Bankruptcy Judgment Collection Guide
A petition does not pause your judgment. It moves it into a rulebook that runs on clocks, in both directions, and it makes your lien and the debtor’s chapter separate questions from your debt.
What the Filing Changed
Section 362(a) stays enforcement of a judgment obtained before the case, and 362(b)’s exceptions are a closed list of twenty-nine numbered paragraphs. The stay can terminate on the 30th day where the debtor had one case dismissed in the previous year, and never goes into effect where two or more were.
Watch: The Creditor’s Clock and Lien
Watch Overview
The Petition Replaces the Rules You Were Enforcing Under
11 U.S.C. 362 makes a petition a stay “applicable to all entities”. It names your act: (a)(2) stays “the enforcement, against the debtor or against property of the estate, of a judgment obtained before the commencement of the case”, and (a)(6) stays “any act to collect, assess, or recover a claim against the debtor” that arose before it. The stay runs from the petition date, not from the day you find out.
Subsection (b) is a closed list of twenty-nine numbered paragraphs, and a handful of them do turn on holding a judgment or an order — which is why a creditor reads the paragraph rather than reasoning from the general rule.
Carry on regardless and (k)(1) applies: an individual injured by any willful violation of the stay “shall recover actual damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees”, and in appropriate circumstances may recover punitive damages. Paragraph (k)(2) limits recovery to actual damages only where the act was taken in a good-faith belief that subsection (h) applied — the individual debtor’s statement-of-intention provision, not a general good-faith defense.
Our guide to collecting a judgment after a debtor files narrates the case from filing to close; this page is the mechanical half, the clocks and the lien.
The Stay Has a Life, and for a Repeat Filer It May Be Thirty Days or None
Section 362(c) gives two stays two endings. The stay of an act against property of the estate runs until the property is no longer property of the estate. The stay of any other act runs until the earliest of the closing of the case, its dismissal, or — “if the case is a case under chapter 7 of this title concerning an individual or a case under chapter 9, 11, 12, or 13” — “the time a discharge is granted or denied”.
One prior dismissal: the 30th day
Where an individual debtor in a chapter 7, 11 or 13 case had a case pending within the preceding one-year period that was dismissed — the statute excepting “a case refiled under a chapter other than chapter 7 after dismissal under section 707(b)” — 362(c)(3)(A) says the stay “shall terminate with respect to the debtor on the 30th day after the filing of the later case”. What those words reach as to property of the estate is contested, so day 31 is not open season on estate property. The debtor may extend the stay, but only after a hearing completed before the 30-day period expires, and only on a showing of good faith. Subparagraph (C) supplies a presumption of bad faith, rebuttable by clear and convincing evidence: as to all creditors where “more than 1 previous case” of the debtor under chapters 7, 11 or 13 was pending within the preceding one-year period, and separately as to any creditor that had commenced a stay-relief action under subsection (d) in the previous case that was still pending, or had been resolved by terminating, conditioning or limiting the stay.
Two or more prior dismissals: no stay at all
Under 362(c)(4)(A)(i), where two or more cases of an individual debtor were pending within the previous year and were dismissed — the same refiling exception applying — the stay “shall not go into effect upon the filing of the later case”. And on request of a party in interest “the court shall promptly enter an order confirming that no stay is in effect”. The debtor’s route back is a request within 30 days on a good-faith showing, and a stay imposed that way is effective only from the date the order is entered.
The clocks you start
The court “shall grant” relief, “such as by terminating, annulling, modifying, or conditioning” the stay. Among the grounds are (d)(1), for cause including lack of adequate protection, and (d)(2), which requires both that the debtor has no equity in the property and that it is not necessary to an effective reorganization. Annulling is how an act taken in ignorance of a petition can be validated after the fact.
Under 362(e)(1) the stay of an act against property of the estate terminates 30 days after the request as to the requesting party unless the court orders it continued after a hearing. Under 362(e)(2), in a chapter 7, 11 or 13 case with an individual debtor, the stay terminates 60 days after the request unless a final decision is rendered in that window or the period is extended by agreement of all parties in interest or by the court on findings of good cause.
