Alaska Judgment Collection: Districts, Not Counties
AS 09.30.010 records an Alaska judgment with "the recorder of a recording district", and the lien reaches only property in that district. Alaska has no county recorders. The lien is capped at ten years from entry however late the recording, and after five years without an execution a creditor needs a court order to get one at all.
The Short Version
An Alaska judgment becomes a lien on real property only when a certified copy is recorded with the recorder of a recording district, and only as to non-exempt property in that district. The lien continues while execution may issue but for not more than ten years from the date of entry. After five years with no execution issued, AS 09.35.020 bars a writ except by order of the court – and the court shall grant the motion where there are just and sufficient reasons for the failure to obtain the writ. After the lien expires the court may grant leave for execution, and recording the judgment together with that order creates the lien again, dated from the new recording. An action on a judgment must be brought within ten years under AS 09.10.040(a).
Watch: Alaska Judgment Collection: Recording Districts and Liens
A short orientation, then the Alaska Statutes that decide where a lien can exist and how long a creditor has.
Watch Overview
Alaska Has No County Recorder to File With
AS 09.30.010 sends a creditor to "the recorder of a recording district", and the lien reaches only property inside that district.
Almost every published instruction about judgment liens tells a creditor to record with the county recorder. In Alaska that instruction cannot be followed, because Alaska is not organised into counties. It has boroughs, much of the state sits in the unorganized borough with no borough government at all, and land records are kept on an entirely separate geography: recording districts, administered through the state recorder's offices rather than by local government.
Section 09.30.010 is written accordingly. A certified copy of the judgment or decree of a court of this state, or of a court of record of the United States, upon which execution may issue and whose enforcement has not been stayed, "may be recorded with the recorder of a recording district." And from the recording, the judgment or decree becomes a lien upon the real property of the defendant "that is in the recording district, that is not exempt from execution, and that is owned by the defendant at the time or acquired by the defendant afterward but before the lien expires."
Three consequences follow, and they are the reason an Alaska file needs research before it needs paperwork. The lien is district-limited, so a creditor has to know which recording district holds the property, and district boundaries do not track boroughs, cities or the assumptions of an out-of-state creditor. The lien is permissive – nothing attaches on entry and nothing attaches automatically. And the after-acquired reach is real but bounded: property the debtor acquires in that district after the recording is caught, but only until the lien expires.
Priority is decided by a recording race rather than by a delivery date. Section 09.30.020 is one sentence: "A conveyance of real property or interest in real property is void against a judgment lien that is recorded before the conveyance is recorded." Not before the conveyance is signed, delivered or accepted – before it is recorded. An Alaska creditor who records promptly can defeat a transfer the debtor made months earlier but never put on record, which is an unusually strong position and a direct argument for recording early rather than when a property finally surfaces.
The Lien Is Created by Recording and Timed From Entry
One sentence of AS 09.30.010 carries two different measurements, and they do not start on the same day.
The duration clause reads: the 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 or decree." Two limits, and whichever runs out first ends the lien.
The first limit is derivative. The lien lives only as long as execution may issue, which sends the reader straight to AS 09.35.020 and its five-year gate – the subject of the next section. So an Alaska lien can stop being effective long before its tenth birthday, simply because the creditor lost the right to execute without a court order.
The second limit is absolute and it runs from entry, not from recording. A creditor who records in year six has, at most, four years of lien. Nothing about the recording restarts the count. This is the same asymmetry that catches creditors in several western states, and it is the reason a delay in locating property is not a neutral delay – it is spent lien.
Alongside the lien sits an independent limitation on suing. AS 09.10.040(a) provides that a person may not bring an action upon a judgment or decree of a court of the United States, or of a state or territory within the United States, and an action may not be brought upon a sealed instrument, unless the action is commenced within 10 years. Subsection (b) was repealed in 1998. So the outer boundary on the judgment itself and the outer boundary on the lien are both ten years, but they are separate rules in separate chapters and only one of them is affected by whether execution has issued. Where Alaska sits among the fifty jurisdictions on that question is set out in how long a judgment is good for by state.
