Arkansas Judgment Collection
Almost every page written about collecting in Arkansas contains the same sentence: judgments last ten years and can be renewed for another ten. Each part of it is loose enough to lose money. The ten years belongs to the lien; the judgment as a debt runs on a separate limitations period in a different chapter, and since 2015 the two are expressly forbidden to help each other. Nothing is renewed – the lien is revived by a writ of scire facias, which relates back to the day it issued. And whether the lien dates from the day the judge ruled turns on a fact about the rendering court’s clerk, with a second, later date running simultaneously against everyone who lacked actual notice. What we do sits underneath all of it and is narrower: Arkansas county records and lawfully licensed data, searched only after a requester states a purpose the law recognises. Nobody here is admitted in Arkansas, licensed as an investigator, or in the business of collecting, and a section-by-section reading is not advice about your own case.
The Lien Attaches on a Condition, Not on a Date
Ark. Code Ann. section 16-65-117(a) does not say a judgment is a lien. It says a judgment is a lien if.
Read the opening subdivision slowly, because its grammar is the whole point. A judgment of the Supreme Court, of a circuit court, or of a United States district or bankruptcy court sitting in Arkansas is a lien on real estate the defendant owns in the county where the judgment was rendered, from the date of its rendition – and then the sentence adds two conditions joined by “only if”. The clerk of the rendering court must maintain a permanent office within that county, at which permanent records of that court’s judgments are continuously kept and maintained. And the judgment must have been filed with the circuit clerk.
Miss either condition and the lien does not date from rendition. It does not exist yet at all. Subdivision (a)(2)(A) supplies the fallback: where the rendering court’s clerk keeps no such permanent office in the county, there is no lien on the defendant’s land in that county until a certified copy of the judgment is filed in the office of that county’s circuit clerk.
A judgment from an Arkansas district court is handled separately and more strictly in the same subdivision. It is not a lien on real estate in the county of rendition until the judgment has been filed and indexed in the judgment records of the circuit clerk of that county. Filing alone is not enough for a district court judgment; the indexing is part of the condition. A creditor holding a district court judgment who assumes the ten years began when the judge signed has misdated the lien by however long the paperwork sat.
The office that matters here is the circuit clerk, county by county. Arkansas circuit courts are organised into judicial circuits that group several counties together, so the court that rendered your judgment and the county whose records will decide your priority are frequently not the same administrative unit. The Arkansas Judiciary’s own description of the circuit court structure is the quickest way to see which circuit a county sits in before you go looking for the right clerk.
And Against Everyone Else It Runs From Indexing
The same section states the actual-notice rule three separate times. That repetition is a drafting signal, not a redundancy.
Subdivisions (a)(1)(B), (a)(2)(B) and (b)(2) of section 16-65-117 each carry an identical sentence, attached to each of the three fact patterns the section describes: as to any person who does not have actual notice of the rendition of the judgment, the judgment is a lien from the date the judgment is recorded and indexed by the court clerk in a manner that provides reasonable notice to the public.
So Arkansas runs two lien dates at once, against two different classes of person. Against someone with actual notice of the rendition – the defendant, and anyone who genuinely knew – the lien can date from rendition. Against everyone who lacked actual notice, it dates from recording and indexing. And “everyone who lacked actual notice” is not a marginal category. It is the purchaser who bought the tract, the bank that took the mortgage, the second judgment creditor who filed a certified copy last Tuesday. Those are the parties a lien exists to beat.
The practical translation is unglamorous and it is the reason this page leads here rather than with a duration. The date that decides a priority contest in Arkansas is usually the indexing date, not the ruling date, because the party you are contesting is almost by definition someone who did not have actual notice. A page that tells you the lien “attaches at rendition” and stops has told you the half of the rule that applies to the person you already have a judgment against.