Four Dates, Three Rules, One Trigger Read From the Wrong Date
Read from the rules as restyled effective 1 December 2024 — restyled, not rewritten.
| Deadline and rule | What it runs from, and how it can move |
|---|---|
| Proof of claim — 70 days. Rule 3002(c): timely if filed within 70 days after the order for relief, in a voluntary Chapter 7 case or a Chapter 12 or 13 case | The trigger is the order for relief, not the petition. In a voluntary case they coincide; on a conversion or in an involuntary case they do not. Involuntary Chapter 7 runs 90 days. Chapter 11 is not in Rule 3002(c) at all |
| A claim that comes from a judgment — 30 days. Rule 3002(c)(3), where an unsecured claim arises in favor of an entity or becomes allowable because of a judgment against that entity | Filed within 30 days after the judgment becomes final — but the claim “must not be allowed” if the liability the judgment imposes is not satisfied, or the duty not performed, within those 30 days or any additional time the court sets |
| Dischargeability complaint — 60 days. Rule 4007(c): a complaint under 523(c) must be filed within 60 days after the first date set for the 341(a) meeting of creditors | The clerk gives at least 30 days’ notice. An extension requires a motion filed before the time expires, and there is no route after it |
| Objection to the discharge itself — 60 days. Rule 4004(a): in a Chapter 7 case, on the same first-date-set trigger | Chapter 11 runs to the first date set for the confirmation hearing instead; Chapter 13 has its own paragraph for a 1328(f) objection. At least 28 days’ notice, not 30. Rule 4004(b)(2) allows a post-expiry motion on newly discovered facts that would support revocation under 727(d) |
Four dates, three rules: Rule 3002(c), Rule 4007(c) and Rule 4004(a).
The first date set, not the date held
Rule 4007(c) says “the first date set for the 341(a) meeting of creditors”. Meetings get adjourned, so a creditor who calendars from the day they finally sat in one can be weeks past an expired deadline. The 341 is a meeting, not a hearing, and what a creditor can do there is the subject of our 341 meeting of creditors guide.
Which deadlines have a way back, and which does not
Rule 3002(c)(7) lets a creditor move to extend the proof-of-claim deadline “before or after” it has expired, for no more than 60 days from the date of the order, if the court finds the notice was insufficient to give a reasonable time to file. Rule 4004(c) does oblige the court to grant the discharge promptly, but a pending objection or a pending motion to extend is itself an enumerated bar to that, so the trap is real only for a creditor who has filed nothing. Rule 4007(c) is the one with no post-expiry route at all.
What the claim is worth, filed or not
Rule 3002(a) says: “Unless Rule 1019(c), 3003, 3004, or 3005 provides otherwise, every creditor must file a proof of claim … for the claim … to be allowed” — Rule 3003 is the exclusion that keeps chapter 11 outside this rule — and adds that “a lien that secures a claim is not void solely because an entity failed to file a proof of claim”. Beside it sits 727(b), which discharges pre-petition debts “whether or not a proof of claim … is filed” and “whether or not a claim … is allowed”. A late claim is subordinated rather than void: in a chapter 7 asset case 726(a)(2)(C) pays a tardy claim at the same level as timely unsecured claims where the creditor had neither notice nor actual knowledge in time and files in time to permit payment, and 726(a)(3) pays other late claims third, ahead of punitive claims, post-petition interest and the debtor. Those are chapter 7 distribution priorities, subject to subordination under section 510, and they do not import into chapter 13. 502(d) says the court “shall disallow” the claim of a creditor holding property recoverable from it, or a transfer avoidable under a list that includes preferences and 522(f), unless it pays or turns over what it is liable for. Preference exposure on a pre-petition garnishment is its own subject and is not treated here; 502(d) is why it reaches your claim as well as your money.