Four Alaska Sections and What Each One Actually Does
They are spread across two chapters of Title 9 and they are routinely conflated.
| Section | What it governs | The operative event |
|---|---|---|
| AS 09.30.010 | Creation and duration of the judgment lien | Recording with the recorder of a recording district; duration measured from entry |
| AS 09.30.020 | Priority against an unrecorded conveyance | Which document was recorded first |
| AS 09.35.020 | Whether execution may issue at all after a gap | Five years from entry with no execution issued |
| AS 09.10.040(a) | Bringing an action upon the judgment | Ten years, as a limitation on commencing the action |
| AS 09.35.070 | What property is liable to execution | All non-exempt goods, chattels, money and other property, real and personal, and property held under attachment in the action |
| AS 09.35.060 | Execution after the debtor's death | Execution may issue as if the debtor were living, except as provided in AS 13.16.505 |
The exemptions that decide what 09.35.070 actually reaches are not restated on this page, deliberately. Alaska's exemption figures live in AS 09.38 and in the regulations at 8 AAC 95.030, and they are frozen by design: AS 09.38.115 lets them move only on 1 October of an even-numbered year, only on a cumulative consumer-price movement of ten percent or more, and only in multiples of ten percent of the 1982 base. That schedule belongs to Alaska asset exemptions creditors face, which keeps a single authoritative copy of the numbers rather than a second copy that can drift out of step with the first.
At Five Years, Execution Stops Being a Right
AS 09.35.020 turns a clerk's task into a motion – and then tells the court when it must grant it.
Section 09.35.010 sets out who may have a writ of execution: a party in whose favour a judgment is given requiring payment of money or delivery of real or personal property, and the state on behalf of a victim of a crime or a delinquent act in whose favour restitution is ordered. Nothing there suggests a deadline. The deadline is in the next section.
Section 09.35.020 shuts that route at five years. Once five years have run from the entry of judgment with no execution ever having issued on it, the clerk cannot issue one – a writ becomes available only by order of the court in which judgment was entered. That is a dormancy rule under a different name, and unlike a dormancy rule it is announced by nothing at all. A creditor who has done nothing for five years discovers it at the counter. (The exemption schedule that decides what any writ can then reach is set out separately, on our Alaska exemptions page, so the figures live in one place rather than two.)
The second sentence is the one that decides Alaska files, and it is unusually favourable to a creditor who can explain themselves. The court shall grant the motion – not "may" – once it is satisfied that there were just and sufficient reasons behind the creditor's failure to take out a writ inside those five years. It is not a discretionary balancing of the equities of the debt. The question the statute puts is narrow and historical: why did nobody get a writ?
That framing changes what is worth assembling. The material that answers it is a record of what was attempted and what was found – the searches that came back empty, the addresses that failed, the employers that ended, the periods when the debtor could not be located at all. A creditor who has kept nothing has nothing to put in front of the court; a creditor who has a dated file has an answer to the only question the section poses. Alaska is therefore one of the few states where the value of a locating file is partly evidentiary rather than purely practical, and our post-judgment discovery page covers the formal tools that sit alongside it.
An Expired Alaska Lien Can Be Rebuilt
The last two sentences of AS 09.30.010 describe a second life that almost no published guidance mentions.
"After expiration of the lien, the court may grant leave for issuance of execution upon the judgment or decree. From the date of recording the judgment or decree, together with the order allowing issuance of execution, the judgment or decree becomes a lien in the manner provided in this section."
So the sequence after expiry is: apply to the court for leave to issue execution; obtain the order; and then record the judgment and the order together with the recorder of the recording district. What comes back is a lien in the manner provided by the section – the same district-limited lien, reaching property owned at the time and acquired afterwards.
