one clock |
Yes. Docketing only creates a lien on real estate in the same county where the judgment is docketed; to reach property in another county, the judgment must be separately docketed there too: 'upon a transcript of the docket being filed with the court administrator in any other county, the court administrator shall also docket it' (§ 548.09 subd. 1). Minnesota's own courts confirm the practical steps: request a Transcript of Judgment for the other county, pay a separate fee, and docket it there; if that county's property is Torrens-registered rather than Abstract, an additional certified-copy filing with that county's Registrar of Titles is required on top of docketing |
| Mississippi verified 2026-07-09 | Miss. Code Ann. § 11-7-189 (enrollment of judgments on 'The Judgment Roll,' the act that creates the lien) and § 11-7-191 (an enrolled judgment becomes a lien 'from the rendition thereof,' with priority set by enrollment order; 'a judgment shall not be a lien on any property of the defendant thereto unless the same be enrolled'); § 15-1-43 (the judgment's own 7-year limitations period and the Notice of Renewal mechanism); § 15-1-47 (the lien's own, separately-stated 7-year cap) |
7 years from rendition, or from the last renewal, whichever is later (§ 15-1-43). It can be kept alive indefinitely through successive renewals, each adding another 7 years, as long as each renewal is filed before the current period expires: the statute states no cap on the number of renewals |
Also 7 years from rendition (§ 15-1-47), stated as its own separate rule rather than simply cross-referencing § 15-1-43: a judgment or decree 'shall not be a lien on the property of the defendant... for a longer period than seven years from the rendition thereof, unless an action be brought thereon before the expiration of such time.' Section 15-1-47 also has its own tolling rule not found in § 15-1-43: time during which execution is 'stayed or enjoined by supersedeas, injunction or other process' doesn't count against the 7 years |
File a sworn 'Notice of Renewal of Judgment or Decree' with the clerk of the court that rendered the judgment, in the statutory form set out in § 15-1-43, identifying the judgment's filing date and case number, who it was taken against and in favor of, the current holder, the current amount owing, and a certification that it 'remains valid and has not been satisfied or barred.' The judgment creditor or attorney also files an affidavit with the debtor's and creditor's last-known addresses; the clerk then mails notice of the renewal to the debtor (or the creditor may mail it directly and file proof, which substitutes if the clerk's mailing fails). The Mississippi Supreme Court has held this procedure must be followed exactly, pursuing execution or a debtor's examination in the meantime does not substitute for filing the Notice of Renewal (Bhana v. Patel, No. 2022-IA-01264-SCT (Miss. Dec. 14, 2023)) |
No defined early-filing window like some states use. A judgment or decree 'can be renewed only if, at the time of renewal, the existing judgment or decree has not expired' (§ 15-1-43), so the notice can be filed any time before the current 7-year period runs out, but filing it even one day late is too late; Bhana v. Patel confirms Mississippi courts enforce this strictly. The renewal takes effect on the date the Notice of Renewal is filed with the clerk, and that date starts the next 7-year period running |
No current pending bill or very recent amendment was found. The Notice of Renewal mechanism itself replaced Mississippi's older renewal process by amendment (Laws 2010, ch. 352, § 1; Laws 2011, ch. 539, § 1, eff. 7/1/2011) and has been stable since; §§ 11-7-189, 11-7-191, and 11-7-195 (enrollment and multi-county mechanics) show no amendment newer than 1997. No debt-type-specific carve-out (a shorter or capped renewal for a particular kind of debt, as some other states have added) exists in current Mississippi law |
Satisfaction, entered directly on the Judgment Roll: an attorney of record can satisfy a judgment in whole or part by endorsing the Roll and signing an entry, which the clerk attests (§ 11-7-189(2)); where the Roll is kept by computer, a sworn affidavit directing the clerk to show the judgment satisfied serves the same function (§ 11-7-189(3)). The other route is simple non-renewal: let the 7-year period (or a renewed period) lapse with no timely Notice of Renewal or other lawful renewal on file, and both the judgment and the lien it supported are gone |
Yes. Enrollment on the Judgment Roll only creates a lien in the county where the judgment was rendered and enrolled, to reach a debtor's property in any other county, the creditor must file a certified abstract of the judgment with that other county's circuit clerk, who enrolls it there (§ 11-7-195). That out-of-county lien runs from the date of ITS OWN enrollment in the new county, not the original county's enrollment date, but the statute doesn't extend that later start date past the same 7-year-from-rendition outer cap that applies everywhere, so a lien recorded late in a second county can have less runway left than one recorded promptly in the first. The statute does not separately address whether a Notice of Renewal filed with the original rendering court alone protects an abstract already enrolled in another county, unlike some states that require re-recording the renewal in each additional county by name |
| Missouri verified 2026-07-09 | Mo. Sup. Ct. R. 74.08 (lien duration, tied to judgment revival); R. 74.09 (revival procedure); RSMo § 516.350.1 (10-year conclusive presumption the judgment is paid); § 511.350 (which judgments become liens at all) |
Not a flat expiration but a conclusive presumption: RSMo § 516.350.1 provides every judgment 'shall be presumed to be paid and satisfied after the expiration of ten years' from entry (or from the last revival on personal service, or from the last payment entered of record). Missouri courts treat this as an absolute bar, not rebuttable: 'once the conclusive presumption arises, the judgment cannot be revived and no suit can be maintained upon it' (Pirtle v. Cook, 956 S.W.2d 235, 238 (Mo. banc 1997)) |
The SAME 10 years as the judgment itself, and the SAME act renews both. Mo. Sup. Ct. Rule 74.08 states plainly that 'the lien of a judgment commences upon entry of the judgment, continues for a period of ten years, and is revived by a revival of the judgment': there is no separate lien-recording or lien-renewal step within the county of entry, unlike states that treat the lien as an independently renewed instrument |
A judgment creditor files a 'motion for revival' in the court that entered the judgment (R. 74.09(a)). The court then issues an order directing the debtor 'to show cause on a day certain why such judgment should not be revived,' served on the debtor like a summons (R. 74.09(b)). If the debtor 'fail[s] to appear and show cause,' the court enters an order reviving the judgment, and the lien revives with it under R. 74.08 (R. 74.09(c)). Older statutory language (RSMo §§ 511.370, 511.430) still describes an antiquated 'scire facias' writ and a mismatched three-year revival period, but current Missouri practice runs entirely on the Supreme Court's later, harmonized Rule 74.08-74.10 framework, not that unamended statutory text |
The motion for revival must be filed 'within ten years after entry of the judgment, the last payment of record, or the last prior revival of the judgment' (R. 74.09(a)), there's no earliest-filing restriction, only the 10-year outer deadline. Timing the SHOW-CAUSE ORDER matters, not just the motion: R. 74.10 provides that if the show-cause order issues before the lien expires but the revival judgment is entered later, 'the revived lien prevails over intermediate encumbrances'; but if the order itself isn't issued until after the lien has already expired, the revival 'shall take effect from the entry thereof and shall not prevail over intermediate encumbrances', so filing right at the deadline risks losing priority to anyone who recorded first in the gap |
No 2025-2026 legislative change found to the judgment-lien duration or revival rules. The last substantive amendment was procedural, not legislative: Rule 74.08 was last amended February 27, 2002 (effective January 1, 2003), and Rule 74.09(a) was amended June 25, 2019 (effective January 1, 2020) to add 'the last payment of record' as an alternative start date for the 10-year window. RSMo § 511.360's own text still carries an old carve-out limiting judgments entered before August 28, 1998 to a 3-year lien, but that cutoff is now purely historical since no judgment from that era could still be current. Pending MO SS/SCS/SBs 835 & 1111 (2026), passed the legislature and headed to the Governor, changes garnishment and debtor-examination procedure but does not touch the judgment or lien duration/revival rules in this survey |
Payment: the creditor must 'immediately file an acknowledgment of satisfaction' once a judgment is satisfied (R. 74.11(a)); if the creditor doesn't, 'any interested person may apply to the court...for an order showing satisfaction' (R. 74.11(c)). Separately, simple non-renewal ends both the lien and the underlying judgment together at the 10-year mark, since RSMo § 516.350.1's conclusive-payment presumption 'extinguishes any real property liens created as a result of the judgment' once the ten years run without a timely revival |
Yes. A circuit court judgment automatically liens real estate only 'in the county for which or in which the court is held' (RSMo § 511.350.1). To reach property in a different county, the creditor files a transcript of the judgment with that county's circuit clerk, which then 'shall be a lien on the real estate...situated in the county in which such transcript is filed' (R. 74.13(a)), lasting 'to the same extent and for the same time only as the lien of the judgment in the county where the same was entered' (R. 74.13(c)). Critically, revival power stays centralized: 'executions may be issued and judgments or liens may be revived only by the circuit court where the judgment was entered' (R. 74.13(d)): a creditor cannot revive the out-of-county lien locally, only refile a fresh transcript of the revival from the original court |
| Montana verified 2026-07-09 | MCA §§ 27-2-201 (10-year deadline to sue on a judgment), 25-9-301 (docketing creates a lien in that county), 25-9-302 (extending the lien to another county) |
10 years: an action to sue on the judgment and obtain a new one must be commenced within 10 years of entry (§ 27-2-201(1)); courts have long required an actual lawsuit, not a motion, to extend it further (Jones v. Arnold, 1998 MT 214) |
10 years from docketing in the county of entry (§ 25-9-301(2)); a child-support lien instead runs 10 years from when the support obligation ends, or from entry of a lump-sum arrears judgment, whichever is later (§ 25-9-301(3)) |
Not a motion, affidavit, or administrative filing: the creditor must file a separate civil action on the existing judgment and obtain a new judgment before the original 10 years expire; docketing that new judgment then creates a fresh 10-year lien (§ 27-2-201(1); Jones v. Arnold, 1998 MT 214) |
No early filing window is set by statute: the action to extend the judgment must be filed before its 10-year period runs out; Montana's courts have squarely held the judgment cannot be extended past 10 years by an after-the-fact motion (Jones v. Arnold, 1998 MT 214, quoting Welch v. Huber) |
No recent change to the general 10-year scheme was found; the one built-in variation is for child support, whose lien clock runs from the END of the support obligation (or entry of a lump-sum arrears judgment) rather than from the judgment's own entry date, and is never subject to the ordinary docketing-date clock (§ 25-9-301(3), § 25-9-302(2)) |
Satisfying the judgment ends the lien before its term runs (§ 25-9-301(2), § 25-9-302(1)); otherwise the lien simply expires at the end of its 10-year term unless a new judgment from a timely renewal lawsuit is docketed before then |
Yes: docketing only creates a lien on property in the county where the judgment was entered; reaching property in another county requires filing a certified transcript of the docket with that county's district court clerk, and that lien still runs only 10 years from the ORIGINAL judgment's entry date, not from when the transcript was filed (§ 25-9-302(1)) |
| Nebraska verified 2026-07-09 | Neb. Rev. Stat. § 25-1504 (creates the lien automatically in the county where judgment is entered; other property only from actual seizure); § 25-1515 (dormancy: what keeps the judgment and its lien alive); § 25-1420 (revivor of a dormant judgment, with its own 10-year outer limit); § 25-1542 (a stricter, separate rule for keeping the lien's PRIORITY against a bona fide third party); § 25-1303 (extending the lien to another county by filing a transcript); § 25-1301(4) (satisfaction entered on the judgment index) |
No flat expiration date. A judgment stays enforceable, and its lien keeps working, as long as a writ of execution is sued out at least once every 5 years, either within 5 years of entry, or within 5 years of the last execution issued (§ 25-1515). Nebraska has no renewal-affidavit option like some states; only issuing a new writ resets the clock. Miss the 5-year window and the judgment 'shall become dormant, and shall cease to operate as a lien', but it isn't dead yet. The creditor then has 10 years from the dormancy date to commence a formal action to revive it (§ 25-1420); Nebraska courts have held that a judgment not revived within that 10-year window is 'forever barred' (Farmers & Merchants Bank v. Merryman, 126 Neb. 684, 254 N.W. 428 (1934)) |
