District of Columbia Judgment Collection
Everyone writing about the District gives the same number. Twelve years. The number is right and it is the least interesting thing about the rule. The D.C. Code states that twelve-year period three separate times, in three sections, and starts the count from a different event each time – from the date execution might first have issued, from rendition, and from the date of the judgment. When it ends, the District does something almost no other jurisdiction does: the judgment ceases to have any operation or effect. Not dormant. Not unsecured. Gone – no action on it, no revival, no execution – with two narrow exceptions, one of which lets a wage attachment you already levied outlive the judgment that authorised it. This page is about that clock and its edges. Where the debtor actually lives across the District, Maryland and Virginia, and how the garnishment formula and the exemptions work, are handled on our Washington, D.C. judgment collection page; the two are meant to be read together and neither repeats the other.
The Same Twelve Years, Measured From Three Different Events
Sections 15-101, 15-103 and 16-578. Read consecutively they do not agree, and on a stayed or appealed case the disagreement is worth months.
D.C. Code section 15-101(a) provides that a final judgment or decree for the payment of money rendered in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia or in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia is enforceable by execution, when filed and recorded in the office of the Recorder of Deeds, “for the period of twelve years only from the date when an execution might first be issued thereon, or from the date of the last order of revival thereof.”
D.C. Code section 15-103 provides that an order of revival issued upon a judgment or decree “during the period of twelve years from the rendition or from the date of an order reviving” extends the effect and operation of the judgment, the lien it created, and all the remedies for its enforcement, for twelve years from the date of the order.
D.C. Code section 16-578 provides that an attachment issued by the Superior Court on a judgment of that court duly filed and recorded, and levied “within twelve years from the date of the judgment” on wages due or to become due from the employer-garnishee, does not lapse before complete satisfaction solely because section 15-101’s period expired.
Three sections. One period. Three starting events: the date execution might first have issued; rendition; the date of the judgment. On an uncontested case decided and docketed in the same week these are the same Tuesday and nobody ever notices. On a case with a post-trial motion, a stay agreed between the parties, or an appeal, they are not.
Which one displaces which
Section 15-101 supplies the general rule for how long the judgment is enforceable, and it is the only one of the three that also tells you what to subtract: time during which the judgment creditor is stayed from enforcing – by written agreement filed in the case, by other order, or by the operation of an appeal – “may not be computed as a part of the period.” So the twelve years is not twelve calendar years from anything; it is twelve years of unstayed time from the date execution might first have issued.
Section 15-103 is not describing enforceability. It is describing the window in which a revival order is capable of being issued, and it measures that window from rendition. Section 16-578 is not describing either; it is a saving provision for one specific act, and it measures its own condition from the date of the judgment.
The practical instruction is unglamorous and it is the whole reason to lead with this. Do not diarise “the judgment date plus twelve years” and treat that as the answer to every question. Diarise three dates – the earliest date execution could have issued, the date of rendition, and the date of the judgment – and record every stay with its start and end, because the section you are relying on for a particular step decides which of those three the step is measured from.
At Twelve Years It Is Gone, Not Dormant
Section 15-101(b) is one sentence long and it is the harshest expiry provision this firm has read in the family.
“At the expiration of the twelve-year period provided by subsection (a) of this section, the judgment or decree shall cease to have any operation or effect. Thereafter, except in the case of a proceeding that may be then pending for the enforcement of the judgment or decree, action may not be brought on it, nor may it be revived, and execution may not issue on it.”
Three separate prohibitions in one clause: no action on it, no revival, no execution. And one exception: a proceeding already pending for its enforcement.
It is worth setting that beside the other regimes, because the differences are structural rather than a matter of degree, and a creditor who manages a multi-state portfolio on one set of habits will get the District wrong. Under Ohio Revised Code section 2329.07 a judgment goes dormant at five years and section 2325.18 allows ten more to bring a revivor action; the judgment is asleep, not dead. Under Georgia’s Code section 9-12-60(b) dormancy arrives at seven, and section 9-12-61 gives three years to revive. Under Arkansas Code section 16-65-117(d)(1)(A) the lien dies at ten while section 16-56-114 leaves a ten-year period to bring an action on the judgment itself, so losing the security is not losing the claim.
In the District, losing the period is losing everything. There is no dormancy stage, no separate limitations period for suing on the judgment that outlives the enforcement period, and – by the express words of 15-101(b) – no revival available once the period has run. The two things that survive are the pending-proceeding exception in 15-101(b) itself, and the levied wage attachment saved by section 16-578.
