Arizona Judgment Collection Guide
Arizona judgments are usually described as good for ten years and renewable forever. Both halves need a footnote. A.R.S. section 12-1551 gives you ten years from entry to have a writ issued – but subsection (D) limits the section to judgments entered on or after August 3, 2013, plus older ones that were renewed on or before August 2, 2018, and says in terms that a writ may not issue for a pre-2013 judgment that missed that renewal. An old Arizona judgment nobody touched in 2018 is not on a ten-year clock; it is finished. For everything still live, the renewal is a ninety-day affidavit under section 12-1612 with five required contents, verified positively and not on information and belief, and after the first renewal the next window is measured from the filing of the prior affidavit rather than from the judgment. This guide covers that clock and the procedure hung on it – the affidavit, the alternative action, the ten percent earnings cap Proposition 209 wrote into section 33-1131, the writ of garnishment that must state the debtor’s last known mailing address, and the examination that cannot drag a debtor out of their own county. We research public records under a confirmed permissible purpose and are not licensed private investigators, a law firm, or a collection agency; this is general information about Arizona law, not advice on your case.
First Question: Is the Judgment Still Alive at All?
Arizona’s ten-year rule does not apply to every Arizona judgment.
Almost every guide to Arizona collection opens with the ten years and moves on. The ten years are real – A.R.S. section 12-1551(A) lets the party in whose favour a judgment is given have a writ of execution or other process issued at any time within ten years after entry, and within ten years after any renewal by affidavit or by an action brought on it. Subsection (B) closes the other side: no execution or other process shall issue after ten years from entry unless the judgment was renewed under section 12-1612 or an action was brought on it in time.
Subsection (D) is the part that matters before any of that, because it says which judgments the section reaches. It applies to all judgments entered on or after August 3, 2013. It also applies to judgments entered on or before August 2, 2013 that were renewed on or before August 2, 2018 – and then adds the sentence that ends files: a writ of execution or other process may not be issued for a judgment entered on or before August 2, 2013 that was not renewed on or before August 2, 2018.
Read plainly, that is a cliff rather than a taper. Arizona’s older, shorter enforcement period was extended, but the extension was not made retroactive to judgments that had already been allowed to go stale by the cut-off. The same carve-out is repeated in the renewal statutes themselves, so there is no way around it by choosing a different route: section 12-1611 permits renewal by action within ten years of the judgment “except that an action may not be brought to renew a judgment entered on or before August 2, 2013 that was not renewed on or before August 2, 2018,” and section 12-1612(A) carries the identical exception for renewal by affidavit.
So the first thing to establish about an inherited or long-dormant Arizona judgment is its entry date and its renewal history, in that order. If it was entered before August 2013 and there is no renewal on file by August 2018, no amount of debtor research will make it collectible, and saying so early is worth more than any search. Subsection (E) lists four categories the section does not reach at all – criminal restitution orders under section 13-805, written judgments and orders for child support and spousal maintenance and their associated costs and fees, certain civil judgments obtained by the state, and judgments directing a sale of property under the tax title. Those run on their own rules.
The Affidavit: Ninety Days, Five Contents, No Judge
Arizona renewal is an administrative act, which is exactly why it gets missed.
Section 12-1612(B) sets the window precisely: the judgment creditor, or the creditor’s personal representative or assignee, may make and file a renewal affidavit within the ninety days preceding the expiration of ten years from the date of entry. Not the ninety days after. Not any time in year ten. A ninety-day band that opens and closes on dates fixed by the entry date of the judgment.
The affidavit must be entitled as in the action and set out five things. First, the names of the parties, the court in which it is docketed, the county of recording if recorded, the date and amount of the judgment, the book and page of any recording, and the name of the owner of the judgment with the owner’s source and succession of title where that is not the original creditor. Second, that no execution is anywhere outstanding and unreturned, or the fact of any that is. Third, the date and amount of all payments and that all have been duly credited. Fourth, whether there are setoffs or counterclaims in favour of the debtor, with the amount if certain, or a statement that an unsettled one may later be allowed as a credit. Fifth, the exact amount due after allowing all known setoffs and counterclaims, together with any other facts necessary to a complete disclosure of the exact condition of the judgment.