In the county where judgment is entered, the lien exists automatically from the day of entry and lasts exactly as long as the judgment stays out of dormancy under § 25-1515, there's no separate lien-specific number. But there's a real trap: avoiding dormancy only takes issuing and returning a writ of execution, even without an actual levy (courts have held this 'is sufficient to prevent judgment from becoming dormant'). Keeping the lien's PRIORITY over a competing bona fide judgment creditor or purchaser is stricter, § 25-1542 requires execution to be 'taken out and levied' (an actual seizure, not just issuance) within the same 5 years, or the lien loses its preference against those third parties even though the judgment itself isn't dormant |
Nebraska has no sworn 'renewal affidavit' filed in the case the way some states use. Before dormancy, the only mechanism is having the clerk issue a writ of execution, a request, not a court motion or hearing. After dormancy, the creditor must bring a formal revival action, using the same procedure prescribed for reviving a lawsuit before judgment (§ 25-1420), this is a new court proceeding with notice to the debtor, not a simple filed document, and the debtor can raise defenses (no judgment to revive, the judgment is void, or it was already paid or discharged). A revived judgment's lien is not retroactive, case law confirms the lien 'is renewed from date of revivor,' not from the original judgment date |
No early-filing restriction, a writ of execution can be sued out any time within the running 5 years. The hard cutoff is simply letting all 5 years pass with no writ issued. Once dormancy hits, the creditor gets a separate, harder deadline: an action to revive the judgment must be commenced within 10 years of the dormancy date (§ 25-1420). Unlike some states, Nebraska's revival statute names no further grace period after that 10 years, courts treat a judgment not timely revived as permanently, forever barred |
No debt-type-specific carve-out currently applies to the general money-judgment lien scheme. §§ 25-1504, 25-1515, 25-1303, and 25-1542 have each seen only technical renumbering or non-substantive amendments since their 1867-1913 origins (most recently 2018's LB193 and 2000's LB921, both technical); § 25-1420 (revivor) hasn't been amended at all since its 1943 codification. A bill pending in the current (109th, 2025-2026) session, LB 1139, would change lien provisions, but only for child- and spousal-support-order judgments under a separate statute (§ 42-371), a self-executing lien mechanism (it attaches when a support payment is due and extinguishes when paid) that has nothing to do with the ordinary money-judgment scheme covered here |
Satisfaction: once a judgment is paid and discharged, or a satisfaction of judgment is filed, 'the clerk shall enter such fact upon the judgment index' (§ 25-1301(4)): no statutory penalty was found for a creditor who refuses or neglects to file one. Beyond satisfaction, the lien also simply stops working the moment dormancy hits: 5 years without an execution issued ends it immediately, even though the underlying judgment might still be revivable for up to 10 more years. If the judgment is never timely revived, Nebraska courts treat the lien as permanently lost, not just paused |
Yes, and Nebraska's default rule is stricter than many states. The automatic lien under § 25-1504 covers ONLY the county where judgment was entered. Reaching a debtor's property in any other county takes an affirmative step: either (a) filing a transcript of the judgment with that other county's district court clerk, which creates a lien there dated from the transcript's own filing and indexing (§ 25-1303; a parallel rule, § 25-1305, covers federal-court judgments), or (b) actually seizing the property there through execution, which binds it only from the moment of seizure, with no automatic lien in the meantime (§ 25-1504). There's no statewide lien and no single recording that reaches every county at once |
| Nevada verified 2026-07-09 | NRS 17.150 (creates the real-property lien via docketing/recording and sets its own duration); NRS 17.214 (the affidavit-based renewal mechanism, filed within a defined 90-day pre-expiration window); NRS 11.190(1)(a) (the general 6-year statute of limitations on bringing an action on a judgment, 'or the renewal thereof'). Nevada ties the judgment's own enforceability and the lien's duration to the identical 6-year figure, and renews BOTH through one filing: unlike states that require separate steps for the judgment and each county's lien |
6 years from entry to bring an action upon the judgment, 'or the renewal thereof' (NRS 11.190(1)(a)). Renewal is available indefinitely through successive Affidavits of Renewal of Judgment, each one adding another 6 years, with no cap on how many times this can repeat (NRS 17.214(4)) |
The SAME 6 years as the judgment's own enforceability period, running from the date the judgment or decree WAS DOCKETED, and 'continued each time the judgment or decree is renewed' (NRS 17.150(2)): Nevada doesn't run these as two separate clocks; one affidavit extends both together |
A single sworn document does the work for both the judgment and the lien: an 'Affidavit of Renewal of Judgment,' filed with the clerk of the court where the judgment was entered and docketed, itemizing the parties, the judgment's date/amount, any outstanding execution, payments and setoffs, and the exact balance still due: all based on the affiant's PERSONAL knowledge, not information and belief (NRS 17.214(1)(a)). If the judgment was recorded to create a lien, the same affidavit must also be recorded with the county recorder within 3 days of the court filing (NRS 17.214(1)(b)), and the judgment debtor must be notified by certified mail within that same 3-day window (NRS 17.214(3)) |
A genuinely defined early window, unlike many states: the affidavit must be filed 'within 90 days before the date the judgment expires by limitation': not any earlier, and not after (NRS 17.214(1)(a)). The Nevada Supreme Court has held these filing, recording, and service requirements are mandatory and strictly enforced (Leven v. Frey, 123 Nev. 399 (2007)). Successive renewals follow the identical rule: each new affidavit must be filed within 90 days before the PRECEDING renewal's own expiration (NRS 17.214(4)) |
No recent change to the 6-year figure itself. The clearest built-in debt-type carve-out: a judgment lien for CHILD SUPPORT ARREARAGES doesn't expire on the ordinary 6-year cycle at all: it 'continues until the judgment is satisfied' (NRS 17.150(2)(b)), with no renewal needed. A separate, narrow exception carves out certain civil-penalty judgments for traffic and related violations under NRS 484A.7047 from both the ordinary lien-duration rule and the affidavit-renewal process. No pending bill affecting §§ 17.150 or 17.214 was found; Nevada's legislature does not meet in 2026 at all (odd-year-only regular sessions), consistent with no current bill activity |
NRS 17.150(2) lists this directly: (a) the judgment is stayed on appeal by a sufficient undertaking, which ends the lien outright, not just pauses it; (b) satisfaction of the judgment; or (c) the lien is 'otherwise discharged.' Simple non-renewal is the other route: let the 6-year period (or a renewed 6-year period) lapse with no timely affidavit filed, and the lien is gone along with the judgment's own enforceability |
The underlying judgment or decree may be recorded 'in the office of the county recorder in any county,' and becomes a lien only on real property in THAT county once recorded there (NRS 17.150(2)), a creditor tracking a debtor across county lines needs a separate recording in each one. On renewal, the affidavit itself must be recorded 'in the office of the county recorder in which the original judgment is filed' (NRS 17.214(1)(b)); the statute's own affidavit-content requirement, disclosing every county where the judgment was docketed and recorded, confirms multi-county recording is contemplated, so a lien recorded in more than one county needs the renewal affidavit re-recorded in each of those counties to stay alive everywhere, not just the first one |
| New Hampshire verified 2026-07-09 | RSA 524:13 (creates the real-property lien by recording a certified copy of the judgment plus an affidavit with a county registry of deeds; sets the lien's duration and the satisfaction/discharge procedure); RSA 508:5 (the flat 20-year, non-extendable limitation period for bringing an action of debt on a judgment, which the lien's own life is directly pegged to) |
A flat 20 years from when the cause of action accrued, with no extension possible: 'Actions of debt upon judgments, recognizances, and contracts under seal may be brought within twenty years after the cause of action accrued, and not afterward' (RSA 508:5). Unlike states that let a creditor file a motion or affidavit to push the deadline back, New Hampshire's statute contains no renewal, extension, or revival mechanism whatsoever: the 20-year period is an absolute ceiling from day one, not a renewable term |
No separate number, the lien's life is expressly pegged to the judgment's own enforceability: it 'shall remain in force and effect for as long as a suit may be maintained upon the judgment under RSA 508:5' (RSA 524:13(IV)), meaning the same flat 20-year window. A certified copy of the judgment may be recorded, OR RE-RECORDED, 'at any time during the duration of the judgment' (RSA 524:13(I)), useful if the debtor later acquires new property in the county, or simply to refresh the lien's recording date, but re-recording does not extend the underlying 20-year deadline, which RSA 508:5 fixes without exception |
There isn't one, in the sense most other states use the term. Because RSA 508:5 sets an absolute, non-extendable 20-year limit ('not afterward'), New Hampshire has no court motion, sworn renewal affidavit, or revival proceeding that can push a judgment's or a lien's life past that point. The only available step is re-recording the same judgment with the registry of deeds at any point before the 20 years run out (RSA 524:13(I)): which can reach newly-acquired property or give the lien a fresher recording date for practical priority purposes, but does not restart or extend the underlying limitation period itself |
There's no renewal window to describe, because there's no renewal available, the only deadline that matters is RSA 508:5's flat 20-year cutoff from accrual, which cannot be moved by any procedural step under current law. This is a genuinely different shape from the pre-2017 common-law practice New Hampshire courts had previously applied, which involved recording a WRIT OF EXECUTION to create an 'execution lien' subject to its own separate, shorter statutory limits on issuing and renewing writs of execution (see McBurney v. Shaw, 148 N.H. 351 (2002), applying RSA 527's execution-issuance limits on top of RSA 508:5's 20 years), RSA 524:13's newer recording-based lien sidesteps that older, more complicated execution-timing trap entirely by not requiring a writ of execution or levy at all |
RSA 524:13 itself is the recent reform: enacted by 2016 ch. 80, effective 2017-01-01, it created this simplified, execution-free way to secure a judgment against real estate, in contrast to the older common-law execution-lien practice that required obtaining and recording a writ of execution. No debt-type-specific carve-out was found in either RSA 524:13 or RSA 508:5, and no bill affecting either section was found pending in a live legislative bill search |
Satisfaction, with an unusually detailed statutory procedure. Once the judgment is satisfied, the plaintiff (or their attorney) must deliver a discharge to the defendant or the property owner (RSA 524:13(V)); the OWNER, not the creditor, is then responsible for recording that discharge and paying the recording fee. If the plaintiff fails to deliver the discharge, the defendant can recover reasonable costs and legal fees. If the plaintiff still hasn't complied within 30 days of a request, or exigent circumstances demand an immediate discharge, the court itself can issue the discharge on proof of payment (a bank check, certified check, attorney trust-account check, or equivalent documentary evidence), and anyone who induces the court to issue a false discharge is liable for the opposing party's costs and fees plus any sanctions the court deems appropriate (RSA 524:13(VI)). Beyond satisfaction, the lien also simply expires automatically once RSA 508:5's flat 20-year window closes, with no separate action needed |
Yes: recording 'shall create a judgment lien on all real estate of the defendant in the COUNTY OF RECORDING' (RSA 524:13(III)), so a creditor tracking a debtor's property across county lines has to record (or later re-record) a certified copy of the judgment with each county's registry of deeds separately to reach property located there |
