How Much Does Judgment Collection Cost?
Every answer you will find to this question is a percentage, and a percentage answers a different question. The real cost is a stack: a court fee set by statute, an officer’s fee set by regulation, a commission on what is actually recovered, whatever a professional charges, and the debtor’s own behaviour, which dominates all of them. This page publishes only the figures that are genuinely fixed and genuinely public, cited so you can check them, and then explains which layer is worth spending on first.
The Short Version
Judgment collection does not have a price; it has a stack of five things that move the final number, four of them charges set by four different parties and the fifth set by nobody. Court fees are statutory and published — the federal civil filing fee is $350 under 28 U.S.C. 1914(a), with a $55 administrative fee on top. Officer fees are set by regulation: the federal schedule runs $65 an hour for personal service plus travel and out-of-pocket expenses, $8 per item served by mail, $20 for a notice of sale, and actual expenses for keeping seized property. A commission of 3 percent on the first $1,000 collected and 1.5 percent above that is charged under 28 U.S.C. 1921(c). Professional fees are contractual. And post-judgment interest runs in your favour at the weekly average one-year constant maturity Treasury yield for the week before entry, computed daily and compounded annually. State and county figures differ; the shape does not. The layer that actually decides the total is how findable the debtor and their assets are.
Watch: Where the Money Actually Goes
Five layers, and only four of them have a payee.
Watch Overview
Why Nobody Can Honestly Quote You One Number
The cost is not a price. It is a stack of separate charges.
Ask what judgment collection costs and you will get a percentage. The percentage is not wrong exactly, but it answers a different question — what a professional charges — while leaving out the layers underneath it, several of which are payable whether anyone is engaged or not, and several of which are set by law and published.
Four different parties set four different parts of the number. The court sets a filing fee by statute. The officer who executes the writ charges under a fee schedule, usually a rate per hour plus expenses, and often takes a percentage of what is actually recovered. Any professional you engage charges on their own terms. And the debtor themselves sets the largest variable of all, by being easy or hard to find and by owning something or nothing.
What follows are the figures that are genuinely fixed and genuinely public — the federal ones, because they are set by statute and regulation and published by the issuing authority. Your state court and county officer will charge different amounts. The point of showing the federal schedule is not that it is your schedule; it is that a fee structure of this shape sits underneath every enforcement step, and it is knowable in advance rather than a mystery.
The Five Layers of What It Costs
Who sets each one, and whether you get it back.
| Layer, and who sets it | How it behaves |
|---|---|
| Court fees — set by statute and by the Judicial Conference | Fixed and published. Payable up front. Generally taxable as costs against the debtor if there is anything to collect from |
| Officer fees — set by regulation or by the county | Usually an hourly rate plus travel and out-of-pocket expenses, often with a deposit required before anyone moves. Not refunded because the attempt found nothing |
| Commissions on what is collected — set by statute | A percentage of the money actually recovered or of the proceeds of a sale. This one only bites when you succeed, which makes it the least painful layer |
| Professional fees — set by contract | Hourly, contingent, or a mix. The only layer you negotiate, and the only one where the structure matters as much as the rate |
| The debtor’s own behaviour — set by nobody | Distance, concealment, a change of employer, a common name. This is the layer that actually decides the total, and the only one you can shrink before spending anything |
Read down that column and the design of a sensible spend becomes obvious: the fixed layers are small and knowable, the commission layer is self-limiting, and the variable layer is enormous. So the cheapest dollar you can spend is the one that shrinks the last row.
The Figures That Are Actually Published
Federal, fixed, and checkable. Yours will differ; the shape will not.
The civil filing fee
The statute directs the clerk of each district court to require a filing fee of $350 from parties instituting a civil action, and the Judicial Conference adds an administrative fee of $55 on top.
Personal service by an officer
The Marshals Service schedule sets $65 per hour, or part of an hour, for each item served personally by one employee, agent or contractor, plus travel costs and other out-of-pocket expenses — and the same again per additional person needed.