Subsection (C) adds two requirements that catch assigned and transcribed judgments. Where the judgment was docketed by a clerk on a certified copy from another court and an abstract was later recorded, the affidavit must state each county in which the transcript was docketed and the abstract recorded. And the affidavit must be verified positively by the person making it, and not on information and belief – which is a real constraint on a purchased portfolio, because the affiant has to be in a position to swear to the payment history and the exact balance rather than to what a file says.
Subsection (D) then removes the safety net that makes creditors casual about deadlines elsewhere. Filing the affidavit in the office of the clerk of the court where the judgment is entered and docketed renews and revives the judgment to the extent of the balance shown, and “an order of the court, or other action by a judge, is not necessary to complete the renewal.” There is no hearing at which a court might notice a problem, and correspondingly nothing to seek relief from if the ninety days pass. The general shape of a renewal decision across states is in our guide to renewing an old judgment before it expires.
Watch: The Arizona Calendar
Why the entry date decides more than the enforcement tool.
Watch Overview
The Second Renewal Runs From a Different Date
After the first affidavit, the judgment’s own anniversary stops being the deadline.
This is the quiet one. Section 12-1612(E) permits additional and successive renewal affidavits, but it fixes the window by reference to a different event: they may be made and filed “within ninety days of expiration of ten years from the date of the filing of a prior renewal affidavit.” Once you have renewed, the diary date is ten years from the day that affidavit hit the clerk’s office – not the judgment’s entry anniversary, and not a neat round date somebody chose.
In practice the two dates drift apart immediately, because almost nobody files on the last possible day. A creditor who renews eighty days early has moved every future deadline eighty days earlier for the life of the judgment. A file diaried from the original entry date will therefore be late on the second renewal by exactly the margin by which the first one was early, and the failure will surface a decade after the mistake was made.
Subsection (F) then repairs a historical problem for recorded judgments. Recorded judgments that were timely renewed by a renewal affidavit and successive affidavits – “even if such successive affidavits were not authorized by prior law” – may be renewed under the current section, provided the prior renewal affidavits were filed within ninety days from the expiration of each successive ten-year period. That is a meaningful rescue for a long-held recorded judgment whose renewal history predates the current statute, and it is conditioned on the same ninety-day discipline being observed all the way back.
The alternative route stays open in parallel. Section 12-1611 allows renewal by an action brought on the judgment at any time within ten years after its date, subject to the pre-2013 exception. It is slower and it is litigation, but it exists where an affidavit will not do – for instance where the exact amount due genuinely cannot be sworn to positively. The wider comparison of what each state’s clock does is in how long a judgment is good for by state, and the mechanics of the underlying instrument in judgment renewal.
Ten Percent, and the Three Places It Does Not Apply
Proposition 209 rewrote the earnings cap. It did not rewrite all of it.
| Situation | What A.R.S. 33-1131 does | What you must know first |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary money judgment | Lesser of ten percent of weekly disposable earnings, or the amount above sixty times the applicable minimum wage. | The employer, and where the debtor works. Records |
| Which minimum wage applies | Federal, state or local – whichever is highest (subsection (B)). | The work location, not the mailing address. |
| Support order | Subsection (B) does not apply; one-half of disposable earnings is exempt. | Whether the judgment is a support obligation. |
| Chapter XIII bankruptcy order | The subsection (B) limits do not apply (subsection (D)). | Whether a plan is in place. |
| State or federal tax debt | The subsection (B) limits do not apply (subsection (D)). | The character of the debt. |
| Pension and deferred comp | Included in “disposable earnings” by subsection (A). | What kind of income the debtor actually has. |
Two things in that table are routinely got wrong. The first is the figure. Section 33-1131(B) says the maximum part of disposable earnings subject to process “may not exceed ten percent” of that week’s disposable earnings, or the amount by which they exceed sixty times the applicable minimum hourly wage, whichever is less. It is ten percent, not approximately ten percent, and any source still quoting twenty-five percent for an ordinary Arizona judgment is describing law that Proposition 209 replaced. The statute then defines the applicable minimum hourly wage as the minimum required by federal, state or local law, whichever is highest – so a city ordinance can raise the protected floor and reduce what a garnishment yields.
The second is the assumption that retirement income is out of reach. Subsection (A) defines disposable earnings as the remaining portion of a debtor’s wages, salary or compensation for personal services, including bonuses and commissions, after amounts required by law to be withheld – and expressly includes payments pursuant to a pension or retirement program or deferred compensation plan. Whether any particular payment is protected by some other exemption is a separate legal question for counsel; what subsection (A) settles is that being a pension does not by itself put a payment outside the earnings rules. The detailed paycheck arithmetic lives in our Arizona wage garnishment laws guide; this page stays at the level of which rule applies.