| New Jersey verified 2026-07-09 | N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2A:16-1 (docketing creates a statewide real-property lien from the date of entry); § 2A:14-5 (20-year period to revive or sue on the judgment); § 2A:17-3 (execution may issue for 20 years without a formal revival); § 2A:16-15 (satisfaction, assignment, and postponement of the lien of record); § 2A:16-49.1 (canceling a judgment after a bankruptcy discharge) |
20 years. 'A judgment in any court of record in this state may be revived by proper proceedings or an action at law may be commenced thereon within 20 years next after the date thereof, but not thereafter' (§ 2A:14-5). Separately, 'execution may issue, without a revival of the judgment, at any time within 20 years after its entry' (§ 2A:17-3), so the creditor doesn't need a revival at all just to keep executing, as long as it happens inside the same 20-year window |
The lien tracks the judgment's own 20-year life: New Jersey does not run a separate, shorter lien-only clock the way Michigan or Ohio do. A Superior Court judgment 'shall [not] affect or bind any real estate, but from the time of the actual entry of such judgment on the minutes or records of the court' (§ 2A:16-1); once docketed, courts and practitioner guides alike describe the resulting lien as valid for the same 20 years fixed by § 2A:14-5 |
Not a new lawsuit: a motion to revive filed in the ORIGINAL case. New Jersey courts (Kronstadt v. Kronstadt, 238 N.J. Super. 614 (App. Div. 1990); Adamar of New Jersey, Inc. v. Mason, 399 N.J. Super. 63 (App. Div. 2008)) require the creditor to show, by motion: (1) the judgment is valid and subsisting; (2) it remains unpaid in full, or the unpaid balance if partial; (3) there is no outstanding impediment to enforcement (a stay, a pending bankruptcy, an injunction); and (4) the motion was filed within 20 years of the judgment's entry. Unlike North Carolina, this does not require filing an entirely new suit |
No stated earliest-filing restriction: the revival motion just has to be filed 'within 20 years next after the date' of the judgment (§ 2A:14-5). Appellate authority confirms this isn't limited to a single renewal: in Adamar, a judgment first entered in 1986 was revived by motion in 2006 for a full additional 20-year term, and the court rejected the argument that the Legislature meant to give a judgment only one 20-year life |
No recent amendment or debt-type-specific carve-out to the 20-year period or the revival-by-motion mechanism was found in the current statute text, and a targeted search of pending New Jersey legislation turned up nothing touching these sections |
A recorded satisfaction, warrant to satisfy, assignment, or postponement of the lien noted on the Civil Judgment and Order Docket (§ 2A:16-15). Bankruptcy has a specific wrinkle: a discharge in bankruptcy does NOT automatically remove an existing real-property lien: the debtor must separately apply, more than a year after the bankruptcy discharge, for a state-court order canceling the judgment of record under § 2A:16-49.1, and even then a lien that already attached to real property the debtor owned before the bankruptcy 'shall not be affected by said order and may be enforced' unless it was separately avoided in the bankruptcy case itself |
No, and this is the most distinctive feature of New Jersey's system. There is a single, STATEWIDE Civil Judgment and Order Docket kept by the Clerk of the Superior Court in Trenton (Rule 4:101-1); one docketing there creates a lien on the debtor's real property everywhere in New Jersey, with no separate county-by-county filing needed the way most other states require |
| New Mexico verified 2026-07-28 | NMSA 1978 § 39-1-6 (creates the real-property lien by filing a transcript of judgment with a county clerk, and separately states the same 14-year enforcement cap); § 37-1-2 (the 14-year limitations period to bring an action on a judgment, and the 2021 amendment's hard outer cap on any revived judgment); § 39-1-20 (a narrower, separate 7-year window for a writ of execution to actually issue); § 39-1-6.1 (duty to release the lien of record once satisfied) |
An action to enforce a New Mexico judgment must be brought within 14 years of its entry (§ 37-1-2). There's no simple renewal filing, reviving a judgment past that point requires bringing an entirely new lawsuit on the existing judgment (a common-law action on the judgment) before the 14 years runs out. Since a 2021 amendment, this is now a genuine hard ceiling: 'a judgment obtained through a common law action on a prior judgment or through any other means of revival of a prior judgment shall not be enforceable after fourteen years from the date of the original judgment', no matter how many times it's revived, nothing pushes enforceability past 14 years from the FIRST judgment |
The lien isn't a separate number, it's tied directly to the judgment's own life. Section 39-1-6 itself says plainly, 'Judgment shall be enforced for not more than fourteen years thereof,' and New Mexico courts have held 'the lien expires with the judgment as a judgment lien is founded on the judgment from which it arises' (W. States Collection Co. v. Shain, 83 N.M. 203, 490 P.2d 461 (1971)). So the lien lasts exactly as long as the judgment does, including the same post-2021 hard 14-year-from-original-entry ceiling, even through a revival |
Not a filed affidavit or notice, New Mexico courts have held that reviving a judgment means bringing a NEW lawsuit: 'an action to revive a judgment' under § 37-1-2, sometimes called a common-law action on the prior judgment (Fischoff v. Tometich, 113 N.M. 271, 824 P.2d 1073 (Ct. App. 1991)). Separately, actually collecting via a writ of execution is its own narrower remedy: an execution may issue 'at any time... within seven years after the rendition or revival of the judgment' (§ 39-1-20), meaning a creditor may need to revive the judgment well before the full 14 years is up just to keep the execution remedy available, even though the underlying judgment's own limitations period runs the full 14 years |
No early-filing window is defined: a revival action just has to be brought before the judgment's enforceability period runs out. The critical trap, and the reason this matters more in New Mexico than in states with simple renewal filings: since 2021, a successful revival does NOT restart a fresh 14-year period measured from the revival. Every revived judgment is still capped at 14 years from the date of the ORIGINAL judgment, so a creditor cannot keep a New Mexico judgment alive indefinitely through repeated revivals the way some other states' judgments can be renewed serially. Separately, a writ of execution needs to issue at least once every 7 years, counted from the last rendition or revival, to keep that specific remedy live |
The defining recent reform IS this topic's whole story for New Mexico: a 2021 amendment (2021 N.M. Laws, ch. 31, § 11, effective 7/1/2021) added the sentence capping any revived judgment at 14 years from the ORIGINAL judgment's date, closing off what had previously been read as allowing serial revivals to extend enforceability indefinitely. No debt-type-specific carve-out (a shorter or capped renewal for a particular kind of debt) was found in current law, and no further bill on point is pending |
Satisfaction creates an affirmative duty, not just an option: once a judgment giving rise to a § 39-1-6 lien is fully satisfied, the judgment creditor must file a release of the lien with the county clerk where the real estate is located, with the filing cost assessed against the debtor and collected before the release has to be filed (§ 39-1-6.1). Filing an approved supersedeas bond on appeal also voids the lien outright, not just pauses it (§ 39-1-6). Beyond that, the lien simply ends when the judgment's own enforceability runs out: at 14 years from the original entry, with no further revival possible past that point since the 2021 amendment |
Yes. The lien only reaches real estate in a county once a transcript of the judgment is actually filed with that county's clerk: New Mexico courts have confirmed 'a money judgment does not carry with it a lien... and a lien exists only from the date of filing the transcript in the office of the county clerk' (Kaseman v. Mapel, 26 N.M. 639, 195 P. 799 (1921); Scheer v. Stolz, 41 N.M. 585, 72 P.2d 606 (1937)). Reaching a debtor's property in more than one county means filing a separate transcript in each one; the statute doesn't describe any special re-filing step tied specifically to a revival, so the same 14-year outer ceiling that governs the judgment governs every county's lien alike |
| New York verified 2026-07-08 | CPLR §§ 211(b) (20-year presumption of payment on the judgment), 5203 (10-year real-property lien and its narrow extension), 5018 (docketing) |
Presumed paid and satisfied 20 years after the creditor was first entitled to enforce it, unless a written acknowledgment of the debt or a payment (including one obtained by levy) is made within that time, which restarts the 20 years from that act (CPLR § 211(b)) |
10 years from the filing of the judgment-roll (i.e. from docketing), by default (CPLR § 5203(a)) |
No routine renewal filing exists for any creditor: only a court order, on the creditor's motion with notice to the debtor, can extend the lien past 10 years, and only to cover a period the creditor was stayed from enforcing or the time needed to complete a levy already delivered to a sheriff before the 10 years ran (CPLR § 5203(b)) |
The execution that can support an extension must be delivered to a sheriff before the 10-year mark; the court's extension order takes effect only once filed with the county clerk where the property sits, with a docket entry made (CPLR § 5203(b)) |
No debt-type carve-out found; the closest analog is that § 211(b)'s 20-year period is a rebuttable presumption rather than an absolute cutoff: any written acknowledgment or payment within the 20 years restarts it from that point |
Filing a signed, acknowledged satisfaction-piece (or partial satisfaction-piece) with the proper clerk; absent that, the lien simply ends when its 10-year term (or a court-ordered extension) runs out (CPLR §§ 5020, 5203) |
Yes: docketing, and any later satisfaction, must be separately filed in every county where the debtor has property, by filing a transcript of the judgment with that county's own clerk (CPLR §§ 5018(a), 5020(d)) |
| North Carolina verified 2026-07-09 | N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-234 (docketing creates the real-property lien, 10 years); § 1-233 (docketing and indexing mechanics); § 1-306 (10-year cutoff on execution); § 1-47(1) (10-year deadline to sue on the judgment itself, one time only); § 1-239 (marking a judgment paid and satisfied) |
No indefinite life and no formal 'renewal' filing. A money judgment can be enforced by execution for 10 years from entry (§ 1-306), and separately, an action 'upon a judgment ... from the date of its entry' must be brought within 10 years (§ 1-47(1)), but that action may be brought only once, and North Carolina's courts have held there is no procedure to revive or renew a judgment directly (NCNB v. Robinson, 80 N.C. App. 154 (1986)); the only way to extend collectability is a new lawsuit treating the unpaid judgment as a debt |
10 years from the date the judgment was entered under Rule 58, running from docketing in each county, not from any later renewal (§ 1-234). The statute ties the lien's life directly to the ORIGINAL judgment's entry date: there is no separate, independently-timed lien clock apart from the judgment's own life |
Not a renewal at all: a second lawsuit. Because 'no such action may be brought more than once, or have the effect to continue the lien of the original judgment' (§ 1-47(1)), a creditor who wants to keep collecting after 10 years must file a brand-new civil action suing on the old judgment as a debt, obtain a second judgment on it, and docket THAT judgment; North Carolina courts have repeatedly said 'there is no procedure now recognized in North Carolina by which a judgment may be revived or renewed' (NCNB v. Robinson, 80 N.C. App. 154 (1986); the new lawsuit is instead 'an action on a debt,' Raccoon Valley Investment Co. v. Toler, 32 N.C. App. 461 (1977)) |
The new lawsuit on the old judgment must be filed before the original judgment's 10-year mark runs out (§ 1-47(1)); there's no earliest-filing restriction, so it can be brought any time within the 10 years, though practitioners are advised to file well before the deadline since the second judgment must actually be OBTAINED, not just filed, to avoid a gap where neither judgment is enforceable. Once used, this option is gone: only one such action is allowed per judgment |
No recent legislative change or debt-type-specific carve-out to the 10-year period or the one-time-only renewal-by-new-lawsuit rule was found in the current statute text or in a targeted search of pending North Carolina legislation |
Full payment, tracked through the clerk's office: once a judgment is paid off and the clerk marks it, the clerk enters 'PAID AND SATISFIED IN FULL' on the judgment docket and sends a certificate of payment in full to the clerk of every county where a transcript of the judgment was docketed (§ 1-239(a)(5)). Short of that, the lien also simply expires on its own once the 10-year period in § 1-234 runs without a timely new judgment |
Yes. A judgment is only a lien in the county where it's docketed (§ 1-233); to reach property in a different county, the creditor must obtain and file a transcript of the original docket with that county's clerk (§ 1-234). A second (renewal-by-lawsuit) judgment does not automatically extend the lien in a county where the second judgment itself isn't separately docketed |