Which Chapter the Debtor Chose Decides Whether Your Judgment Survives
Read the preamble of 11 U.S.C. 523 slowly. Its exceptions apply to “a discharge under section 727, 1141, 1192 1228(a), 1228(b), or 1328(b)”. A completed-plan chapter 13 discharge under 1328(a) is not in that list; the hardship discharge under 1328(b) is. What a completed plan discharges is fixed instead by 1328(a)’s own exceptions, and 1328(a)(2) excepts the debts specified in “paragraph (1)(B), (1)(C), (2), (3), (4), (5), (8), or (9) of section 523(a)”. Paragraph (6), willful and malicious injury, is not.
The nearest thing to it, 1328(a)(4), is narrower than 523(a)(6) on three axes at once. It reaches restitution or damages “awarded in a civil action”, where 523(a)(6) has no such requirement. It says willful or malicious; 523(a)(6) says willful and malicious. And it requires injury “that caused personal injury to an individual or the death of an individual”, where 523(a)(6) covers injury to another entity “or to the property of another entity”. A property-damage or purely economic willful-injury judgment sits inside (a)(6) and outside 1328(a)(4). Whether “awarded” requires an award entered before the petition is not answered by the text, and is not answered here.
Two provisions point the same way. Section 1328(c)(2) excepts from a hardship discharge any debt “of a kind specified in section 523(a)” — the whole of it, paragraph (6) included. And Rule 4007(d) sets a bespoke deadline for a 523(a)(6) complaint triggered only when the debtor moves for a 1328(b) hardship discharge, a rule with no work to do unless (a)(6) were treated differently under 1328(a) and 1328(b). Rule 4007(c) opens “Except as (d) provides”.
What follows is what those provisions say read together, not a court ruling, and no case is cited for it: the chapter the debtor completes, not the complaint you won, decides whether a willful-injury judgment survives. One caution. Completing the payments does not by itself guarantee the 1328(a) discharge — 1328(f) bars it where the debtor received a discharge in a chapter 7, 11 or 12 case filed during the four years before the order for relief in this case, or in a chapter 13 case filed during the two years before it. The measured date is the filing of the earlier case, not the day its discharge came through. That is the objection Rule 4004(a)(3) gives a creditor 60 days to make.
The 60-Day Clock Is Fatal on Three Debts and Harmless on the Rest
Fraud, false pretenses, false representation
Section 523(a)(2). Ask, or the debt is discharged notwithstanding the fraud.
Fiduciary defalcation, embezzlement, larceny
Section 523(a)(4). Ask within the 60 days, or the exception is gone.
Willful and malicious injury
Section 523(a)(6). The paragraph a tort judgment creditor relies on.
Everything else in 523(a)
Rule 4007(b): a complaint other than one under 523(c) may be filed at any time.
The engine is 523(c)(1): the debtor “shall be discharged” from a debt of a kind specified in paragraph (2), (4) or (6) unless, on the creditor’s request and after notice and a hearing, the court determines it to be excepted. Note the opening carve-out, “Except as provided in subsection (a)(3)(B)”: a creditor not listed or scheduled in time to file, with no notice or actual knowledge of the case, is outside it. Which side of the line a judgment falls on is the subject of our page on fraud judgments and non-dischargeability.
Getting it wrong the other way has a cost, with four limits. Under 523(d), where a creditor requests a determination on a consumer debt under 523(a)(2) and the debt is discharged anyway, the court shall award the debtor costs and a reasonable attorney’s fee if the creditor’s position “was not substantially justified”, except where “special circumstances would make the award unjust”. It reaches neither a 523(a)(4) nor an (a)(6) action, and not a business debt.
A Discharge Is an Injunction Against a Person; Your Lien Is Somewhere Else
Different provision, different test, different arithmetic.
11 U.S.C. 524(a) does the work. Paragraph (a)(1) says a discharge “voids any judgment at any time obtained, to the extent that such judgment is a determination of the personal liability of the debtor”. Paragraph (a)(2) makes it an injunction against any act to collect, recover or offset that debt “as a personal liability of the debtor”. Subsection (a) has a third paragraph too, reaching after-acquired community property, so (a)(1) and (a)(2) are not the whole of it.