What revival actually extends, while it is still available
Section 15-103 is the only provision that describes the effect of a D.C. revival, and it is broader than the usual “another twelve years to enforce”. An order of revival extends the effect and operation of the judgment or decree, the lien thereby created, and all the remedies for its enforcement, for twelve years from the date of the order. Section 15-101(a) then treats the date of that last order as the fresh starting point for its own count. So a timely revival does not merely buy time to execute; it carries the recorded lien and its priority forward with it.
The condition is that the order issue during the twelve years – measured, per section 15-103’s own words, from rendition or from the date of the previous reviving order. A revival sought after the period has run is barred twice over: once because 15-103 only speaks to orders issued during the period, and again because 15-101(b) says in terms that the judgment may not be revived.
The Short Version
A District of Columbia money judgment is enforceable by execution for twelve years once filed and recorded with the Recorder of Deeds – but D.C. Code section 15-101(a) measures that from the date execution might first have issued, section 15-103 measures the revival window from rendition, and section 16-578 measures its own condition from the date of the judgment. Stayed time does not count. At the end, section 15-101(b) provides that the judgment ceases to have any operation or effect: no action on it, no revival, no execution, except a proceeding already pending – and, separately, a wage attachment already levied, which section 16-578 keeps alive to complete satisfaction. A writ of execution must issue within three years under section 15-302 and is returnable by the sixtieth day; if it comes back unsatisfied inside those three years, section 15-303 allows alias writs during the life of the judgment. Interest runs at seventy percent of the federal underpayment rate under section 28-3302(c), and a court may lower it.
Watch: Twelve Years, Counted Three Ways
Why the date you diarised may not be the date the section you are relying on uses.
Watch Overview
The One Attachment That Outlives the Judgment
Section 16-578, and the four conditions that make it much narrower than it first sounds.
Given how absolute section 15-101(b) is, section 16-578 reads almost as an oddity. An attachment issued by the Superior Court of the District of Columbia upon a judgment of that court duly filed and recorded, and levied within twelve years from the date of the judgment upon the wages due or to become due to the judgment debtor from the employer-garnishee, “shall not lapse or become invalid prior to complete satisfaction solely by reason of the expiration of the period of limitation set forth in section 15-101.”
Read the conditions rather than the conclusion, because each of them excludes a case a creditor might assume is covered:
- the attachment must have been issued by the Superior Court – the section does not speak to attachments issued by the United States District Court, even though section 15-101 covers judgments of both;
- it must be upon a judgment of that court, duly filed and recorded;
- it must have been levied, not merely issued or served – an unlevied writ sitting in a file is not saved; and
- it must be levied upon wages due or to become due from the employer-garnishee. A bank attachment is not covered. A levy on chattels is not covered. It is a wage provision.
What it then does is generous within those limits: the levy runs to complete satisfaction, and the expiry of the section 15-101 period is not by itself a reason for it to lapse. On a long-running wage garnishment against a stable employer, a creditor who levied in year eleven can be collecting in year twenty.
Which puts an unusual amount of weight on a single fact: the identity of the employer-garnishee, established early enough to levy inside the twelve years. This is the section that turns “where does the debtor work” from a convenience into the difference between a judgment that dies on a date and one that keeps paying afterwards. The District wrote the requirement into the enforcement statutes rather than leaving it to practice – the writ has to name a garnishee, and it has to be levied on one.
Three Years for the First Writ – and Alias Writs After
Section 15-302 sets a short window inside the long one. Section 15-303 is the escape from it, and almost nobody cites it.
Section 15-302 allows the writ to issue inside a three-year window, which opens at whichever is later of two moments: the end of a stay of execution the parties agreed to, or the point at which law or the rules of court first permitted a writ at all. The writ’s own life is short – subsection (b) fixes its return at the sixtieth day from its date. Section 15-301 confirms that “judgment”, for the purposes of sections 15-302 and 15-303 among others, includes an unconditional decree for the payment of money.
Taken alone, that reads as a hard three-year cut-off sitting inside a twelve-year horizon, and a creditor reading only section 15-302 would reasonably conclude the practical life of a D.C. judgment is three years rather than twelve. Section 15-303 corrects it: if a writ of execution is issued and returned unsatisfied, in whole or in part, within the three-year period provided by section 15-302, an alias writ may be issued during the life of the judgment.