| North Dakota verified 2026-07-09 | N.D.C.C. §§ 28-01-15(1) (10-yr limit on a fresh suit on a judgment), 28-20-13 (docketing creates the lien, split by 8/1/2021 docketing date), 28-20-21 to -23 (affidavit renewal, pre-8/1/2021 judgments only, repealed eff. 8/1/2031), 28-20-35 (cancellation of record), 28-21-01 (writ-of-execution period, amended 2023 to 20 years) |
No single 'expiration' figure: three separate clocks run at once: a writ of execution may issue any time within 20 years of entry (§ 28-21-01, doubled from 10 years by a 2023 amendment); a brand-new lawsuit 'upon' the judgment is barred for the first 9 years without court leave for good cause shown and must be filed within 10 years of accrual if at all (§§ 28-01-34, 28-01-15(1)); and the docketed real-property lien itself runs 10 or 20 years depending on the docketing date (see the next row) |
For a judgment docketed before 8/1/2021: 10 years from docketing, once-renewable by affidavit to 20 years total (§ 28-20-13(2)). For a judgment docketed on or after 8/1/2021: a flat 20 years from docketing, with no renewal option and none needed (§ 28-20-13(3)); both tiers end in mandatory cancellation of record at the applicable mark (§ 28-20-35) |
Available only to judgments docketed before 8/1/2021: a sworn affidavit of renewal (not a court motion or lawsuit), filed with the clerk where the judgment was first docketed and then separately filed in every other county carrying a transcript (§§ 28-20-21, 28-20-22); docketing it extends the lien for one additional 10-year term (§ 28-20-23). A judgment docketed on or after 8/1/2021 already has the full 20-year term and has no affidavit-renewal mechanism available to go beyond it: the renewal statutes themselves are repealed outright effective 8/1/2031 |
For an eligible pre-8/1/2021 judgment: the affidavit must be filed 'within ninety days preceding the expiration of ten years from the first docketing' (§ 28-20-21(1)): a defined 90-day early window, not 'anytime' before the deadline. There is no renewal window at all for a post-8/1/2021 judgment's 20-year lien, since none is needed or available |
Two back-to-back reforms, not one: 2021 HB 1251 (eff. 8/1/2021) doubled the docketed lien from 10 to 20 years for judgments docketed after that date and phased out affidavit renewal for them entirely, with the renewal statutes themselves sunsetting 8/1/2031; a separate 2023 act doubled the writ-of-execution period under § 28-21-01 from 10 to 20 years. The state's own courts self-help guide flags genuine, unresolved uncertainty for judgments docketed between 8/1/2021 and 7/31/2023 about how the two changes interact. No debt-type or debtor-type carve-out (e.g. medical debt, individual vs. business) was found |
Filing a signed, acknowledged satisfaction of judgment cancels and discharges it of record (§§ 28-20-24, 28-20-25); a partial satisfaction discharges the lien only to that extent (§ 28-20-26); a bankruptcy court's lien-avoidance order, or a discharge protecting after-acquired property or the homestead, removes the lien by filing a certified copy (§ 28-20-30.1); a debtor can also release the lien during an appeal by depositing 1-1/3 times the judgment amount or posting a bond (§ 28-20-29). Simple non-renewal (pre-8/1/2021 judgments) or reaching the natural 20-year mark (post-8/1/2021 judgments) also ends it, triggering mandatory cancellation (§ 28-20-35) |
Yes: the lien exists only in a county where the judgment (or a transcript of it) is actually docketed, covering property the debtor owns there at docketing or acquires later in that county (§ 28-20-13(1)-(2)); reaching property in additional counties takes filing a transcript there too. For an eligible renewal, the affidavit must likewise be separately filed and docketed in every county carrying a transcript, or the lien lapses there even though it survives in the original county (§ 28-20-22) |
| Ohio verified 2026-07-09 | R.C. 2329.02 (judgment lien via a certificate of judgment filed with a county's clerk of courts); § 2329.07 (5-year dormancy trigger for non-state judgments, 10-15 years for the state); §§ 2325.15, 2325.17, 2325.18 (revivor of a dormant judgment; 10-year deadline to sue for revival) |
No flat expiration date. Instead, a non-state judgment 'is dormant and shall not operate as a lien against the estate of the judgment debtor unless' one of four qualifying actions occurs 'within five years from the date of the judgment or any renewal of the judgment, whichever is later' (§ 2329.07(B)(1)). Once dormant, 'an action to revive a judgment can only be brought within ten years from the time it became dormant' (§ 2325.18(A)), so a creditor who keeps taking a qualifying action every 5 years can keep an Ohio judgment alive indefinitely, unlike states with one fixed outer-limit year count |
Unusually, Ohio doesn't give the recorded lien its own separate, shorter clock: filing a certificate of judgment creates the lien (§ 2329.02), and that same lien lapses on exactly the same 5-year dormancy schedule that governs the underlying judgment's own enforceability (§ 2329.07(B)(1)). There's no second, independent lien-only duration to track |
Any one of four acts resets the 5-year dormancy clock: issuing an execution on the judgment, filing (or re-filing) a certificate of judgment, issuing or continuing an order of garnishment, or commencing or continuing a proceeding in aid of execution (§ 2329.07(A), (B)(1)). If the judgment has ALREADY gone dormant, the creditor instead has to file a formal revivor action 'in the manner prescribed for reviving actions before judgment, or by action in the court in which such judgment was rendered' (§ 2325.15); once granted, the judgment 'shall stand revived' and can again operate as a lien (§ 2325.17) |
For a judgment that hasn't yet gone dormant, any one of the four § 2329.07(B) actions taken within 5 years of the judgment (or its last renewal) keeps it current, there's no separate early-filing window. For a judgment that has ALREADY gone dormant, a revivor action can be brought any time 'within ten years from the time it became dormant' (§ 2325.18(A)), a considerably longer grace period than the routine 5-year cycle, but available only once dormancy has already set in |
Ohio's clearest carve-out isn't about consumer debt but about who the creditor is: a judgment 'in favor of the state' gets a much longer window: dormancy is avoided if a qualifying act occurs 'within ten years from the date of the judgment, or any renewal of the judgment, or within fifteen years from the date of the issuance of the last execution thereon, whichever is later' (§ 2329.07(B)(2)), with the 15-year period applying to executions and certificates 'issued and filed before, on, or after March 29, 2007.' No dollar-amount or natural-person consumer-debt-specific renewal cap (comparable to Illinois's 2026 reform) was found |
Two routes: simple non-renewal: the lien 'shall not operate ... unless' a qualifying act happens within the 5-year window, so it lapses on its own with no separate release filing required (§ 2329.07(B)(1)); or the judgment being paid off, in which case Ohio's county clerks of courts describe the practice as the debtor obtaining a certified 'Entry of Satisfaction' from the court that rendered the judgment and filing it to release the certificate-of-judgment lien |
Yes. A certificate of judgment creates a lien only in the county where it's filed with the clerk of the court of common pleas (§ 2329.02); reaching property in another county requires filing a certificate there too, and each county's lien independently 'shall cease to operate ... upon lands and tenements of the judgment debtor within that county' unless a qualifying renewal act is taken specifically in that county within the same 5-year (or, for the state, 15-year) window (§ 2329.07(C)) |
| Oklahoma verified 2026-07-09 | 12 O.S. § 706 (creates the real-property lien via a recorded 'Statement of Judgment'); 12 O.S. § 735 (sets the judgment's own 5-year dormancy/enforceability clock); 12 O.S. § 759(C) (extending a recorded lien specifically). Oklahoma doesn't run an independent lien-duration number: the lien's survival is entirely tied to the judgment's own enforceability under § 735 |
5 years from the date the judgment is filed, with no cap on renewals: the judgment 'becomes unenforceable and of no effect' unless one of four specific actions occurs within 5 years of filing, or within 5 years of the last such action: issuing and filing an execution, filing a notice of renewal of judgment, issuing a garnishment summons, or sending a notice of income assignment (§ 735(A)-(B)). Any one of those four actions restarts a fresh 5-year clock indefinitely |
Not a separate number. The recorded lien's life tracks the judgment's own 5-year enforceability status under § 735: § 706(E) only allows a lien to be released once it 'has not become unenforceable by operation of law,' meaning the lien simply lapses in step with judgment dormancy rather than running its own independent term the way Michigan's does |
Two separate filings, similar to California's approach. To keep the underlying judgment alive, one of the four § 735 triggering documents (execution, notice of renewal, garnishment summons, or income-assignment notice) must be filed at the court-clerk level. To keep a lien alive in a PARTICULAR county past its current term, § 759(C) separately requires filing a certified copy of one of those same four documents with that county's clerk. No hearing or court order is required for either filing |
No defined early-filing window: § 759(C) requires the certified copy be filed 'prior to the expiration of' the current period, without setting any earliest date (unlike, e.g., Michigan's 120-day floor). The hard cutoff is the same 5-year mark: miss it, and both the judgment and every county's lien become unenforceable, with no grace period |
No recent amendment to §§ 706, 735, or 759's duration or renewal mechanics, Oklahoma's official code portal is current through the 2026 legislative session with no substantive change to these sections since 2019 (§ 759) and 2002 (§ 735). One built-in carve-out already exists on the statute's face: child-support judgments are exempt from the ordinary dormancy scheme (§ 735(C)) and instead run on 43 O.S. § 137(B), the support judgment itself never goes dormant, but its real-property lien still runs a flat 5 years from filing, extendable the same way under § 759(C) |
Two routes. (1) An affirmative 'Release of Judgment Lien' filed with the county clerk: voluntarily by the creditor, or compelled by court order after a debtor's motion, with a built-in 15-day notice-and-objection period, if the creditor won't release it voluntarily (§ 706). (2) Simple non-renewal: once the judgment becomes unenforceable under § 735, or a specific county's lien isn't timely extended under § 759(C), that county's lien lapses automatically with no separate filing needed to make it happen |
Yes. A lien attaches 'within a county' only after a Statement of Judgment is filed 'in the office of the county clerk in that county' (§ 706(B)): a creditor tracking a debtor's property across county lines must file separately in each one. Renewal follows the same logic: extending a lien in a given county requires filing a certified copy of the qualifying document with THAT county's clerk specifically (§ 759(C)); keeping the judgment alive at the court-clerk level does not, by itself, extend a lien already recorded in a county where nothing was separately filed there |
| Oregon verified 2026-07-09 | ORS 18.005(11) (defines 'judgment remedy' as BOTH the ability to execute on a judgment AND any judgment lien: a single bundled concept, not two separate things); ORS 18.150 (creates the judgment lien automatically in the county where the judgment is entered); ORS 18.152 (extends lien coverage to other counties via recording); ORS 18.180 (expiration of judgment remedies); ORS 18.182 (extension of judgment remedies) |
Conceptually distinctive: the judgment itself does not expire. What expires are 'judgment remedies': defined by ORS 18.005(11) as both the right to execute AND any judgment lien, treated as one unit. For an ordinary civil judgment, those remedies 'expire 10 years after the entry of the judgment' (ORS 18.180(3)), or immediately upon 'full satisfaction of the money award portion of the judgment' (ORS 18.180(1)), whichever happens first. An Oregon Law Commission work group member who helped write this framework has explained the distinction plainly: 'judgment remedies can expire... but judgments do not' |
The SAME 10 years as the right to execute: Oregon does not split these into two separate clocks the way many states do. Because ORS 18.005(11) defines 'judgment remedy' to include the judgment lien itself, ORS 18.180(3)'s 10-year expiration applies to the lien exactly as it applies to execution rights, both running from the judgment's entry date |
A single filing: a 'certificate of extension,' filed 'in the court that entered the judgment,' which the court administrator enters both in the court's register and in the judgment lien record (ORS 18.182(1)). This can only be filed if judgment remedies haven't already expired under ORS 18.180 and no full satisfaction document has been filed. Critically, ORS 18.182(5) caps this at exactly one extension: 'Judgment remedies for a judgment may be extended only once under the provisions of this section': there is no second extension available under this statute |