The Writ Asks You for an Address
Arizona wrote the locate requirement into the garnishment paperwork itself.
Once the creditor has complied with the preceding sections, section 12-1574(A) has the clerk, justice of the peace, or city or town magistrate issue a writ of garnishment of monies or property together with a summons commanding the garnishee to appear and answer. Subsection (B) then lists what the writ must state, and the fourth item is not a legal conclusion or a calculation. It is the last mailing address of the judgment debtor known to the judgment creditor.
The other three items are the outstanding balance including accrued fees, interest and allowable costs as of the date of issuance plus the rate at which interest accrues; the name and address of the garnishee or its authorised agent; and the name and address of the creditor and the creditor’s attorney. Three of the four are in your file. The fourth is the one creditors habitually cannot supply accurately, and the statute requires it anyway.
Subsection (C) sets out what is served on the garnishee – two copies of the summons and writ, a copy of the underlying judgment, four copies of the answer form, two copies of the notice to judgment debtor and request for hearing form, and one copy of the instructions to garnishee – either in the manner required for a summons or by certified mail, return receipt requested, with the effective date of service being the date the garnishee receives it. Subsection (D) then puts the debtor-notice duty on the garnishee: within three days, not counting weekends and holidays, the garnishee must deliver to the judgment debtor a copy of the summons and writ, a copy of the underlying judgment, and the notice and request-for-hearing form.
The practical reading is that a stale address does not merely inconvenience the creditor; it propagates through the whole service chain and reaches an employer or a bank that then cannot pass the notice on. Identifying the institution that actually holds an account is covered in finding a judgment debtor’s bank account, and the employer question in finding a judgment debtor’s employer.
The Examination, and the County Limit
You can compel answers. You cannot compel travel.
Section 12-1631(A) is unusually open-handed: once a judgment has been entered and docketed, the judgment creditor at any time may have an order from the court requiring the judgment debtor to appear and answer concerning their property, before the court or a referee, at a time and place specified in the order. There is no waiting period and no periodic bar. The same subsection offers a second route – a subpoena compelling the debtor to appear for deposition on oral examination and answer concerning their property.
Subsection (B) supplies the one real constraint, and it is geographic: no judgment debtor shall be required to attend out of the county in which he resides. That turns a fact most creditors treat as background – which Arizona county the debtor actually lives in now – into a condition on where the examination can be held. A debtor who has moved from Maricopa County to Yavapai or Pima cannot be made to come back for it, and an order that ignores the move is an order the debtor has a straightforward answer to.
Between the two routes, the examination is the strongest Arizona discovery tool a creditor has after judgment, and it is at its most productive when it is used to test what records already suggest rather than to ask open questions into the dark. Preparing it that way is the subject of our guide to post-judgment discovery. Where the debtor has left Arizona entirely, the examination is not the tool at all and the question becomes enforcement elsewhere – see finding a judgment debtor who moved out of state.
The Short Version
Before anything else, check whether the Arizona judgment is still enforceable at all: A.R.S. 12-1551(D) applies the ten-year rule to judgments entered on or after August 3, 2013, and to older ones only if they were renewed on or before August 2, 2018 – and it bars a writ outright for a pre-2013 judgment that missed that date. For live judgments you have ten years from entry to have a writ issued, and renewal is a ninety-day affidavit under 12-1612(B) filed in the ninety days before the ten years expire, carrying five specified contents, verified positively and not on information and belief, with no judge involved. After the first renewal the next window runs ten years from the filing of that affidavit, not from entry, which is how second renewals get missed. Wage garnishment under 33-1131(B) is capped at ten percent of weekly disposable earnings or the amount above sixty times the highest applicable federal, state or local minimum wage, whichever is less – with support orders, chapter XIII plans and tax debts outside that cap, and pension and deferred compensation counted as earnings. The writ of garnishment must state the debtor’s last known mailing address, and an examination under 12-1631 cannot require the debtor to attend outside the county where they reside. Supplying the address, the employer and the county is our part, lawfully and with sources. General information, not legal advice.
How an Arizona File Should Be Worked
Dates first, because a dead judgment cannot be improved by research.