Process by mail, and paperwork
$8 per item forwarded between offices or served by mail; ten cents a page for copies; $20 per item for preparing a notice of sale, a bill of sale, or a deed.
Keeping seized property
Not a flat fee at all: actual expenses incurred in seizing, maintaining and disposing of property, which is why storing a seized vehicle or advertising a sale can outrun the equity in it.
Commission on what is collected
3 percent of the first $1,000 collected and 1.5 percent on anything above that, for seizing or levying, disposing of property, and receiving and paying over money. Reduced by whatever is paid to a public auctioneer.
A deposit, before anything happens
The statute expressly allows marshals to require a deposit to cover the fees and expenses it prescribes. Enforcement is pay-first almost everywhere.
Those come from 28 U.S.C. 1914(a) and 28 C.F.R. 0.114, and the administrative fee from the courts’ own published fee schedule. A receiver, where one is appointed, is another layer again: New York caps a receiver’s commissions at five percent of the sums received and disbursed, on top of necessary expenses.
One Number Runs in Your Favour
Post-judgment interest, and what it is actually pegged to.
While the costs accumulate on your side of the ledger, interest accumulates on the debtor’s. 28 U.S.C. 1961 sets the federal rule and it is more specific than most people expect: interest is calculated from the date of entry of the judgment at a rate equal to the weekly average one-year constant maturity Treasury yield, as published by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, for the calendar week preceding the date of the judgment. It is computed daily and compounded annually.
Three consequences follow. The rate is fixed at entry, not floating afterwards, so a judgment entered in a high-rate week is worth more over time than one entered in a low-rate week. The current and historical figures are published weekly by the Federal Reserve, so you can look up what your own judgment carries. And because it compounds annually rather than simply accruing, a judgment left alone for several years is worth materially more than a straight-line calculation suggests — assuming it has not lapsed in the meantime, which is a real risk covered in renewing a judgment before it expires.
State judgments run at state rates, which vary widely and are often far higher than the federal one; those are indexed in judgment interest rates by state. And enforcement costs themselves are frequently recoverable rather than sunk: California’s small claims chapter, for one, entitles the prevailing party to the costs of enforcing the judgment and to accrued interest.
What Actually Makes a File Expensive
Six drivers, and five of them are facts rather than fees.
The debtor moved and nobody checked
Every step aimed at a former address is a fee spent, a wait, and a return of no service.
Attempts were made in the wrong order
A levy before the account is confirmed, a lien before the county is confirmed. Each miss is paid for in advance.
Title sits with an entity
Property held through a company or a trust does not answer to the debtor’s name, so a search under that name returns nothing and the file looks hopeless when it is not.
The judgment crossed a state line
Enforcing where the assets are means getting the judgment there first, which is a filing and a wait of its own.
Property has to be stored and sold
Seizure is the beginning of a custody problem. Storage, insurance and advertising are actual expenses, not a flat fee.
A common name muddied the file
Two people with the same name in the same county turns every finding into a question, and questions cost hours.
Notice what is missing from that list: the court’s fee. It is real, it is knowable, and it is rarely what decides whether a file is worth running. What decides it is whether the attempts were aimed. Getting a judgment to the state where the assets sit is covered in domesticating a foreign judgment, and the compounding cost of simply leaving a judgment alone is in the cost of not collecting.
The Only Question That Decides It
Not what it costs. Whether there is anything to collect from.
Every layer above is knowable except one, and the unknowable one dominates. Two judgments for the same amount, enforced in the same county, under the same fee schedule, can cost wildly different sums — because one debtor has a job and a house in the county where the judgment sits, and the other left the state two years ago and put the truck in a relative’s name.
Which reframes the spending decision entirely. The question is not whether to spend, but what to spend first. Establishing whether there is a reachable asset costs a fraction of what a sequence of blind enforcement attempts costs, and it produces one of two useful answers: here is the target, or there is nothing here yet. The second answer is worth paying for too, because it stops the spending rather than extending it — and what to do with that answer is the subject of a judgment-proof debtor.