What can remove a judgment lien is a motion by the debtor under 11 U.S.C. 522(f), aimed squarely at judgment creditors. It permits avoidance of the fixing of “a judicial lien” to the extent the lien impairs an exemption the debtor would be entitled to — with a carve-out: not a judicial lien that secures a debt of a kind specified in section 523(a)(5), a domestic support obligation. A support judgment lien is not avoidable under (f)(1)(A). The subsection also opens “subject to paragraph (3)”, a further limit in opt-out states with unlimited state exemptions. This is a different attack from the one on our page about lien stripping against secured creditors, which concerns junior consensual liens and turns on what the collateral is worth.
Section 522(f)(2)(A) defines impairment as a sum, with no dollar figure in it: add the lien in question, plus all other liens on the property, plus the amount of the exemption the debtor could claim if there were no liens on the property. If that total exceeds what the debtor’s interest would be worth in the absence of any liens, the lien impairs the exemption to that extent and to that extent can be avoided. Two refinements: a lien already avoided is not counted when the calculation is run for the other liens, and the paragraph does not apply to a judgment arising out of a mortgage foreclosure. If you need the valuation and the senior encumbrances established rather than assumed, you can open a documented asset and address search.
If the case is dismissed rather than completed, 11 U.S.C. 349(b) provides that, unless the court for cause orders otherwise, dismissal reinstates transfers avoided and liens voided. A judicial lien avoided under 522(f) is a transfer avoided under section 522 and comes back under 349(b)(1)(B), while 349(b)(1)(C) is a different thing, a lien voided under section 506(d).
Your Address Is a Filing, Not an Assumption
Every deadline above assumes you were told. 11 U.S.C. 342 treats that as something a creditor can control, starting before the case exists. Under 342(c)(2)(A), where a creditor supplies the debtor in at least two communications in the 90 days before a voluntary filing with its current account number and the address at which it wants correspondence, the debtor’s notices “shall be sent to such address”. A subparagraph (B) qualifies that where non-bankruptcy law would bar the creditor from sending such communications in that window, so (A) is not unconditional.
Once a case exists, two mechanisms remain. Section 342(e) lets a creditor in a chapter 7 or 13 case of an individual debtor, “at any time”, both file with the court and serve on the debtor a notice of address; any notice required more than 7 days after both receive it must go there. It binds the court as well as the debtor. Section 342(f) is the standing version: an address filed with a bankruptcy court for all chapter 7 and 13 cases in the courts named, effective for notices required more than 30 days later, and overridden case by case by a 342(e) notice.
Under 342(g)(1), notice given other than in accordance with section 342 “shall not be effective notice until such notice is brought to the attention of such creditor” — and where a creditor has designated a person or subdivision to receive bankruptcy notices and established reasonable procedures to route them there, notice is not brought to its attention until that recipient gets it. Under 342(g)(2), “a monetary penalty may not be imposed on a creditor for a violation of a stay in effect under section 362(a) (including a monetary penalty imposed under section 362(k))” unless the conduct occurred after the creditor received effective notice of the order for relief. Three boundaries belong in the same breath: it limits monetary penalties only; it does not make the act lawful or displace a turnover duty under sections 542 or 543; and it is no license to act once a filing is known.
The same fact — whether notice reached you — decides the Rule 3002(c)(7) extension, the 726(a)(2)(C) priority for a late claim and the 523(a)(3)(B) carve-out. One thread through 342(g).
Where the Filings Meet the Facts
The notice went to an address nobody maintained
Section 342(e) exists so you need not rely on the debtor’s copy of your file.
The date was calendared from the meeting held
Both 60-day clocks run from the first date set, and Rule 4007(c) has no route back.
Nobody checked whether the lien was recorded
Where the lien is recorded is a record question, and it decides whether the 522(f) arithmetic is ever run.
The property was valued by assumption
A wrong value for the property or the senior debt gives a wrong answer.