What does not come back is the old date. The new lien runs "from the date of recording" the judgment together with the order, so anything recorded against the property in the meantime is ahead of it. This is the same trade a creditor faces in the revival states: the remedy survives and the priority does not. It is also why an Alaska creditor is better off recording once, early, in the right district than relying on the ability to reconstruct a position later.
One further wrinkle sits in AS 09.35.060 for files where the debtor has died: if the judgment debtor dies after judgment, execution may be issued on the judgment "in the manner and with the effect as if the debtor were still living, except as provided in AS 13.16.505" – the probate provision on presenting claims. A death does not automatically end an Alaska enforcement file, but it moves part of it into a different code, and what happens when a judgment debtor dies sets out how that plays out.
Where Alaska Files Come Apart
Six, and two of them are geography rather than law.
The creditor looked for a county recorder
There is not one. AS 09.30.010 records with the recorder of a recording district, and the lien reaches only property in that district.
Recording happened in the wrong district
District boundaries do not follow boroughs or city limits, so a correctly executed filing can still miss the property entirely.
Five years passed with no execution
AS 09.35.020 then requires a court order, and the court is asking why no writ was obtained – a question about the creditor’s diligence, not the debt.
Ten years was counted from recording
The lien is capped at ten years from the date of ENTRY of the judgment, however late the recording happened.
The debtor recorded a conveyance after the judgment lien
Under AS 09.30.020 that conveyance is void against a lien recorded first – a point creditors miss in their own favour.
Nobody kept a record of the searching
In Alaska that record is the evidence for a 09.35.020 motion, and a creditor without one has nothing to put before the court.
How an Alaska File Is Built
Districts first, because in Alaska the map is the filing plan.
Fix the date of entry
Both the ten-year lien cap in AS 09.30.010 and the five-year execution gate in AS 09.35.020 are measured from it.
Establish where the debtor's real property actually is
Then translate that into recording districts, which are the units the lien statute uses and are not the units most people think in.
Check the recording index in each district that matters
Because a prior recording may already have started the clock, and because priority under AS 09.30.020 is a recording race.
Date the last execution, if any
The five-year gate turns on whether an execution has ever issued, not on whether one succeeded.
Assemble the diligence record
AS 09.35.020 asks for just and sufficient reasons for the failure to obtain a writ. Dated searches, failed addresses and lost employment trails are the answer to that question.
Identify non-exempt property before spending on a writ
What execution reaches is set by AS 09.38 and the regulations, and those figures live on our Alaska exemptions page rather than here.
Deliver documents, sources and dates
So counsel decides whether to record, move for leave, or both, on evidence rather than on recollection.
What We Do on an Alaska File, and What We Will Not
The boundaries, before the work rather than after it.
AS 09.35.020 asks a court to weigh "just and sufficient reasons for the failure" – which is to say it asks for an honest account of what was tried and what it produced. That is the standard this firm works to as well. This is records research and skip tracing. It is not the practice of law and it is not licensed investigation; no Alaska private investigator licence is held, and none is claimed on this page. On an Alaska judgment the work is establishing which recording districts hold the debtor's real property, what the recording index shows and when, and building the dated account of the search that a 09.35.020 motion is likely to need.
The lawful basis is stated by the requester at the outset and assessed independently by us. Enforcing an Alaska judgment held in your own name meets it. Wanting to know where a person has moved to does not, and adding a case number to that wish does not make it a purpose. We do not pretext: no false identity is used with a recorder's office, a court clerk, a process server, an employer or a bank, and we do not misstate whose enquiry it is or what it is for.
One set of Alaska requests never reaches the assessment stage. Where someone fled an abusive home. Where an Alaska protective order stands in their favour. Where a court or a confidentiality scheme is holding the address back on purpose. The value of the judgment is irrelevant to that, and so is the number of years it has gone unpaid – it is not weighed against anything, and a requester hears it during intake.