Every other county is a separate act
Subdivision (b)(1) is short and absolute: no such judgment is a lien on the defendant’s land in any other county until a certified copy is filed in the office of the clerk of the circuit court of the county in which the land lies. Subdivision (c)(1) then tells the clerk what to do on receipt – on filing the certified copy and payment of three dollars, the clerk immediately dockets and indexes the judgment as though it had been rendered in that county’s own court, and from that time it is a lien on the defendant’s lands there. Subdivision (c)(2) makes indexing a duty owed immediately on filing, and defines “judgments” for the section to include any order, decree or judgment providing for payment of money for the support and care of a child through the registry of the court.
Arkansas has seventy-five counties. The lien reaches exactly the ones where somebody performed this act, on the dates they performed it. That turns a legal question into a records question: which counties hold real property in this debtor’s name, and under what spelling of it.
The Short Version
An Arkansas judgment lien runs ten years from the date of the judgment under Ark. Code Ann. section 16-65-117(d)(1)(A) and may be revived only under section 16-65-501 – by a writ of scire facias, which must issue within ten years of rendition or of the last order of revivor, and which relates back to the day it issued. Separately, section 16-56-114 gives ten years to bring an action on the judgment. Since Act 2015 No. 1113, an act that tolls or renews the section 16-56-114 period cannot revive or extend the lien. And a scire facias filed in one county does nothing to a lien in another county unless a five-item notice was recorded in that other county’s real property records first, under section 16-65-501(g). The deadlines are statutory; what they need from you is a person to serve and a list of counties.
Watch: Two Clocks That No Longer Rescue Each Other
Why tolling the debt does nothing for the lien after 2015.
Watch Overview
Ten Years, and the 2015 Decoupling
Two ten-year periods in two chapters, and one sentence that severed them.
Section 16-65-117(d)(1)(A) provides that the liens the section authorises shall continue in force for ten years from the date of the judgment, and shall be revived only under section 16-65-501. Note the shift in the section’s own vocabulary, because it is genuine and a careful creditor should see it: the lien attaches “from the date of its rendition” in (a)(1)(A), but it runs “from the date of the judgment” in (d)(1)(A). On a judgment signed and entered the same day the distinction is academic. On a judgment rendered from the bench in October and entered in November it is a month of lien life, and the month falls at the end, ten years later, when nobody is looking.
Meanwhile section 16-56-114, which lives in the limitations chapter rather than the judgments chapter, provides that actions on all judgments and decrees shall be commenced within ten years after the cause of action shall accrue, and not afterward. That is the clock on suing on the judgment, and it comes with the whole limitations apparatus of subchapter 1 – the disability provisions, the armed-forces suspension, the rules about injunctions and absconding debtors, and the tolling sections that decide when a written acknowledgment or an endorsed payment counts.
The sentence that changed the arithmetic
Act 2015, No. 1113, section 1, effective 22 July 2015, added subdivision (d)(1)(B) to section 16-65-117: an act or circumstance that may toll or renew the limitations period provided by section 16-56-114 for the underlying judgment shall not revive or extend the duration of a lien authorised by the section.
Before that sentence, a creditor could at least argue the two ten-year periods moved together, so that whatever kept the debt alive kept the security alive with it. After it, the argument is closed by text. A partial payment, an acknowledgment, a period of the debtor’s absence – anything that buys time on the debt – buys nothing on the lien. The lien has exactly one life-extending act available to it, and that act is scire facias.
This is why the phrase “renewable for another ten years” is worse than imprecise. It suggests an administrative step of the kind several neighbouring states genuinely have, where a creditor files an affidavit and the clerk dockets it. Arkansas has no such filing. The one thing that extends an Arkansas judgment lien is a writ that has to be sued out, served, and either answered or defaulted.
Scire Facias: A Writ, and It Relates Back
Section 16-65-501, subsection by subsection, including the part about occupants of the land.
Subsection (a) fixes who and when: the plaintiff or the plaintiff’s legal representatives may, at any time before the expiration of the lien, sue out a scire facias to revive the judgment. Not after. The window closes with the lien it is meant to save.