So the three years is not a deadline for collecting. It is a deadline for starting. Issue one writ inside three years, have it returned unsatisfied – which is the ordinary outcome when the marshal cannot find leviable property – and the right to keep issuing writs runs out to the twelve-year horizon. Issue nothing in the first three years and that door is shut, whatever section 15-101 says about enforceability.
That reverses the usual advice. The conventional counsel is to wait until the debtor has assets worth levying on. In the District, a creditor who waits past three years without ever issuing a writ has traded a twelve-year enforcement horizon for nothing, and a returned-unsatisfied writ in year two is cheap insurance for years four through twelve.
The lien, and the exception that lets a debtor buy free of it
Section 15-102(b) provides that liens created under that section continue “as long as the judgment, decree, or recognizance is in force or until it is satisfied or discharged” – so the lien’s life is not independently timed; it tracks section 15-101. Section 15-102(c) carves out property owned by the District government or by any independent agency or instrumentality of the District government, and any property in which the District or such an agency has an interest, to the extent of that interest.
Section 15-104 is the one to watch when a judgment debtor is buying. The lien of a mortgage or deed of trust upon real property, given by the purchaser to secure payment of the whole or any part of the purchase-money, is superior to that of a previous judgment or decree against the purchaser. A recorded D.C. judgment reaches after-acquired real property, but on the acquisition itself the purchase-money lender takes ahead of it. A creditor who watches a debtor close on a house and assumes first position behind nothing has misread the priority. The judgment sits behind the purchase-money financing, and the equity available to it is whatever is left.
A Floating Rate the Court Can Lower
Section 28-3302(c) – and a foreign-judgment rule with two limbs, not one.
Where the judgment is not against the District, its officers, or its employees acting within the scope of their employment, and where the rate is not fixed by contract, section 28-3302(c) sets the post-judgment rate at seventy percent of the rate set by the Secretary of the Treasury under 26 U.S.C. 6621 for underpayments of tax to the Internal Revenue Service, rounded to the nearest full percent – and if the result is exactly one half of one percent, increased to the next highest full percent.
Then comes the proviso that no page in the ranking set carries: “provided, that a court of competent jurisdiction may lower the rate of interest under this subsection for good cause shown or upon a showing that the judgment debtor in good faith is unable to pay the judgment.” The District’s post-judgment rate is therefore both floating, because it tracks a federal tax rate that moves quarterly, and reducible on the debtor’s application. Over a twelve-year horizon that is a material planning input, and it is why any page quoting a single D.C. percentage is quoting a moment rather than a rule.
Subsection (b) caps interest on judgments against the District, its officers or its employees acting within the scope of employment at not exceeding four percent. Subsection (a) sets six percent per annum for the loan or forbearance of money, goods or things in action in the absence of an express contract. Section 15-108 requires a judgment on a liquidated debt carrying interest by contract, law or usage to include interest on the principal from the time it was due at the contract rate until paid. Section 15-109 provides that in an action for breach of contract the judgment allows interest from the date of the judgment only – while not precluding the trier of fact from including interest as an element of the damages awarded where that is necessary to compensate the plaintiff fully – and that a judgment for the plaintiff in an action for a wrong shall bear interest.
Bringing a judgment from somewhere else
Section 12-307 is a borrowing provision and its structure matters. An action upon a judgment or decree rendered in a State, territory, commonwealth or possession of the United States, or in a foreign country, “is barred if by the laws of that jurisdiction, the action would there be barred and the judgment or decree would be incapable of being otherwise enforced there.”
Two limbs, joined by “and”. A creditor whose home-state limitation period for an action on the judgment has run is not automatically shut out of the District, provided the judgment remains capable of being enforced at home by some other route – a surviving lien, a live renewal, an execution still available. A debtor arguing the point has to satisfy both limbs. Practically, that turns a District enforcement question into a question about the state of the file in the rendering state, which is a records question before it is a legal one.