No early-filing floor, the certificate can be filed any time before the 10 years run out. But there's no grace period either: ORS 18.182(4) states plainly that 'if a certificate of extension is filed after the date on which the judgment remedies for the judgment expire... the certificate has no effect', a late filing does nothing, it doesn't restart anything. Once a timely certificate is filed, the extended remedies run for a fresh 10 years measured from the date the certificate itself was filed, not from the original judgment date (ORS 18.182(5)) |
No new 2025-2026 reform, but this entire framework is itself the product of a major overhaul: 2003 Or. Laws ch. 576 (HB 2646), effective January 1, 2004, rewrote Oregon's judgments law from the ground up, including creating the 'judgment remedy' concept and the current expiration/extension structure. Separately, several debt-type-specific timelines exist: child support judgment remedies expire 35 years after the support obligation is first established (ORS 18.180(5)); spousal support remedies expire 25 years after the obligation is established, or 10 years after any missed installment comes due, whichever is later, with its own separate extension procedure (ORS 18.185); and criminal judgment remedies expire 20 years (50 years if the judgment includes restitution). No pending bill touching ORS 18.180 or 18.182 was found for the current session |
Full satisfaction of the money award ends judgment remedies, including the lien, automatically and immediately, by the statute's own terms (ORS 18.180(1)), without a separate release filing being what actually terminates the underlying right (though the court administrator does note satisfaction in the judgment lien record per ORS 18.075(4)(e)). Bankruptcy has a narrower effect: ORS 18.150(5) says a judgment lien simply 'does not attach to any real property... acquired after the debt... is discharged', meaning discharge blocks the lien from reaching NEW property going forward, but a lien that already attached to real property before the bankruptcy filing can survive, which is exactly why ORS 18.182(2) carves out a path to extend that kind of already-attached, non-avoided lien even after a discharge. And simple non-extension works too: miss the 10-year (or extended) deadline with no timely certificate on file, and the remedies are just gone |
Yes, with a genuine twist: in the county where the judgment is ENTERED, the lien attaches automatically: the court administrator just notes it in the register, with no separate recording required from the creditor (ORS 18.150(2)). To reach a debtor's property in any OTHER Oregon county, though, the creditor has to affirmatively record a certified copy of the judgment (or a 'lien record abstract') in that county's own County Clerk Lien Record, and do it before the judgment remedies expire (ORS 18.152(1)). An extension has to be separately recorded in each of those other counties too, or its benefit doesn't carry over there (ORS 18.152(4)) |
| Pennsylvania verified 2026-07-09 | 42 Pa.C.S. § 4303(a) (judgment as a lien on entry of record); § 5526(1) (5-year deadline to revive the lien); § 5529(a) (20-year limit on executing against personal property); Pa.R.C.P. 3025-3031.1 (revival) and 3001-3003 (multi-county transfer) |
No flat expiration on the judgment as a debt of record. The creditor's right to execute against the debtor's personal property must be exercised within 20 years of entry (42 Pa.C.S. § 5529(a)); the real-property lien, covered separately below, runs on its own much shorter 5-year clock |
5 years. Entering a judgment of record in a county's judgment index automatically creates a lien on the debtor's real property there (42 Pa.C.S. § 4303(a)); that lien, and any lien created by a later writ or agreement of revival, continues for 5 years from the date it is entered in the judgment index (Pa.R.C.P. 3027(c), 3031.1(a)) |
File a praecipe for a writ of revival, or an agreement to revive, with the prothonotary of the county where the judgment was entered (Pa.R.C.P. 3025). Once entered in the judgment index, it continues the existing lien AND separately creates a fresh lien on any other real property the debtor has acquired in that county since the judgment was last entered (Pa.R.C.P. 3027(b)) |
The revival action must be commenced within 5 years of the judgment (or the last revival) being entered in the judgment index to keep the lien continuous (42 Pa.C.S. § 5526(1)); each successful revival then runs its own fresh 5 years (Pa.R.C.P. 3031.1(a)). There's no defined early-filing window: revival can be filed any time before the 5 years runs out |
No debt-type-specific carve-out found in the revival statute or rules governing how long a judgment lien lasts or how it's renewed |
Filing a written satisfaction with the prothonotary discharges the judgment 'forever' (42 Pa.C.S. § 8104(a)); a judgment creditor who unreasonably refuses a debtor's written request to do so for more than 90 days owes liquidated damages (§ 8104(b)). Absent a filed satisfaction, the lien also simply lapses on its own once its 5-year term runs out without a timely revival |
Yes. A judgment lien attaches only to real property in the county where the judgment is entered of record (42 Pa.C.S. § 4303(a)). To reach property in another county, the creditor must transfer the judgment there by filing a certified copy of all docket entries and a certification of the amount owed with that county's prothonotary (Pa.R.C.P. 3002(a)); execution and revival can then proceed independently in that county too, on its own 5-year clock (Pa.R.C.P. 3003) |
| Rhode Island verified 2026-07-09 | R.I. Gen. Laws §§ 9-1-17 (20-year limit to sue on a judgment), 9-26-33 (20-year discharge of a real-estate execution lien), 9-25-3 (6-year limit on issuing or reissuing an execution) |
20 years: "actions on judgments" must be "commenced and sued" within 20 years of the judgment (§ 9-1-17); separately, any individual execution to collect on that judgment must be issued within 6 years of the judgment (or of the return of the last execution) and reissued as an alias execution to continue (§ 9-25-3) |
A flat 20 years from the DATE OF THE JUDGMENT itself, not from when the execution was recorded or levied: the lien is "deemed discharged of record" automatically at that point (§ 9-26-33) |
No renewal-by-motion or affidavit procedure is set out in the statute for either the judgment or the lien; extending enforcement past 6 years takes issuing a new (alias) execution under § 9-25-3, and § 9-1-17's own framing of "actions on judgments" implies a fresh lawsuit on the judgment is the route to a new judgment once the original nears its 20-year limit |
An alias execution may issue "at any time within six (6) years from the rendition of the judgment originally or from the return day of the last execution" (§ 9-25-3); the 20-year lien discharge under § 9-26-33 has no stated early window or renewal option at all: it simply ends |
Effective January 1, 2026 (P.L. 2025, ch. 300 § 2 and ch. 301 § 2), no execution may be filed against a defendant's principal residence for a judgment based on medical debt, regardless of how much of the 6-year execution window remains (§ 9-25-3) |
The statute names no separate satisfaction-of-judgment filing for this lien; the only extinguishment mechanism it states expressly is the automatic 20-year discharge under § 9-26-33. That discharge doesn't apply at all to a levy against only one spouse's interest in real estate held as tenants by the entirety |
Rhode Island records real estate by town or city rather than by county: the officer must file the levied execution "with the recorder of deeds, if any, or with the town clerk or the city clerk of the town or city in which the real estate shall lie" (§ 9-26-14), so reaching property in more than one town or city requires a separate filing in each |
| South Carolina verified 2026-07-09 | S.C. Code § 15-35-810 (creates the real-property lien, 10-year term from judgment); § 15-39-20 and § 15-39-30 (the judgment's own 10-year enforceable 'active energy,' explicitly 'without any renewal or renewals thereof') |
A flat 10 years from the date of entry, with no renewal available under current law. § 15-39-30 states executions may issue 'at any time within ten years from the date of the original entry thereof and shall have active energy during such period, without any renewal or renewals thereof.' The South Carolina Supreme Court has confirmed this is a hard bright-line rule, not a presumption: in Gordon v. Lancaster, 425 S.C. 386, 823 S.E.2d 173 (2018), the Court overruled an earlier case that had allowed a pending collection proceeding to keep a judgment alive past 10 years, holding a creditor gets no extension even when a hearing on enforcement was already scheduled before the deadline |
The identical 10 years as the judgment itself, running from the same date. § 15-35-810 provides the lien 'begin[s] from the time of such entry on the book of abstracts and indices and continue[s] for a period of ten years from the date of such final judgment or decree.' South Carolina does not split the judgment's life and the lien's life into two different clocks the way some states do: both expire together, automatically, at the same 10-year mark |
None exists under current law. Unlike most states, South Carolina's statutes contain no renewal affidavit, no renewal motion, and no revival procedure of any kind for an ordinary civil judgment. The South Carolina Supreme Court has described the effect of the current statute in the strongest possible terms: quoting Hardee v. Lynch, 212 S.C. 6, 46 S.E.2d 179 (1948), the Court in Gordon v. Lancaster explained that when the legislature removed the old renewal mechanism, '[t]he logical result...was to utterly extinguish a judgment after the expiration of ten years from the date of entry.' A bill, H.5010 (2019-2020 session), would have added a renewal-application procedure to §§ 15-35-810, 15-39-20, and 15-39-30, but it stalled in the House Judiciary Committee and died with that session; no successor bill has been introduced since |
Not applicable: there is no renewal window because no renewal mechanism exists. The only 'window' that matters is the 10-year period itself: a creditor must complete collection (execution, levy, or a court order actually issued) before the 10 years run out. Gordon v. Lancaster held that even having already filed a collection proceeding before the deadline does not extend the judgment if the court's order granting relief comes after the 10 years expire |
No debt-type carve-out exists, and the only notable recent activity cuts the other direction: in 2018, Gordon v. Lancaster eliminated a judicially-created equitable exception (from a 2010 case, Linda Mc Co. v. Shore) that had let some judgments survive past 10 years if a collection proceeding was already pending, returning South Carolina to a strict, no-exceptions 10-year cutoff. Separately, the legislature's own 2019-2020 attempt to add a general renewal procedure (H.5010) failed to pass, so South Carolina remains an outlier with no path to extend a judgment past 10 years at all, for any debt type |
Three ways: (1) satisfaction, the judgment creditor (or assignee) has the judgment 'duly cancelled of record,' and the clerk of court then marks it 'cancelled' on the judgment margin and index (§ 15-35-650); (2) a bankruptcy discharge, but only after the debtor affirmatively applies to the court that entered the judgment, discharge does not cancel a South Carolina judgment automatically, and the debtor must wait at least one year after the bankruptcy discharge before applying, with notice served on the creditor (§§ 15-35-630, 15-35-640); or (3) simple non-renewal, since no renewal mechanism exists, the lien and judgment both just expire automatically at the 10-year mark |
Yes. A judgment lien under § 15-35-810 attaches only to real estate in the county where the judgment (or a transcript of it) is entered on that county's own book of abstracts of judgments. To reach a debtor's property in a different county, the creditor must separately docket a transcript of the judgment with the clerk of court in that other county under § 15-35-540, which then 'shall have the same force and effect as a judgment of that court' locally. Because no renewal mechanism exists in South Carolina at all, this recording requirement doesn't raise the multi-county renewal trap seen in other states: every county's lien simply expires on the same fixed 10-year schedule regardless of when or where it was recorded |
| South Dakota verified 2026-07-09 | SDCL §§ 15-16-7 (10-year county lien from docketing), 15-16-33 and 15-16-35 (renewal by affidavit), 15-2-6(1) (20-year limit to sue on a judgment) |
No cap on how many times a judgment can be renewed by affidavit every 10 years (§§ 15-16-33, 15-16-35); separately, a fresh lawsuit to sue ON the judgment as a new cause of action is barred after 20 years (§ 15-2-6(1)) |
10 years from docketing, automatically, on all the debtor's non-homestead real property in that county, present and later-acquired, but ONLY in a county where the judgment is actually docketed (§ 15-16-7) |