Subsection (b) fixes service, and it is broader than a creditor expects. The writ is served on the defendant, on the defendant’s legal representatives, on terre-tenants, or on any other person occupying the land – and it may be directed to and served in any county in the state. A terre-tenant is whoever now holds land that was subject to the lien. Arkansas therefore contemplates that by the time you revive, the land may have moved on and the person you must reach may be a stranger to the lawsuit who happens to be living on the tract.
Subsection (c) handles the debtor who cannot be found, and it is the provision that turns this from a legal exercise into a judgment debtor location exercise. If the defendant cannot be found, the court makes an order briefly setting forth the nature of the case and requiring all interested persons to appear on a date the court sets and show cause why the judgment should not be revived and the lien continued. A copy of that order is put up for four weeks at the courthouse door of the county where the judgment was rendered.
Subsection (d) supplies the consequence: if, on service or publication, nobody appears and shows cause, the judgment is revived and the lien continued for another period of ten years, and so on from time to time as often as may be necessary. There is no cap on the number of revivals. There is only a cap on the interval between them.
Relation back, and the outer limit
Subsection (e) is the timing rule worth putting on a calendar: if a scire facias is sued out before the termination of the lien, the lien of the revived judgment relates back to the day on which the scire facias issued. Priority is therefore established by the issue date of the writ, not by the date the revival order is finally signed – which matters, because a contested revival can outlast the original lien’s expiry while still preserving the earlier rank.
Subsection (f) sets the outer boundary. No scire facias may issue except within ten years from the date of the rendition of the judgment, or, where the judgment has been previously revived, within ten years from the order of revivor. So the cycle is: rendition, then a ten-year window; revivor order, then a fresh ten-year window; and so on. Miss one window and there is no later remedy, because the writ that would fix it can no longer issue.
The 2011 Rule That Quietly Kills a Multi-County Lien
Section 16-65-501(g), added by Act 2011 No. 227. It appears on no page in the ranking set.
Suppose you did everything right. You obtained a judgment in Pulaski County. You filed certified copies with the circuit clerks in Benton, Washington and Craighead Counties, where the debtor owns land, and each clerk docketed and indexed. You have four county liens, all timely. In year nine you file your petition for a writ of scire facias in Pulaski County and you revive.
Under subsection (g), you have revived one lien. The other three are gone.
Subsection (g)(1) provides that unless, before the expiration of the judgment, the notice described in (g)(2) is recorded in the real property records of a county other than the county in which the scire facias action is filed, then (A) the scire facias is not effective in that other county, and (B)(i) a recorded judgment lien may not be revived against real property in that other county. Subdivision (B)(ii) preserves one thing only: the creditor may still register the judgment or record a judgment lien in a new county after the judgment is obtained or revived. That is a forward-looking right. It does not resurrect the rank you just lost.
The five items the notice must contain
Subsection (g)(2) lists them, and they are worth setting out with the statute’s own lettering so you can check the draft against it rather than against somebody’s summary. There are five, (A) through (E):
- (A) the names of the judgment debtors and judgment creditors;
- (B) the name of the court and the case number in which the judgment was rendered;
- (C) the name of the county in which the petition for a writ of scire facias was filed;
- (D) the date on which the petition was filed; and
- (E) a statement that the filing party intends to maintain its judgment lien against any property of the judgment debtor located in the county in which the notice is filed.
Item (E) is the one that requires a decision rather than a transcription, and it is the one that requires facts. You are declaring an intention to maintain a lien in a named county. Which means that before the deadline – not after it, when you are reconstructing what happened – you need the list of counties whose real property records carry this debtor’s name. Not the counties you filed in nine years ago. The counties that hold property now, including anything acquired since, and including property held under a variant of the name, through an entity, or with a spouse.
That list is a records problem, and it is the specific records problem this firm exists to answer. We do not file the notice, choose the counties, or advise on the deadline. We establish, from Arkansas county records and lawfully licensed data, which counties carry real property in the name, with the instrument, the book and page or instrument number, and the date each was checked, so that counsel is deciding from a documented list rather than from memory.