| Provision | Period | Measured from | What it governs |
|---|---|---|---|
| D.C. Code 15-101(a) | Twelve years | Date execution might first have issued, or the last order of revival | Enforceability by execution; stayed time excluded |
| D.C. Code 15-101(b) | At expiry | End of the 15-101(a) period | Judgment ceases to have any operation or effect; no action, no revival, no execution |
| D.C. Code 15-103 | Twelve years | Rendition, or the date of the previous reviving order | Window to obtain a revival order; extends judgment, lien and all remedies |
| D.C. Code 16-578 | Twelve years | Date of the judgment | A Superior Court wage attachment levied inside the period survives expiry to complete satisfaction |
| D.C. Code 15-302(a) | Three years | Expiry of an agreed stay, or when the writ first might have issued | Window to issue the first writ of execution |
| D.C. Code 15-302(b) | Sixty days | Date of the writ | Return date of the writ |
| D.C. Code 15-303 | Life of the judgment | A writ returned unsatisfied inside the three years | Alias writs thereafter |
| D.C. Code 15-102(b) | Tracks the judgment | Filing and recording with the Recorder of Deeds | Lien continues while the judgment is in force or until satisfied or discharged |
| D.C. Code 15-104 | – | – | Purchase-money mortgage or deed of trust outranks a previous judgment against the purchaser |
What Has to Be Established Before the Dates Matter
Each of the provisions above assumes a fact somebody has to supply, and the assumption is always the same shape.
Section 15-101 makes enforceability conditional on the judgment being filed and recorded with the Recorder of Deeds. Section 16-578 saves a levy only where it reached a named employer-garnishee inside twelve years. Section 15-302 rewards a writ issued in the first three years, which requires somewhere to send the marshal. Section 15-104 means after-acquired real property has to be identified early enough to be worth anything behind the purchase-money lender. Section 12-307 turns on the state of the file where the judgment was rendered. None of those is a legal question. Each is a question about a person, an employer, a parcel or a docket, answered from records, before a date that section 15-101(b) will not extend.
A District file comes back with four things in it. Who the debtor actually is, separated from the same-name records that accumulate in a jurisdiction whose working population turns over with each administration and whose residents routinely hold addresses on the far side of two state lines. Where they are now, every element carrying its own source and check date. What real property stands in the name inside the District, and in the relevant Maryland or Virginia counties when the matter crosses over. And the employer or depository, where lawful sources name one – reported as something the records showed, never as something anyone was persuaded to tell us.
And an explicit statement of the limits. An absence in the Recorder of Deeds index is an absence under the spellings and date ranges searched; it is not proof the debtor owns nothing in the District, and we do not report it as though it were. Where a title question needs an examiner, or a priority question under section 15-104 needs a lawyer, we say so instead of guessing.
Where our part stops
We file nothing with the Recorder of Deeds, issue no writ, levy no attachment, move for no order of revival, and calculate no interest under section 28-3302(c) for anybody’s file. We do not advise whether a period has run or which of the three triggers governs a particular step. The District is already comfortable allocating a burden of proof in this area – section 15-503(c) puts it on the plaintiff to prove where a contract was made – and we hold ourselves to something similar about our own product. Debtors are not contacted. What is done is research into public records and lawfully licensed data, by a firm that holds no bar admission here, and no role in collecting.
The second limit is statutory rather than self-imposed. This is not a consumer reporting agency. Nothing it produces may decide who is granted a lease, who is hired, or what a borrower or policyholder is charged – the Fair Credit Reporting Act at 15 U.S.C. 1681b reserves those to agencies regulated as such, and a judgment-enforcement file assembled here supports none of them. Running the other way, the requester carries a burden too, and it is discharged before any search begins rather than afterwards: a lawful basis has to be on the record – the judgment held or represented, and the use the answer will be put to – and an enquiry that cannot meet that permissible-purpose test is not taken.
Beyond that sits a refusal with no exceptions. Where the pattern of a request suggests the real object is a person who would be endangered by being located – a former partner, someone covered by a protective order, someone whose address a court has closed – it is not run, and no amount of accompanying judgment paperwork alters that. Everything on this page is an account of the District’s enacted Code and is not legal advice; what to do about a particular judgment is a question for a lawyer admitted in the District who is looking at your file. The withholding arithmetic, the exemption figures and the current minimum-wage multiple are set out on Washington, D.C. wage garnishment laws, and the enforcement mechanics together with the District, Maryland and Virginia geography on the companion page linked at the top of this one. Where the judgment came from another jurisdiction, domesticating foreign judgments covers the step that section 12-307 assumes has already happened.
Our Commitment
The District record arrives as the Recorder of Deeds and the Superior Court docket keep it, sorted into what the recorded instruments and the case file will actually support, what they merely gesture at, and what falls outside their reach – with a provenance and a retrieval date attached to each. Section 15-101(b) leaves nothing behind when the period closes, and section 16-578 pays only the creditor whose levy reached a correctly named employer-garnishee first. Those two facts are why every line here is labelled either documented or inferred, and never allowed to blur into the other.
District of Columbia Judgment Questions
Mostly about the clock, because that is where the published answers stop at a number.
How long is a judgment good for in Washington, D.C.?