From lawful public records and licensed data, under a permissible purpose such as enforcing a judgment you hold, we search the debtor’s current address, the property and its senior encumbrances, the lien recordings and the transfer trail, with a source attached to whatever the records carry. Where the concern is concealment rather than misfortune, see objecting to the discharge entirely under section 727; where value moved before the filing, tracing a transfer; and where the question is whether the debtor ever had anything, judgment-proof versus bankrupt.
Nobody here files your claim, drafts your complaint, computes your deadline, or opines on whether your judgment sits inside section 523(a)(2), (4) or (6). Those belong to your lawyer, and this is general information about federal procedure, not legal advice. A request that is really an effort to find someone who fled a violent household, or who is in hiding for their own safety, is turned away rather than worked.
The Facts, With Their Sources
Every item tied to its source.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the automatic stay ever end on its own?
The stay of an act against property of the estate ends under section 362(c)(1) when the property leaves the estate. The stay of any other act ends under section 362(c)(2) at the earliest of closing, dismissal, or, in a chapter 7 case concerning an individual or a case under chapter 9, 11, 12 or 13, the grant or denial of a discharge.
The debtor has filed before. Does the stay still apply?
Under section 362(c)(3), one case of an individual debtor pending in the preceding year and dismissed terminates the stay with respect to the debtor on the 30th day after the later filing, unless the court extends it after a hearing completed before that period expires. Under section 362(c)(4), where two or more were dismissed, no stay goes into effect at all. Both paragraphs except a case refiled under a chapter other than chapter 7 after a section 707(b) dismissal.
I garnished the day after the petition and did not know. Am I liable?
Section 342(g)(2) bars a monetary penalty for a stay violation, including one imposed under section 362(k), unless the conduct occurred after the creditor received effective notice of the order for relief. That does not make the act lawful or displace a turnover duty under sections 542 or 543.
How long do I have to file a proof of claim, and is a late one worthless?
Seventy days after the order for relief in a voluntary Chapter 7 case or a Chapter 12 or 13 case, and 90 days in an involuntary Chapter 7. A late claim is subordinated rather than void in a Chapter 7 asset case, and section 726(a)(2)(C) can pay it alongside timely unsecured claims where the creditor had neither notice nor actual knowledge in time and files in time to permit payment. Those are Chapter 7 priorities and do not import into Chapter 13.
When exactly does the 60-day nondischargeability clock start?
From the first date set for the section 341(a) meeting of creditors, not the date the meeting was held or concluded. Rule 4007(c) allows an extension only on a motion filed before the time expires.
My judgment is for willful and malicious injury. Does it survive?
It turns on which discharge the debtor receives. Section 523(a)’s exceptions reach a hardship discharge under section 1328(b) but not a completed-plan discharge under section 1328(a), whose own list in 1328(a)(2) does not include 523(a)(6). That is what the provisions say read together, not a court ruling.
Does the discharge wipe out my judgment lien, and how is impairment calculated?
Neither wipes the lien. Sections 524(a)(1) and (a)(2) reach the judgment and the debt as a personal liability of the debtor, not a lien that already attached. The debtor avoids a judicial lien under section 522(f), except one securing a domestic support obligation, and impairment under 522(f)(2)(A) is a sum: the lien, plus all other liens on the property, plus the exemption the debtor could claim if there were no liens, measured against the unencumbered value of the debtor’s interest.
Can I make sure the court’s notices actually reach me?
Under section 342(e), in a Chapter 7 or 13 case of an individual debtor a creditor may at any time both file with the court and serve on the debtor a notice of address, and any notice required more than 7 days after both receive it must be sent there. Section 342(f) does the same standing across the Chapter 7 and 13 cases in the courts named, for notices required more than 30 days after it is filed.
Get the Facts Before the Clock Runs
Deadlines are your counsel’s to calculate. Send the debtor’s identifiers and we will search the records — lawfully, with sources, and typically within 24 hours. Tell us what you are holding.
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