Which Act, Which Office, Which Clock
Arkansas keeps these in different chapters. Confusing two of them is the usual way a lien is lost.
| Act | Authority | Where it happens | What it does to the clock |
|---|---|---|---|
| Judgment rendered and filed with the circuit clerk | 16-65-117(a)(1)(A) | County of rendition, if the clerk keeps a permanent office there | Lien dates from rendition against a person with actual notice |
| Recording and indexing by the clerk | 16-65-117(a)(1)(B), (a)(2)(B), (b)(2) | Same clerk’s records | Lien dates from that recording and indexing against everyone without actual notice |
| District court judgment filed and indexed | 16-65-117(a)(1)(A) | Circuit clerk of the county of rendition | No lien at all until both filing and indexing are done |
| Certified copy filed in another county | 16-65-117(b)(1), (c)(1) | Circuit clerk where the land lies; three dollars | Lien in that county begins at docketing and indexing there |
| Writ of scire facias sued out | 16-65-501(a), (e), (f) | Court that rendered the judgment; served anywhere in the state | Revived lien relates back to the issue date; must issue within ten years of rendition or of the last revivor |
| Notice recorded in another county | 16-65-501(g)(1), (g)(2) | Real property records of each other county | Without it the revival has no effect in that county at all |
| Payment, acknowledgment or other tolling event | 16-56-114 with 16-65-117(d)(1)(B) | Anywhere | May affect the action on the judgment; since 22 July 2015 it does nothing to the lien |
| Decree of conveyance recorded | 16-65-116(a) | Recorder’s office where the land lies, within one year | Late recording makes the decree void as to subsequent purchasers without notice |
Two entries in that table are easy to skim past. The last one, section 16-65-116(a), applies where a circuit court decrees a conveyance of real estate or that real estate pass: the party in whose favour the decree was made must record a copy in the recorder’s office of the county where the land lies within one year, and if that is not done the decree is void as to all subsequent purchasers without notice. Subsection (b) defines “real estate” for that purpose to include all legal or equitable estates and interests in lands and tenements liable to be sold under execution – which is broader than the phrase sounds and catches interests a title search keyed only to fee ownership will not surface.
The other is interest. Under section 16-65-114(a)(1), a judgment bears post-judgment interest in a contract action at the rate provided by the contract or at the Federal Reserve primary credit rate in effect on the date the judgment is entered plus two percent, whichever is greater; in any other action, at the primary credit rate on the date of entry plus two percent. Subdivision (a)(2) caps the result at the maximum permitted by Arkansas Constitution, Amendment 89, and subsection (b) provides that a judgment against a county on a county warrant or other evidence of county indebtedness bears no interest at all. The section was last amended by Act 2019, No. 995, effective 24 July 2019. Because the rate is fixed by reference to the primary credit rate on the entry date, two judgments entered months apart in the same case can accrue at different rates permanently, and any page quoting a single Arkansas percentage is quoting a snapshot. Note as well that this is a third event-word in the same body of law: the lien attaches at rendition, runs from the date of the judgment, and the interest rate is set at entry.
Execution itself is unremarkable and section 16-66-101 says so plainly – an execution may issue on any final judgment order of a court of record, in personam, for a liquidated sum of money and for interest and costs, or for costs alone. What is not unremarkable is what an execution needs before it is worth issuing, which is a place to send it.
What the County Records Will and Will Not Carry
Every deadline above is an act performed in a named county, against a named person, at an address someone has to have.
Reread the statutes with that in mind and the pattern is hard to miss. Section 16-65-501(b) wants the defendant, the legal representatives, the terre-tenants, or the occupant of the land. Section 16-65-501(c) is the branch for when the defendant cannot be found, and it costs four weeks and a courthouse-door posting. Section 16-65-501(g)(2)(E) wants a county named. Section 16-65-117(b)(1) wants to know where the land lies. None of those is a legal question. Each is a question about a person and a parcel, answered from records, before a date.