A sworn affidavit of renewal (not a court motion or lawsuit), filed and docketed before the original 10 years expire, setting out the parties, court, judgment amount, ownership chain, every county the judgment has been transcribed to, and the exact balance still owed after credits and offsets (§ 15-16-33) |
No early filing window: the affidavit must be filed "at any time prior to the expiration of ten years from the first docketing"; docketing it in time restarts a fresh 10-year lien and revives the right to execute (§§ 15-16-33, 15-16-35) |
No recent legislative change to the general scheme was found; the one built-in carve-out is property-type, not debt-type: the lien never reaches the debtor's homestead in the first place, no matter how many times the judgment is renewed (§ 15-16-7) |
Simply letting the 10-year period run without filing and docketing a renewal affidavit ends the lien; the statute doesn't set out a separate satisfaction-of-judgment filing in this subchapter |
Yes: "no judgment shall become a lien on real property ... unless it be docketed in the county where the land is situated" (§ 15-16-7); reaching property in additional counties takes filing a certified transcript there (§ 15-16-9), and a renewal affidavit must likewise be filed in each county where a transcript was docketed to keep the lien alive there (§ 15-16-35) |
| Tennessee verified 2026-07-09 | T.C.A. § 28-3-110(a)(2) (10-year limitation on actions upon judgments); T.C.A. § 25-5-101 (creating a real-property lien by registering a certified copy of the judgment); T.C.A. § 25-5-105 (how long that registered lien lasts); Tenn. R. Civ. P. 69.04 (the motion-to-extend-the-judgment procedure) and 69.07 (how the lien is created, extended, and terminated) |
10 years from entry (T.C.A. § 28-3-110(a)(2): actions on judgments and decrees of Tennessee courts of record must be commenced within 10 years). This can be extended for another 10 years by filing a timely motion under Tenn. R. Civ. P. 69.04 before the original 10 years run out; there's no cap on how many times this can be repeated, as long as each extension is sought within the currently-running 10-year period. If the 10 years lapse with no timely motion, the judgment isn't simply gone, but reviving it requires a new lawsuit called a writ of scire facias, not a simple motion |
The SAME clock as the judgment's own 10-year life, not an independent number, unlike states that run the two on separate tracks. T.C.A. § 25-5-105(a) is explicit: a registered judgment lien 'will last for the time remaining in a ten-year period from the date of final judgment entry in the court clerk's office.' A lien registered five years into the judgment's life, for example, only has five years left to run, not a fresh 10. This 10-year figure is itself relatively recent: before a May 17, 2000 amendment, a Tennessee judgment lien lasted only 3 years (or the judgment's remaining life, if shorter), and the amendment expressly does not revive any lien that had already expired before that date (§ 25-5-105(b)) |
Two separate steps, not one. First, extending the JUDGMENT itself: file a motion under Tenn. R. Civ. P. 69.04 with the court that entered it; mail a copy to the debtor; if the debtor doesn't respond within 30 days, 'the court shall grant the motion without further notice or hearing': fully automatic if uncontested (a 2016 rule change eliminated the older show-cause hearing requirement for uncontested extensions). But that motion alone does not keep an already-recorded LIEN alive. Second, and separately, the creditor must register a certified copy of the court's order extending the judgment with the same register of deeds where the lien was originally registered: Tenn. R. Civ. P. 69.07(2) is explicit that 'for the extension of the lien to be enforceable, the judgment creditor must register the court's order extending the judgment.' Skipping that second registration step means the judgment survives but the real-property lien does not |
The motion to extend the judgment must be FILED before the current 10-year period expires, Tennessee case law holds that filing the motion in time is what matters, not whether the court rules on it or the debtor is served before the deadline (In re Hunt, 323 B.R. 665 (Bankr. W.D. Tenn. 2005)). Once granted, the extension is treated as running 'from the expiration of ten years from the effective date of the original judgment,' not from the date of the extension order itself (Cook v. Alley, 419 S.W.3d 256 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2013)), so there's no gap in coverage even if the court doesn't act until after the original 10 years technically ran out. There's no comparable statutory grace period for the SEPARATE lien-continuation registration once the judgment's own deadline has passed |
The most significant reform is already in force, not pending: a 2016 change to Tenn. R. Civ. P. 69.04 eliminated the requirement that a court hold a show-cause hearing before extending an uncontested judgment, replacing it with an automatic grant if the debtor doesn't respond within 30 days of the motion. Separately, the 10-year judgment-lien duration itself dates to a May 17, 2000 amendment to T.C.A. § 25-5-105, which replaced a much shorter 3-year lien period; that amendment was not retroactive to liens already expired by that date. No currently pending Tennessee bill touches the core duration, extension, or revival statutes in this survey |
Full payment, cleared through a formal termination statement: once the judgment is satisfied, the debtor can DEMAND that the creditor register a termination statement with the register of deeds to supersede the lien; if the creditor doesn't register it within 10 days of that demand, the creditor becomes liable to the debtor for $100 plus any resulting loss (Tenn. R. Civ. P. 69.07(5)). Simple non-extension also ends it: because the lien is tied directly to the judgment's own 10-year clock, letting that period lapse without a timely Rule 69.04 motion ends the lien along with the judgment's ordinary enforceability. And critically, even a REVIVED judgment (via a later scire facias action after full expiration) does not restore the original lien: Tennessee courts have long held a judgment lien is not extended by reviving the underlying judgment (Davidson v. Shearon, 1 Tenn. Cas. 304 (1874)); the creditor must re-register a fresh lien from the revived judgment, and it only gets whatever priority a brand-new registration would have |
Yes. A judgment lien on real property is 'created by registering a certified copy of the judgment in the register's office of the county where the realty is located' (Tenn. R. Civ. P. 69.07(2)): a creditor pursuing a debtor's property across county lines must register separately in each county. The same rule applies to keeping the lien alive on extension: the creditor 'must register the court's order extending the judgment' in the records of the register of deeds where the lien was ORIGINALLY registered, meaning that step also has to be repeated in every county where a lien exists, not just the county of the original case |
| Texas verified 2026-07-08 | CPRC §§ 34.001 (dormancy), 31.006 (revival); Prop. Code ch. 52, §§ 52.001, 52.004-52.006 (lien creation and duration) |
No fixed expiration: becomes dormant without a writ of execution within 10 years of rendition (or of the last writ); revivable within 2 years of dormancy (CPRC §§ 34.001, 31.006) |
10 years from recording and indexing, but ends immediately if the judgment becomes dormant during that period; government judgments instead get 20 years, renewable once for another 20 (Prop. Code § 52.006) |
No court motion renews the lien itself: recording a new (subsequent) abstract while the judgment isn't dormant creates a fresh 10-year lien; the judgment stays non-dormant by a writ of execution issuing at least once every 10 years, or a dormant judgment is revived by scire facias or an action of debt (Prop. Code § 52.001; CPRC §§ 34.001, 31.006) |
No early filing window for a fresh abstract; revival of an already-dormant judgment must be sought within 2 years after the date it became dormant (CPRC § 31.006) |
No temporary or recently-added debt-type cap found; the one carve-out in the statute is permanent: government judgments get a longer 20-year, once-renewable lien instead of the ordinary 10-year term (Prop. Code § 52.006(b)) |
Recording a certified execution return, or a signed and acknowledged satisfaction/release, shows satisfaction; the judgment becoming dormant during the lien's term ends the lien automatically, with no recording required (Prop. Code §§ 52.005, 52.006(a)) |
Yes: the county clerk of each county records and indexes its own abstract, and the lien reaches only real property located in that county (Prop. Code §§ 52.001, 52.004) |
| Utah verified 2026-07-09 | Utah Code §§ 78B-5-201 and 78B-5-202 (creation, recording, and duration of the real-property lien, these two sections cover both the judgment AND the lien together, unlike states that split them into separate statutory schemes); § 78B-2-311 (the general statute of limitations for an action on a judgment); §§ 78B-6-1801 to -1804, the 'Renewal of Judgment Act' (the actual renewal procedure). Utah runs the judgment's own life and the lien's life on the SAME single 8-year clock, there's no independent lien-duration figure the way Michigan or Connecticut have |
8 years from entry, 'unless previously satisfied, renewed, or unless enforcement of the judgment is stayed' (§ 78B-5-202(1)(a)); § 78B-2-311 separately sets that same 8-year window as the deadline to bring an action on the judgment, running either from the original entry date or from a proper renewal under the Renewal of Judgment Act. Renewal is available indefinitely: nothing caps how many 8-year cycles a judgment can go through, as long as each renewal motion is filed before the prior period runs out |
The SAME 8 years as the judgment itself: Utah does not run the lien on an independent clock. § 78B-5-202(7)(c) ties the lien's life directly to the period the judgment stays 'effective,' meaning the recorded lien lasts exactly as long as the underlying judgment does in whichever county it was recorded |
For the judgment itself: file a motion WITHIN the original action (not a new lawsuit) before the current 8-year period runs out, supported by a sworn accounting affidavit of the judgment balance and all post-judgment payments, with confirmation that notice was sent to the debtor's current address; the motion is granted once the debtor's response window has passed (§§ 78B-6-1802-1803). A 2026-added provision confirms renewal 'maintains the date of the original judgment' and its collection priority, while still 'begin[ning] anew the time limitation for an action upon the judgment' (§ 78B-5-202(1)(b)). Separately, to keep a recorded LIEN effective in a specific county, § 78B-5-201(9) requires recording a renewal/extension document with THAT county's recorder: a second, county-level step layered on top of the judgment-level renewal motion |
No early-filing floor: a renewal motion can be filed any time before the current period expires, as long as it's filed within the original case. Miss the 8-year mark with nothing filed, and § 78B-2-311's own action deadline runs out too, since renewal is the only way to reset that clock. If the court doesn't sign the renewal order before the old judgment's expiration date, the renewed judgment is effective 'from the date the judge signs it or from the old judgment's expiration date, whichever is earlier' (§ 78B-6-1804), so a late-signed order doesn't create a coverage gap |
Freshly amended in both the 2025 and 2026 Utah legislative sessions, not a settled-for-decades statute. 2025's Chapter 493 rewrote § 78B-2-311 to explicitly cross-reference the Renewal of Judgment Act as an alternative accrual date. 2026's Chapter 327 (amending § 78B-5-201) and Chapter 38 (amending § 78B-5-202) added the new subsection confirming exactly what a renewal order does to the judgment's original date, collection priority, and action deadline: codifying renewal mechanics that weren't previously spelled out in the statute's own text. Separately, § 78B-5-202(6) gives child-support judgments their own duration rule: enforceable until 4 years after the youngest child covered reaches majority, or 8 years from entry, whichever is longer, and 'may be renewed to extend the duration' just like an ordinary judgment. A judgment in favor of a state agency also reaches real property STATEWIDE rather than just in the recording county (§ 78B-5-202(7)(d)) |
Three routes on the statute's face. (1) Simple non-renewal: once the 8-year period lapses with no renewal motion granted, both the judgment and the lien it supports are gone. (2) Explicit release, assignment, or extension, handled by recording a document to that effect with the recorder of EACH county where the lien was recorded (§ 78B-5-201(9)). (3) A distinctive appeal-related route: if the judgment is appealed and the debtor deposits cash or other adequate security with the court, the lien on real property is affirmatively terminated by court order and replaced with a perfected lien in the deposited security instead, dated back to the original judgment (§ 78B-5-202(5)) |