As for whether to run the enforcement yourself or engage someone, that is a different question from this one and it turns on authority and capability rather than on arithmetic: a creditor who can afford any fee may still lack the standing to take a particular step, and a creditor who is perfectly capable of every step may still not clear the fees. That comparison is worked through in doing it yourself versus engaging a professional.
Our Part: Shrinking the Variable Layer
The one line on the list that research can move.
Of the layers above, exactly one responds to work done in advance, and it is the one that dominates the total. Where the debtor lives now, who employs them, which county the property is recorded in, what name it is recorded under, and whether the account you were about to levy is even at the institution you assumed — those are answerable before any fee is paid, and each answer removes an attempt that would otherwise have been made blind. The work is done from lawful public records and licensed data, under a permissible purpose such as collecting the judgment you hold, and every finding is returned with its source.
Since this is a page about what things cost, four things that cost nothing because they are never done. No private investigator’s licence is held or claimed behind this work; it is records research, not licensed investigation. No information is bought with a false story — there is no pretexting and nobody here impersonates a court, a bank or an employer to get a record. No account contents are obtained, at any price. And no fee will persuade anyone here to take a matter whose real object is a person hiding from an abuser or living somewhere new for their own safety; that request is declined. One more limit belongs on a cost page specifically: nothing above is a quotation of what your court, your sheriff or your lawyer will charge, and none of it is legal or financial advice. The federal figures are cited so you can check them against the source; your own jurisdiction sets its own.
What We Commit To
Every figure on this page is set by statute or regulation and published by the authority that sets it, and each one is cited so you can check it. Nothing here is an industry average, an estimate, or a percentage someone quoted in a blog post. On a file, we tell you what is reachable before you pay to reach for it, and we say plainly when the answer is that nothing is. Lawful public-records and licensed-data research since 2004.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why will nobody give me a straight number?
Because there is no single payee. A court sets the filing fee, an officer charges under a fee schedule, a commission is taken on what is actually recovered, and any professional charges on their own terms. Only the first three are published, and the fourth layer — how findable the debtor is — moves the total more than the rest combined.
What does the court itself charge?
In federal district court, 28 U.S.C. 1914(a) sets a civil filing fee of $350, and the Judicial Conference adds an administrative fee of $55. State and county courts set their own, and they are not the same figure.
What does it cost to have an officer execute the writ?
The federal schedule at 28 C.F.R. 0.114 sets $65 per hour or part of an hour for each item served personally by one employee, plus travel and other out-of-pocket costs, and the same again per additional person required. Service by mail runs $8 per item.
Is there a commission on what gets collected?
In the federal system, yes: 28 U.S.C. 1921(c)(1) sets a commission of 3 percent of the first $1,000 collected and 1.5 percent on the excess, for seizing or levying, disposing of property, and receiving and paying over money.
Do I have to pay before anything happens?
Usually. The federal statute expressly permits marshals to require a deposit to cover the fees and expenses it prescribes, and most county officers work the same way. A deposit is not returned because the attempt found nothing.
Does interest actually accrue while I chase this?
On a federal judgment it accrues from entry at a rate equal to the weekly average one-year constant maturity Treasury yield published by the Federal Reserve for the week before the judgment, computed daily and compounded annually. State rates are set separately and are often higher.
Can I recover what enforcement cost me?
Often, at least in part. Court costs are commonly taxable against the debtor, and some statutes say so directly — California’s small claims chapter entitles the prevailing party to the costs of enforcing the judgment and to accrued interest. It only helps if the debtor turns out to be collectable.
What is the cheapest thing I can do first?
Establish whether there is a reachable asset. It costs a fraction of a sequence of blind enforcement attempts and it produces a useful answer either way. An initial picture typically comes back within 24 hours.
Spend on the Answer Before the Attempt
The layer that decides your total is how findable the debtor and their assets are, and it is the only one you can change before paying a fee. Send us the debtor’s identifiers and we will tell you what is reachable — lawfully, sourced, and typically within 24 hours. Contact us to start.
Find the Target First →