What we produce on an Arkansas matter is a documented answer to exactly those questions and nothing beyond them. Identity confirmed against the judgment – the correct individual or entity, distinguished from same-name records, which in a state with concentrated surnames across contiguous counties is real work rather than a formality. A current location and its supporting sources with the date each was checked. The counties whose real property records carry the name, with the instrument type and its recording data, including anything bought since the original filing, because the lien can only sweep up later purchases in counties where it exists to do the sweeping. Employers and depositories are reported where lawful sources name them, and reported as identified rather than as confirmed by anyone we asked.
And a clear statement of what the records do not establish. An absence of recorded property in a county is an absence in that county’s index under the spellings searched; it is not proof the debtor owns nothing there. We say which it is. Where a title question needs an examiner and where a question needs counsel, we say that instead of guessing, because the sworn and cost-bearing steps in this area belong to people who are admitted and insured to take them.
What we do not do
We sue out no writ, serve no terre-tenant, record no notice in any county’s real property records, and file nothing with a circuit clerk. We do not advise on whether a lien has expired, choose which counties to notice, or interpret Amendment 89 for your file. Judgment debtors are never approached by us at all. And nothing here is ever drawn out of a clerk, an employer or a bank by adopting a false identity or a false reason for asking – a practice this firm treats as disqualifying rather than as a technique. Research into public records and lawfully licensed data is the whole of what happens: no Arkansas investigator’s licence is held here, no bar admission, and no debt is collected on anyone’s behalf.
The output also sits outside the consumer-reporting system, which matters if your intended use is one the Fair Credit Reporting Act governs at 15 U.S.C. 1681b. Deciding who rents a unit, who is hired, or what a loan or a policy costs are all uses that require a consumer reporting agency, and this is not one; a file built here carries no permissible purpose for any of them. Going the other way, a request has to arrive with its own lawful basis stated – the judgment held or represented, and what the result is for – before a search begins, and anything that will not sit inside that frame is turned away.
There is one refusal that is not negotiated. Where the shape of an enquiry suggests it is really an effort to reach a person who would be put at risk by being located – an ex-partner, someone under a protective order, someone whose address a court has sealed – the answer is no, and the collection paperwork attached to it makes no difference. Everything set out above is general information about published Arkansas statutes and is not legal advice; whether a particular lien is alive, and what to do about it, is a question for an Arkansas lawyer looking at your file.
Where a debtor’s wages or exempt property are the question rather than their whereabouts, the schedules live on their own pages: Arkansas wage garnishment laws for the withholding rules, and Arkansas asset exemptions from creditors for the constitutional and statutory protections, which in Arkansas sit partly in the state constitution rather than in the Code. If the judgment came from somewhere else, domesticating foreign judgments covers the step that has to happen before any of section 16-65-117 applies at all.
Our Commitment
What you receive is the Arkansas record in the condition the circuit clerks and county recorders keep it – separated into three columns rather than one: findings the judgment, conveyance and mortgage indexes actually support; readings those indexes point toward without settling; and questions they simply do not reach. Every entry carries where it came from and when it was pulled. Since the writ has to issue before a deadline nobody can move, and since section 16-65-501(g) turns a revival into nothing in any county left unnoticed, we would rather call a county unresolved than call it clear.
Arkansas Judgment Questions
The ones where the published answer is usually a paraphrase of the wrong device.
How long does an Arkansas judgment lien last?
Ten years from the date of the judgment. Ark. Code Ann. section 16-65-117(d)(1)(A) provides that the liens the section authorises continue in force for ten years from the date of the judgment and may be revived only under section 16-65-501. That is the lien. The separate ten-year period in section 16-56-114 governs bringing an action on the judgment, and since Act 2015 No. 1113 the two no longer help each other.
Can an Arkansas judgment be renewed?