Yes, on two separate levels. The lien only reaches real property in whichever county the judgment (or abstract of judgment) is actually recorded with that county's recorder, covering all property the debtor owns there at any time while the judgment stays effective, but not property in any other county unless a copy is separately recorded there too (§ 78B-5-202(7)). And extending, releasing, or assigning an already-recorded lien is itself a county-by-county act: § 78B-5-201(9) requires recording that document 'in the office of the county recorder of each county in which an instrument creating the lien is recorded', a creditor with liens recorded in three counties files three separate extension documents |
| Vermont verified 2026-07-09 | 12 V.S.A. § 506 (8-year deadline to sue to enforce, renew, or revive a judgment, in a new independent action), § 2901 (creation of the real-property lien by recording), § 2903 (8-year lien duration and relation-back on renewal), § 2904 (recording with the town clerk), § 2905 (discharge like a mortgage) |
'Actions on judgments and actions for the renewal or revival of judgments shall be brought by filing a new and independent action on the judgment within eight years after the rendition of the judgment, and not after' (§ 506): a flat 8-year deadline with no dormancy period and no forgiveness for a late-filed suit |
'A judgment lien shall be effective for eight years from the issuance of a final judgment on which it is based,' extended only if a foreclosure suit on the lien is filed and recorded before the 8 years run, in which case the lien stays effective until that foreclosure suit ends (§ 2903(a)) |
Not an affidavit or a motion in the existing case: § 506 requires filing 'a new and independent action on the judgment,' i.e., a fresh lawsuit suing on the old judgment. If that action produces a renewed or revived judgment and it is recorded under this chapter, it creates a new 8-year lien from its own issuance date (§ 2903(b)) |
The new lawsuit to renew or revive must be filed within 8 years of the original judgment's rendition, 'and not after' (§ 506): an absolute cutoff, not a window with an early opening date. To keep the lien's priority unbroken back to its original recording date, the complaint to renew must itself be recorded in the land records within that same 8 years, and the renewed judgment must later be recorded too (§ 2903(b)) |
No debt-type or dollar-amount carve-out was found in 12 V.S.A. chapter 113 or § 506. A search of Vermont's current legislative session for bills touching 'judgment lien' found none pending |
'A judgment lien shall be discharged in the same manner as a mortgage pursuant to 27 V.S.A. chapter 5' (§ 2905), with the same discharge obligations and liability for breach as an ordinary mortgage discharge. Letting the 8-year period run without a timely renewal lawsuit also ends the lien; separately, if a lien isn't satisfied within 30 days of recording it can instead be foreclosed and redeemed under § 2903(d) and V.R.C.P. 80.1 |
Vermont has no counties, recording is done town by town. A judgment lien is recorded 'in the town clerk's office of any town where real property of the debtor is located' (§ 2904), so a creditor tracking a debtor's real estate across more than one town must record, and later re-record on renewal, separately in each one |
| Virginia verified 2026-07-09 | Va. Code § 8.01-458 (docketing with the clerk of the county or city where the land sits creates the real-property lien); § 8.01-251 (how long a judgment can be enforced by execution or suit, and how that period is extended); § 8.01-454 (marking a judgment satisfied of record) |
Depends on the judgment's date. For a judgment dated ON OR AFTER July 1, 2021: 10 years from entry (or domestication), except a judgment 'created by nonpayment of child support,' which still gets 20 years (§ 8.01-251(A)). For a judgment dated, extended, or renewed BEFORE July 1, 2021: the original 20-year period continues to apply. Either way, 'no execution shall be issued and no action brought' once the applicable period runs out, unless properly extended |
The same clock as the judgment's own enforceability: Virginia does not run a separate, independently-timed lien duration. The lien attaches 'from the time such judgment is recorded on the judgment lien docket of the clerk's office of the county or city where such land is situated' (§ 8.01-458), and it survives only as long as the underlying judgment remains enforceable under § 8.01-251's limitations period (10 years for post-7/1/2021 judgments, 20 for older ones, subject to extension) |
Since July 1, 2021, a simple recorded certificate: no motion, no hearing, no court order required. The judgment creditor (or an attorney or authorized agent) records a 'certificate in the form provided in subsection G' of § 8.01-251 in the clerk's office where the judgment is recorded, before the current period expires; recordation alone extends enforceability. This replaced the pre-2021 process, which required filing a motion, a court hearing on whether there was 'good cause' NOT to extend, and a court order |
The certificate must be recorded 'prior to the expiration of the limitation period prescribed' (§ 8.01-251(B)), there's no early-filing restriction, just a hard deadline. The first certificate extends enforceability 10 years from ITS OWN recordation date (not from the original expiration date); a second, final certificate can be recorded before that first extension runs out, adding one more 10 years. That's a hard cap of two extensions, for a maximum of 30 years total for a judgment dated on or after July 1, 2021 (10 + 10 + 10), or up to 40 years for an older judgment that keeps its original 20-year base (20 + 10 + 10). A narrower rule applies against a decedent's personal representative: any extension there is limited to 2 years, and only one extension is allowed |
A major, already-in-force 2021 overhaul (2021 Sp. Sess. I, c. 486, eff. July 1, 2021), aimed at reducing so-called 'ghost creditor' liens that lingered indefinitely on titles. It cut the base enforcement period for new judgments from 20 years to 10, replaced the old unlimited-motion-based renewal system with a capped, certificate-based one (maximum two extensions, not unlimited), and carved out child-support judgments to keep the longer 20-year period. Judgments dated before the effective date keep their original 20-year base but are now also subject to the new two-extension cap going forward |
A signed entry of satisfaction on the judgment docket, which the judgment creditor must cause to be made 'within 30 days' of the judgment being paid off (§ 8.01-454); a related statutory authorization-and-release process exists under § 8.01-453. Separately, § 8.01-251(C) cuts off the lien early against a specific parcel: if the judgment debtor conveys the land to a good-faith purchaser for value, no suit to enforce the lien against that parcel can be brought more than 5 years after the deed is recorded, unless a notice of lis pendens was also recorded within that same 5 years |
Yes. The lien only attaches to real estate in the specific 'county or city where such land is situated' once the judgment is docketed there (§ 8.01-458); a creditor pursuing property in more than one Virginia locality must docket the judgment separately in each one, and any extension certificate likewise gets recorded 'in the clerk's office in which such judgment is recorded': meaning it also has to be separately recorded wherever the lien needs to stay alive |
| Washington verified 2026-07-09 | RCW 4.56.190 (the judgment lien on real estate, its duration, and its commencement point); RCW 4.56.200 (when the lien attaches, by court and county); RCW 4.56.210 (cessation of the lien after 10 years, absent extension); RCW 6.17.020 (the mechanism and hard cap for extending enforcement); RCW 4.56.100 (satisfaction of judgment) |
10 years from entry (RCW 6.17.020(1): execution, garnishment, or other legal process may issue 'at any time within 10 years from entry of the judgment or the filing of the judgment in this state'). A matching 10-year bar applies to bringing a brand-new lawsuit ON the judgment (RCW 4.16.020(2)). Either period can be extended once under RCW 6.17.020(3); once extended (or once 20 years total have passed), no further extension is available except for child support |
The same clock as the judgment's own enforceability, not a separate number. RCW 4.56.190 ties the real-property lien's life directly to the judgment: it runs 'for a period of not to exceed ten years from the day on which such judgment was entered unless the ten-year period is extended in accordance with RCW 6.17.020(3).' RCW 4.56.210(3) confirms the lien 'continues in force for an additional ten-year period if the period of execution for the underlying judgment is extended', so renewing the judgment automatically renews the lien too, at least in the county where it was originally perfected |
A court application, not a recorded document and not a new lawsuit. The judgment creditor (or assignee) 'may... apply to the court that rendered the judgment... for an order granting an additional 10 years' (RCW 6.17.020(3)). The application 'shall be granted as a matter of right, subject to review only for timeliness, factual issues of full or partial satisfaction, or errors in calculating the judgment summary amounts': no hearing on the merits of whether to allow it. Critically, RCW 6.17.020(6) says the existing lien 'remains in full force and effect and does not have to be rerecorded after it is extended' in the county where it was already perfected; but if the judgment was also transcribed and perfected in OTHER counties, keeping the lien alive there requires separately filing a certified copy of the extension order (or of the docket showing the extension) with each of those counties' clerks |
The application must be filed 'within 90 days before the expiration of the original 10-year period' (RCW 6.17.020(3)): a defined early-filing window, not 'anytime before expiration.' Filing outside that 90-day window (too early or, fatally, too late) leaves no statutory path to extend; once the 10 years run without a timely application, the judgment and its lien simply cease, per RCW 4.56.210(1) |
No recent amendment to the core civil duration/renewal/extension rules. The only 2022 change to RCW 6.17.020 (2022 c 260) added ability-to-pay language and a broader definition of 'legal financial obligations' for extending CRIMINAL restitution/fee judgments specifically: it left the ordinary civil 10-year/one-extension/20-year-cap structure untouched. No currently pending Washington bill touches the ordinary civil judgment-lien duration or renewal statutes (RCW 4.56.190-.210, 6.17.020(1)-(3)); a pending 2026 bill on legal financial obligations, HB 2102, and a separate consumer-debt default-judgment bill, SB 5720 (enacted, eff. 2027-01-01), both address different subjects (criminal LFO collection and default-judgment entry procedure) and do not change this survey's rules |
Full satisfaction, noted on the execution docket: once a judgment 'shall have been paid or satisfied,' the court clerk notes satisfaction (or a filed satisfaction document is noted), and 'when so satisfied by the clerk or the filing of such certificate the lien of such judgment shall be discharged' (RCW 4.56.100(1)). That same satisfaction certificate 'may be filed in the office of the clerk of any county in which an abstract of such judgment has been filed,' discharging the lien there too. Absent satisfaction, the lien also simply lapses on its own at the end of the 10-year (or extended 20-year) period with no separate release needed (RCW 4.56.210(1)) |
Yes. A judgment only becomes a lien in a county other than where it was entered once a 'duly certified abstract of such judgment' is filed with that county's clerk (RCW 4.56.200(3)-(5)); a creditor tracking a debtor's property across county lines must record separately in each one. And per RCW 6.17.020(6), extending the judgment doesn't automatically keep an out-of-county lien alive: the creditor must separately file a certified copy of the extension order (or docket) in each county where the lien was perfected, to continue perfection there |
| West Virginia verified 2026-07-09 | W. Va. Code § 38-3-6 (creates the lien automatically, statewide, from the date of judgment; ties its duration directly to the judgment's own enforceability); § 38-3-7 (docketing for priority against a bona fide purchaser, per county); § 38-3-18 (the rolling 10-year execution/revival window, including a child-support carve-out); § 38-3-19 (tolling exceptions to the 10-year window); § 38-3-5 (the county clerk's docketing duty); §§ 38-12-1 and 38-12-10 (release of a satisfied lien, and what happens if the creditor refuses to release it) |
No flat expiration date. Instead, a rolling 10-year mechanic keeps the judgment enforceable: a writ of execution may issue within 10 years of the judgment, and once one does, further executions may issue within 10 years of the return day of the last execution that wasn't returned by an officer or was returned unsatisfied (§ 38-3-18(a)). A 2025 published Intermediate Court of Appeals decision confirmed that filing a timely petition for a writ of scire facias to revive the judgment has 'the same operative effect' as issuing an execution for keeping this window open: 'writs of execution are not the exclusive means of keeping a judgment alive' (Leonard v. Wells Fargo, No. 24-ICA-210 (W. Va. Ct. App. Mar. 24, 2025)). The West Virginia Supreme Court has long held that once BOTH the right to execute and the right to revive by scire facias are time-barred, 'the creditor's right to the lien of his judgment is gone forever' (Lamon v. Gold, 72 W. Va. 618, 621-22, 79 S.E. 728, 729 (1913)) |