Date It, Then Check 12-1551(D)
Entered before August 2013 with no 2018 renewal means no writ, ever.
Diary From the Right Event
Entry for the first renewal; the prior affidavit’s filing date for every one after.
Locate Before the Window Opens
The writ needs a last known address and the exam needs the right county.
Aim, Then File
Employer or institution identified first, so the ten percent lands on a real paycheck.
Step one is worth doing before step two even on a file you inherited with a confident summary attached, because the 2013 and 2018 dates are recent enough that they sit inside the working life of judgments people still hold and old enough that they have already passed. Step four matters more under Proposition 209 than it did before: at ten percent of disposable earnings a garnishment aimed at the wrong employer does not merely fail, it consumes months of a clock that is now finite in a way the twenty-five percent era disguised. What the judgment can be aimed at on the property side – the lien, the homestead, and the community-property question – is covered on our Arizona judgment collection page.
Our Half of It, and Where It Stops
Facts with sources. Arizona procedure stays with your attorney.
Everything above is general information about how Arizona’s enforcement statutes are written. Applying them is a different job and not ours: whether your particular judgment survived the 12-1551(D) cut-off, whether the balance can be sworn to positively, whether an affidavit or an action is the right route, and how the 33-1131 arithmetic runs on a given paycheck are legal questions for you and your counsel. We do not file renewal affidavits, obtain writs, serve garnishments, examine debtors, or contact anyone to demand payment.
What we supply is the factual layer the statutes assume. We confirm the debtor’s identity against the judgment so a writ is not aimed at a namesake, develop and corroborate a current Arizona address of the kind section 12-1574(B)(4) requires the writ to state, establish which county the debtor now resides in so an examination order is enforceable under 12-1631(B), identify the employer and the work location that decides which minimum wage governs the earnings calculation, and research recorded property, business affiliations and holdings across Arizona counties. The work is done through public records and lawfully licensed data under a confirmed permissible purpose – a judgment being one – and never by pretexting, impersonation, or reaching into private financial account contents. Our wider skip tracing services apply the same method beyond Arizona.
There is a request we decline, and Arizona has an institution built around exactly the situation. The Secretary of State runs the Address Confidentiality Program for survivors of domestic violence, sexual offences, stalking and related harms, precisely so a participant’s residential address is not reachable through the ordinary record trail. An Arizona order of protection already in the papers, a mailing address that is transparently a forwarding service, an asserted stake in the debt that will not reconcile with the entered judgment: any of those and the locate is turned down. The person on the other end of it may be safe precisely because they are hard to find, and we say that rather than going quiet. A judgment authorises research into a debtor’s whereabouts for enforcement; it does not authorise delivering a residential address to a person the courts have already put at a distance.
Each finding is delivered with its source and an honest confidence note, including when a trail has gone cold. For a legitimate Arizona enforcement matter a first read typically comes back within 24 hours. Where the file is genuinely finished – the 2018 cliff, or a debtor with nothing reachable – we say so; the honest version of that assessment is in what to do about a judgment-proof debtor, and the working method for recovery firms in skip tracing for judgment recovery companies.
Who Is Working an Arizona Deadline
Different files, the same two dates.
Arizona Collection Counsel
Diarying 12-1612 windows
Holders of Older Judgments
Testing the 2018 cut-off
Arizona Businesses
B2B judgments and garnishments
Arizona Landlords
Back rent and damage judgments
Judgment Purchasers
Swearing to a balance positively
Out-of-State Creditors
Domesticating into Arizona
The purchaser card is not decoration. Section 12-1612(C) requires the renewal affidavit to be verified positively and not on information and belief, which puts a real evidentiary burden on an assignee who bought a file rather than litigated it, and section 12-1612(B)(1) requires the affidavit to state the owner’s source and succession of title. A judgment brought in from another state runs on Arizona’s clock once it is here, which is the subject of domesticating foreign judgments.
Our Commitment
An Arizona judgment is a dated instrument twice over: once at entry, and again at every renewal affidavit, because the next window is measured from the day the last one was filed. Around those dates the statutes ask for facts nobody hands you – the last known mailing address the writ of garnishment has to state, the county a debtor now resides in so an examination order holds, the employer and work location behind the ten percent calculation. We develop those, confirm them against the judgment, and deliver each with its source and an honest note on how current it is. Whether the judgment survived the 2018 cut-off, and every filing that follows, belongs to you and your attorney. The research itself has run on the same terms since 2004 – a lawful reason given up front, public filings and licensed data only, impersonation not a technique anyone here uses, and no interest whatever in what sits inside an account.