Not by that name and not by that method. Arkansas has no renewal affidavit. The lien is revived by suing out a writ of scire facias under section 16-65-501, which must be served on the defendant, the legal representatives, terre-tenants or the occupant of the land, or else advertised by an order posted for four weeks at the courthouse door where the defendant cannot be found. On default the lien continues another ten years, and section 16-65-501(d) allows that to happen as often as may be necessary.
When exactly does the lien attach – at rendition or at recording?
Both, against different people. Section 16-65-117(a)(1)(A) can date the lien from rendition, but only where the rendering court’s clerk maintains a permanent office in the county with continuously kept permanent judgment records and the judgment has been filed with the circuit clerk. Subdivisions (a)(1)(B), (a)(2)(B) and (b)(2) then provide, three separate times, that as to any person without actual notice of the rendition the lien runs from the date the judgment is recorded and indexed. Against a competing purchaser or mortgagee, the indexing date is normally the operative one.
Does an Arkansas district court judgment work the same way?
No, and the difference is a trap. Section 16-65-117(a)(1)(A) provides that a judgment of an Arkansas district court is not a lien on real estate in the county where it was rendered until the judgment has been filed and indexed in the judgment records of the circuit clerk of that county. Filing alone does not do it; the indexing is part of the condition. A creditor who dates the ten years from the day the district judge ruled has started the clock too early.
I revived my judgment. Why did my lien in another county disappear?
Because of section 16-65-501(g), added by Act 2011 No. 227. Unless a notice was recorded in the real property records of the other county before the judgment expired, the scire facias is not effective in that county and a recorded judgment lien may not be revived against real property there. The notice must contain five items under (g)(2): the names of the judgment debtors and creditors; the court and case number; the county where the scire facias petition was filed; the date the petition was filed; and a statement that the filing party intends to maintain its judgment lien against property in the county where the notice is filed.
Does a payment by the debtor extend my Arkansas lien?
No. Section 16-65-117(d)(1)(B), added by Act 2015 No. 1113 effective 22 July 2015, provides that an act or circumstance which may toll or renew the section 16-56-114 limitations period for the underlying judgment shall not revive or extend the duration of the lien. Something that buys time on the debt buys none on the security. Scire facias is the only act that extends the lien.
What interest does an Arkansas judgment earn?
A formula rather than a fixed number. Under section 16-65-114(a)(1), a judgment in a contract action bears the rate provided by the contract or the Federal Reserve primary credit rate in effect on the date the judgment is entered plus two percent, whichever is greater; in any other action, the primary credit rate on the entry date plus two percent. Subdivision (a)(2) caps it at Arkansas Constitution, Amendment 89, and subsection (b) provides that a judgment against a county on a county warrant bears no interest. Because the rate is fixed at entry, judgments entered on different dates can accrue differently and permanently.
What does your firm actually do on an Arkansas judgment, and what will it not do?
We answer the records questions the statutes assume are already answered. From Arkansas county records and lawfully licensed data we establish where the debtor is and which counties’ real property records carry the name, each with the instrument, its recording data and the date checked, so a scire facias has somewhere to be served and a section 16-65-501(g) notice reaches the right counties in time. The steps with legal consequence are not ours: no writ is sued out, no terre-tenant served, nothing recorded with a circuit clerk or county recorder, and no view offered on whether a lien is still alive. Debtors are not approached, and nothing is obtained by adopting a false identity or a false reason for asking. This is a public-records research firm holding no Arkansas investigator’s licence, no bar admission and no collection role, and it is not a consumer reporting agency – so its work carries no permissible purpose for tenant screening, hiring, or the underwriting of credit or insurance. Enquiries that appear aimed at someone who would be harmed by being found are refused.
The Writ Has a Deadline. The County List Has to Exist First.
Scire facias is sued out in the court that rendered the judgment; the section 16-65-501(g) notice is recorded county by county, wherever the land sits. Name the debtor, tell us the lawful basis on which you are asking, and what comes back is a current location alongside every Arkansas county whose real property records answer to that name – sourced, dated, and in the ordinary case back within 24 hours. Contact us and you will get a straight account of what those indexes carry and what they do not.
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