Tied directly to the judgment's own life, not a separate number: the lien 'shall continue so long as such judgment remains valid and enforceable, and has not been released or otherwise discharged' (§ 38-3-6). So the lien rides on the same rolling 10-year execution/revival mechanic described above. There's a separate, narrower rule layered on top for priority against a bona fide purchaser specifically: even a properly docketed judgment stops being a lien against a good-faith buyer for value without notice 10 years after the judgment's date, UNLESS an execution issued within those 10 years was filed with the county clerk (or the buyer had actual notice of it), and if executions did issue and get filed, that priority protection only extends another 10 years from the date of the LAST filed execution (§ 38-3-7) |
No standalone 'renewal affidavit' or 'renewal motion' filing exists as such. The creditor keeps the judgment, and its lien, alive by having a writ of execution issued within the running 10-year window, or, per binding case law, by filing a petition for a writ of scire facias to revive the judgment within that same window; a court granting that petition enters an order reviving the judgment, and the 10-year limitation period 'begins anew' from that order's date. West Virginia Rule of Civil Procedure 69(a) confirms a writ of scire facias qualifies as one of the 'other writs... provided by law' usable to enforce a money judgment, alongside ordinary execution |
No early-filing floor: execution can be sued out, or a scire facias petition filed, any time within the running 10 years from the judgment date, or within 10 years of the return day of the last unreturned or unsatisfied execution (§ 38-3-18(a), (c)). The hard cutoff is letting that entire window close with neither action taken. A narrower, separate deadline applies if a party has died: an action, suit, or scire facias against a decedent's personal representative must be brought within 5 years of that representative's qualification, even if that's sooner than the general 10-year mark (§ 38-3-18(c)). Certain suspensions of the right to execute (by the judgment's own terms or by legal process) are excluded from the 10-year count under § 38-3-19 |
One debt-type carve-out is already built into current law: for a child-support judgment in an action filed on or after § 38-3-18's 2008 reenactment, execution may issue within 10 years after the EMANCIPATION of the child (the youngest child, if the order covers more than one) rather than 10 years from the judgment date itself: a materially later trigger than the ordinary rule (§ 38-3-18(b)). No bill affecting §§ 38-3-6, -7, -18, -19, or the Article 12 release provisions was found pending in a live legislative search; the only recent bill touching judgment liens at all, 2024's HB 4007 (which would have let city attorneys or municipal court clerks file judgment liens), died in House Judiciary and that session has long since closed |
Satisfaction: once the debt secured by any lien, including a judgment lien, is fully paid, the lienholder must furnish the debtor a written release within 30 days, executed and acknowledged before the county clerk (§ 38-12-1). If the lienholder refuses or fails to do so, the debtor can go to circuit court, which may direct the clerk to execute the release directly, with the refusing lienholder on the hook for the proceeding's costs and the debtor's reasonable attorney fees (§ 38-12-10). Beyond satisfaction, the lien also simply dies once the creditor's right to execute or to revive by scire facias becomes time-barred, West Virginia's Supreme Court has been explicit for over a century that the lien is 'gone forever' at that point, not merely dormant or harder to collect |
No, and this is a genuine outlier compared to most states. The lien attaches automatically, statewide, to all real estate the debtor owns or later acquires from the date of judgment; nothing has to be recorded anywhere for the lien to exist as between the creditor and the debtor (§ 38-3-6). Docketing an abstract with a specific county's clerk (§ 38-3-5) doesn't create the lien there, it only protects the lien's PRIORITY against a bona fide purchaser for value without notice who later buys property in that particular county (§ 38-3-7). A creditor who wants that purchaser-protection in every county where the debtor owns or might acquire property still has to docket separately in each one, but the lien's basic existence is not county-by-county the way it is in states that require a recorded transcript before any lien attaches at all |
| Wisconsin verified 2026-07-09 | Wis. Stat. § 806.15 (creates the 10-year real-property lien on docketing); § 806.10 (the judgment and lien docket that creates the lien automatically); § 893.40 (the judgment's own separate 20-year enforceability period); § 806.23 (leave-of-court requirement for a new action on an existing judgment: Wisconsin's functional renewal mechanism) |
20 years to bring an 'action upon a judgment or decree of a court of record' (§ 893.40): a hard limitations period, not a rebuttable presumption of payment like some states use. This is a genuinely SEPARATE, LONGER clock than the 10-year real-property lien: the underlying judgment stays legally actionable for twice as long as any lien it creates keeps attaching to real estate. Note municipal (non-record) court judgments run on a much shorter, separate 6-year clock under a different section |
10 years from the date of entry/docketing (§ 806.15(1)): a genuinely shorter, independently-running clock than the judgment's own 20-year life. The lien attaches automatically the moment a money judgment is entered in the county's judgment and lien docket, with no separate recording act required, but it explicitly does NOT reach homestead property exempt from execution under § 815.20. An appeal that stays execution can pause the 10-year clock ('enforcement suspended by injunction' or 'secured on appeal' entries under § 806.15(2)) |
Unusually heavy compared to most states: NOT a renewal affidavit or simple motion, but an entirely new LAWSUIT for a fresh judgment on the same debt. § 806.23 requires the creditor to first obtain 'leave of the court, for good cause shown, on notice to the adverse party' before that new action can even be filed. If the court grants leave and the creditor wins, the result is a genuinely NEW judgment (for whatever amount remains unpaid on the old one), and that new judgment must then be separately docketed under § 806.10 to create its own fresh 10-year lien. Getting the new judgment does not automatically extend or recreate any lien tied to the old one, the same 'renewing the judgment isn't the same as renewing the lien' pattern seen in several other states, just reached here through a full new lawsuit rather than a renewal filing |
No fixed early-filing window exists in the statute: a creditor can seek § 806.23 leave to sue on the judgment at essentially any point the judgment remains within its 20-year life under § 893.40, though practically this needs to happen before the existing 10-year lien lapses to avoid a gap in real-property coverage. Wisconsin's Court of Appeals has held that a trial court abused its discretion by DENYING leave to sue on a judgment that was already 12 years old, meaning the passage of time on its own is not a bar to good cause (Andersen v. Kojo, 110 Wis. 2d 22 (Ct. App. 1982)) |
2025 Wisconsin Act 60 (SB 193), signed December 9, 2025 and published December 10, 2025, amended § 806.22 to add a THIRD way to record a satisfaction in a county other than where the judgment was first satisfied of record: previously a creditor there could only file a certified copy of the satisfaction or the original county clerk's own certificate; the Act adds a plain satisfaction 'signed and acknowledged by the owner or, if no assignment has been filed, by the owner's attorney of record' as independently sufficient, without first going back through the original county clerk. No debt-type-specific carve-out (medical debt, small personal debt, etc.) was found in the lien-duration or renewal statutes |
Satisfaction, entered on the judgment and lien docket either by a signed and acknowledged instrument or by a clerk-witnessed acknowledgment (§ 806.19(1)); partial satisfaction reduces the lien only 'to the extent of the satisfaction' (§ 806.21). Bankruptcy discharge does NOT automatically kill the lien in Wisconsin: the statute requires the discharged debtor (or another interested party) to submit a court application, and only 'upon receipt of a completed application' does the clerk satisfy the judgment of record and end the lien (§ 806.19(4)). Simple non-renewal also ends the lien on its own at the 10-year mark, regardless of whether the underlying judgment (on its separate 20-year track) remains collectible by other means |
Yes. § 806.15(1) creates the lien only 'in the county where the judgment is rendered.' To reach property in a different Wisconsin county, the creditor files a certified transcript from the original judgment and lien docket with that county's circuit court clerk (§ 806.13), paying a separate filing fee for each additional county. Satisfying the lien in one of those OTHER counties, once it's satisfied in the original county, requires filing one of three things there under § 806.22: a certified copy of the satisfaction, the original clerk's own certificate, or, since the 2025 amendment, a signed satisfaction itself |
| Wyoming verified 2026-07-28 | Wyo. Stat. §§ 1-17-302, 1-17-306 (filing a judgment transcript with the county clerk creates the real-property lien), § 1-17-307 (when a judgment becomes dormant and stops operating as a lien), § 1-16-502 (revivor procedure), § 1-16-503 (outer time limit to revive a dormant judgment) |
No flat expiration date: a Wyoming judgment remains valid until satisfied unless it goes dormant. It becomes dormant "if execution ... is not issued within five (5) years from date of the judgment or if five (5) years intervene between the date the last execution issued ... and the time of issuing another execution" (§ 1-17-307), at which point it "ceases to operate as a lien on the estate of the judgment debtor" |
The lien lasts exactly as long as the judgment stays non-dormant. Filing a transcript with the county clerk makes the judgment 'bound' on real estate in that county 'from the day the judgment is filed' (§ 1-17-302), but § 1-17-307's dormancy rule, 5 years with no execution, or a 5-year gap between executions, shuts the lien off ('ceases to operate as a lien') the same moment the judgment itself goes dormant |
Not a self-help affidavit: a dormant judgment 'may be revived by the allowance of the court of a motion for revival or by a conditional order of the court that the action be revived' (§ 1-16-502). If the parties consent, the action is revived on that basis; if not, the revival order must be served on the adverse party (by publication if they're a nonresident and the moving party files a supporting affidavit). A revived judgment's lien 'operate[s] from the time of the entry of the conditional order or the filing of the motion,' not retroactively to the original judgment date |
The dormancy trigger itself sets the first deadline: no execution for 5 years, or a 5-year gap between executions. Once dormant, '(n)o action shall be brought to revive a judgment after ten (10) years after it becomes dormant' (§ 1-16-503(a)): an absolute outer limit, with only two exceptions: a party who was a minor or under another legal disability when the judgment went dormant gets 15 years after the disability ends, and a child-support judgment gets 21 years |
No debt-type or dollar-amount carve-out narrows the ordinary dormancy/revivor scheme; the only carve-outs found are procedural, for minors/disabled parties and child-support judgments, both already reflected in the renewal-window figures above. A search of Wyoming's current legislative bills for 'judgment lien' returned no pending bill touching this scheme |
Satisfaction: any judgment 'settled or satisfied shall be released or dismissed in writing upon the face of the docket or by written release by the attorney of record or the person in whose favor the judgment was rendered' (§ 1-16-308(a)); if neither can be found, the debtor may pay the clerk of court and get a court order releasing and satisfying the judgment instead. Separately, letting the judgment go dormant and then letting the 10-year revival window in § 1-16-503 run out without reviving it ends the lien permanently, with no further revival possible |
Recording is per county, and one filing does not reach the whole state. The judgment binds real estate 'within the county in which judgment is entered ... from the day the judgment is filed with the county clerk' (§ 1-17-302); to reach property in any other county, the creditor must separately 'file a transcript of the judgment record ... with the clerk of the district court and the county clerk in any other counties ... where the judgment debtor owns real estate,' and the lien in that other county runs 'from the date of filing with the county clerk' there (§ 1-17-304) |
All 51 jurisdictions verified. Each state page shows the statute text and verification date behind its row.
Have a specific situation?
A 50-state comparison shows the landscape. Ezel answers your exact question under your state's law, applied to your facts, with citations.
Opens in Ezel Pro. Every answer cites the authority it relies on.