Arizona Renewal and Garnishment Questions
How long is a money judgment good for in Arizona?
A.R.S. 12-1551(A) gives ten years from entry to have a writ of execution or other process issued, and ten years after any renewal by affidavit or by action. But subsection (D) limits the section to judgments entered on or after August 3, 2013, and to older judgments only where they were renewed on or before August 2, 2018. A judgment entered on or before August 2, 2013 that was not renewed by that date cannot have a writ issued on it at all, so the ten-year figure does not describe every Arizona judgment.
My Arizona judgment is from 2010 and was never renewed. Can I still collect?
Not by execution. A.R.S. 12-1551(D)(2) bars a writ of execution or other process for a judgment entered on or before August 2, 2013 that was not renewed on or before August 2, 2018, and the same exception is written into 12-1611 for renewal by action and 12-1612(A) for renewal by affidavit. Establishing the entry date and the renewal history is therefore the first thing to do with an old or inherited Arizona file, before any debtor research is commissioned.
When exactly can I file the Arizona renewal affidavit?
Within the ninety days immediately preceding the expiration of ten years from the date of entry, under 12-1612(B). It is a window, not a deadline with a run-up: filing before it opens is as ineffective as filing after it closes. Subsection (D) confirms no judicial act is needed – filing the affidavit with the clerk of the court where the judgment is entered and docketed renews it to the extent of the balance shown.
What has to go in the renewal affidavit?
Five things, under 12-1612(B): the parties, court, county of recording, date and amount, book and page, and the owner’s name with source and succession of title; whether any execution is outstanding and unreturned; the date and amount of all payments and that they are credited; any setoffs or counterclaims with amounts or a statement about undetermined ones; and the exact amount due after allowing them, with any further facts needed for a complete disclosure. Subsection (C) requires it be verified positively by the affiant, not on information and belief.
When is my second Arizona renewal due?
Ten years from the filing of the previous renewal affidavit, not from entry of the judgment. Section 12-1612(E) allows successive affidavits within ninety days of the expiration of ten years from the date the prior affidavit was filed. Because most creditors file somewhere inside the ninety-day window rather than on its final day, the second deadline drifts away from the judgment’s own anniversary by exactly that margin, which is a common way a long-held Arizona judgment quietly lapses.
How much of a paycheck can be garnished in Arizona?
Under A.R.S. 33-1131(B) the maximum is the lesser of ten percent of that week’s disposable earnings, or the amount by which those earnings exceed sixty times the applicable minimum hourly wage – with the applicable wage being whichever of the federal, state or local minimum is highest. Subsection (C) takes support orders outside that rule, exempting one-half of disposable earnings instead, and subsection (D) takes chapter XIII bankruptcy orders and state or federal tax debts outside it as well.
Is a debtor’s pension safe from an Arizona garnishment?
Not by virtue of being a pension. A.R.S. 33-1131(A) defines disposable earnings to include payments pursuant to a pension or retirement program or a deferred compensation plan, alongside wages, salary, bonuses and commissions, after amounts required by law to be withheld. Whether a specific payment is protected by some other exemption or by federal law is a separate question for your attorney, but the earnings rules themselves do not exclude retirement income.
How does this page differ from your Arizona judgment collection page?
This guide owns the clock and the procedure: the 12-1551 enforceability period and its 2013 and 2018 applicability cut-offs, renewal by affidavit and by action, the ten percent earnings cap and its carve-outs, the writ of garnishment and its contents, and the debtor’s examination. The Arizona judgment collection page owns the asset side – how a lien is created and the information statement that is a condition of it existing, the lien’s own ten-year duration, the homestead, and the community-property joinder rule in A.R.S. 25-215 that decides whether a judgment reaches a married couple’s property at all.
Keep the Arizona Judgment Worth Renewing
There is no point filing a renewal affidavit for a debtor nobody can find, and no point garnishing an employer who stopped paying them two years ago. Give us the name as the judgment carries it, the last address you hold, and the lawful reason for the enquiry. What comes back is a corroborated current location together with the employment and account signals the writs depend on, documented for your attorney, and as a rule a first read within 24 hours. Contact us to get started.
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