Twelve years – but the D.C. Code says so three times and starts the count from a different event each time. Section 15-101(a) measures twelve years from the date when an execution might first have been issued, or from the last order of revival, and excludes any time the creditor was stayed from enforcing. Section 15-103 measures the revival window from rendition. Section 16-578 measures its own condition from the date of the judgment. On a case with a stay, a post-trial motion or an appeal those are different dates.
What happens when a D.C. judgment expires?
It ceases to exist rather than going dormant. Section 15-101(b) provides that at the expiration of the twelve-year period the judgment or decree shall cease to have any operation or effect, and that thereafter – except for a proceeding then pending for its enforcement – no action may be brought on it, it may not be revived, and execution may not issue on it. That is different from Ohio, Georgia or Arkansas, where a lapsed period leaves either a revivable dormant judgment or a surviving cause of action.
Can a D.C. judgment be revived, and what does revival do?
It can, while the period is still running. Section 15-103 provides that an order of revival issued during the twelve years from rendition, or from the date of a previous reviving order, extends the effect and operation of the judgment or decree together with the lien it created and all the remedies for its enforcement, for twelve years from the date of the order. Once the period has run, section 15-101(b) bars revival outright.
Does a wage garnishment stop when the D.C. judgment expires?
Not if it was already levied. Section 16-578 provides that an attachment issued by the Superior Court on a judgment of that court duly filed and recorded, and levied within twelve years from the date of the judgment upon wages due or to become due from the employer-garnishee, does not lapse or become invalid before complete satisfaction solely because section 15-101’s period expired. The conditions are strict: Superior Court, a judgment of that court, actually levied, and levied on wages – a bank attachment or an unlevied writ is not saved.
How long do I have to issue a writ of execution in D.C.?
Three years under section 15-302(a). The window opens at the later of two moments – the end of a stay the parties agreed to, or the point when law or the rules of court first permitted a writ – and subsection (b) requires the writ itself to be returned by the sixtieth day from its date. But section 15-303 provides that where a writ is issued and returned unsatisfied, in whole or in part, within that three-year period, an alias writ may be issued during the life of the judgment. So the three years is a deadline for starting, not for collecting – and a creditor who issues nothing in the first three years loses the benefit.
What interest does a D.C. judgment earn?
A floating rate that a court can reduce. Under section 28-3302(c), where the judgment is not against the District or its officers or employees acting within the scope of employment and the rate is not fixed by contract, the rate is seventy percent of the rate set by the Secretary of the Treasury under 26 U.S.C. 6621 for underpayments of tax, rounded to the nearest full percent, with exactly one half of one percent rounded up. The same subsection lets a court lower the rate for good cause shown or on a showing that the debtor in good faith is unable to pay.
Will my D.C. judgment lien catch a house the debtor is about to buy?
It will attach, but it will not be first. Section 15-104 provides that the lien of a mortgage or deed of trust upon real property, given by the purchaser to secure payment of the whole or any part of the purchase-money, is superior to that of a previous judgment or decree against the purchaser. So a recorded D.C. judgment reaches after-acquired real property while sitting behind the purchase-money financing on that acquisition, and what is available to it is whatever equity exceeds that lender’s position.
What does your firm do on a District judgment, and what will it not do?
The factual layer, and only that. From District public records and lawfully licensed data we establish where the debtor is, what real property is recorded in the name, and – where lawful sources identify it – the employer or account-holding institution, each with its source and the date checked, so that a writ can issue inside section 15-302’s three years and a section 16-578 levy can reach a correctly named garnishee inside the twelve. Every act with legal effect stays on your side: nothing is filed with the Recorder of Deeds, no writ is issued, no attachment levied, no revival moved for, and no interest calculated under section 28-3302(c) for anyone’s file. The firm holds no bar admission here, and no collection role, and it is not a consumer reporting agency – so nothing it produces may decide a lease, a hire, or the price of credit or insurance. A request that looks like a route to someone who would be endangered by being located is not taken.
Section 15-101(b) Leaves Nothing Behind. Section 16-578 Rewards the Levy That Landed First.
A writ inside the three years keeps the door open to twelve; a wage levy on a correctly named garnishee goes on paying after the judgment itself has ended. Give us the debtor and the lawful footing for the enquiry, and what returns is a present location plus whatever the District instruments – and, when the matter crosses a state line, the neighbouring county instruments – record under that name, sourced and dated, and on most files delivered within 24 hours. Contact us for a candid read on how far those records reach.
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