One statutory line closes this out. We are not a consumer reporting agency, so the Fair Credit Reporting Act does not govern us – and an Alaska diligence file is not a consumer report. It cannot decide a tenancy, an employment offer, a credit application or an insurance rating. When that is the real requirement, we name it and send the requester to a provider that is FCRA-regulated. Everything above is general legal information about the Alaska Statutes and is not legal advice; an Alaska attorney is who applies it to a particular judgment. The Legislature publishes the lien section at AS 09.30.010 and the Alaska Court System publishes creditor self-help material at courts.alaska.gov. Where the debtor has left the state, the skip tracing services overview sets out how the search widens.
Who Sends Us Alaska Judgments
Creditors for whom the Alaska problem is a map or a gap in the file.
Holders of unrecorded Alaska judgments
Where nothing attached because nothing was recorded, and the ten years from entry has been running the whole time.
Creditors'-rights counsel in Alaska
Preparing a 09.35.020 motion that has to explain a five-year gap in terms of what was attempted.
Out-of-state creditors
Meeting recording districts for the first time and discovering there is no county recorder to file with.
Assignees and portfolio holders
Inheriting files whose entry dates and execution history have to be rebuilt from the court record.
Commercial creditors in Alaska
Chasing a debtor whose property sits across districts that each require their own recording.
Title and closing professionals
Applying AS 09.30.020’s recording race, where an earlier unrecorded conveyance loses to a later recorded judgment lien.
Alaska's combination – permissive recording, a district-limited lien, a five-year execution gate and the ability to rebuild an expired lien – has no close equivalent in the lower forty-eight, so a creditor should not import assumptions from a state that uses counties and dormancy. If your Alaska question is legal, an Alaska attorney is the right first call. If it is factual, Alaska skip tracing services is where the locating half begins, and Alaska wage garnishment laws covers the payroll route.
Our Commitment
Alaska's execution statute asks a court for just and sufficient reasons for a failure, which means the value of a search file is partly evidentiary. Ours are dated, sourced and honest about what came back empty, because an empty result that is documented is worth more here than an optimistic one that is not.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is an Alaska judgment recorded to create a lien?
With the recorder of a recording district. AS 09.30.010 provides that a certified copy of a judgment on which execution may issue, and whose enforcement has not been stayed, may be recorded with the recorder of a recording district, and the lien then reaches the defendant’s non-exempt real property in that district.
How long does an Alaska judgment lien last?
It continues during the time execution may issue on the judgment, but for not more than ten years from the date of entry of the judgment or decree, under AS 09.30.010. Recording late does not extend it.
What happens after five years without an execution in Alaska?
Under AS 09.35.020, no execution may issue except by order of the court in which the judgment was entered. The court shall grant the motion if it determines that there are just and sufficient reasons for the failure to obtain the writ within five years after entry.
Can an expired Alaska judgment lien be revived?
AS 09.30.010 provides that after expiration of the lien the court may grant leave for issuance of execution, and that from the date of recording the judgment together with the order allowing issuance of execution, it becomes a lien again in the manner provided by the section. The new lien dates from the new recording.
How long do I have to sue on an Alaska judgment?
Ten years. AS 09.10.040(a) provides that an action may not be brought upon a judgment or decree of a court of the United States, or of a state or territory within the United States, unless it is commenced within ten years.
Does an unrecorded conveyance beat an Alaska judgment lien?
No. AS 09.30.020 provides that a conveyance of real property or an interest in real property is void against a judgment lien that is recorded before the conveyance is recorded.
What property can an Alaska execution reach?
AS 09.35.070 makes all non-exempt goods, chattels, money or other property, real and personal, or an interest in the property of the judgment debtor, and all property seized and held under attachment in the action, liable to execution. The exemption schedule itself is set by AS 09.38 and the regulations.
Can execution issue after the Alaska judgment debtor dies?
AS 09.35.060 provides that if the judgment debtor dies after judgment, execution may be issued on the judgment in the manner and with the effect as if the debtor were still living, except as provided in AS 13.16.505.
Map an Alaska Recording District
Send the entry date and what you know about the debtor's property. We will tell you which recording districts matter, what the index shows, and what the record cannot establish.
Start Your Request →
