Louisiana Judgment Collection
Louisiana is a civil-law jurisdiction, and on this subject the vocabulary is not decoration – it changes what a creditor has to do. A Louisiana money judgment does not expire; it prescribes. It does not create a judgment lien; filing it with the recorder of mortgages creates a judicial mortgage. It is not renewed by affidavit; it is revived by an ex parte motion in the court that rendered it. And the mortgage’s recordation is not extended by the revival; it is reinscribed, separately, by recording a notice. Two ten-year clocks therefore run at the same time, on two different triggers, kept alive by two different acts in two different offices – and under La. Civ. Code art. 3368 the second is worthless without the first. That last point is where most published guidance on Louisiana is out of date. Where we come into it is narrower than any of that: parish records and lawfully licensed data, searched only after a requester has given a basis the law recognises. Nobody at this firm is admitted to the Louisiana bar, licensed as an investigator, or in the business of collecting, and an article-by-article summary is not counsel on your own suit.
Clock One: The Judgment Prescribes From the Signing
La. Civ. Code art. 3501 states three different triggers in a single article.
La. Civ. Code art. 3501, headed “Prescription and revival of money judgments”, opens: “A money judgment rendered by a trial court of this state is prescribed by the lapse of ten years from its signing if no appeal has been taken, or, if an appeal has been taken, it is prescribed by the lapse of ten years from the time the judgment becomes final.”
Signing is the trigger, and it is worth saying plainly because it is not the trigger anywhere else in this region. Not entry, not docketing, not rendition, not recording – the day the judge signs. Where an appeal was taken, the ten years instead run from finality. And a third trigger appears in the same article for judgments from elsewhere: an action to enforce a money judgment rendered by a court of another state, a possession of the United States, or a foreign country is barred by the lapse of ten years from its rendition – with the important qualification that such a judgment is not enforceable here at all if it is prescribed, barred by the statute of limitations, or otherwise unenforceable under the law of the jurisdiction where it was rendered.
The article then supplies the maintenance act and is generous about it. Any party having an interest in a money judgment may have it revived before it prescribes, as provided in Article 2031 of the Code of Civil Procedure; a judgment so revived is subject to the prescription provided by the first paragraph of the article – a fresh ten years – and an interested party “may have a money judgment rendered by a court of this state revived as often as he may desire.” (Acts 1983, No. 173, s. 1, effective 1 January 1984.)
So there is no cap on the number of revivals and no outer limit on the life of a Louisiana judgment, provided each revival happens before the current ten years lapse. What Louisiana does not offer is any way back afterwards: the article permits revival before it prescribes, and prescription of the judgment is the end of that route.
Revival Is Ex Parte, Unserved, and Expensive to Get Wrong
La. Code Civ. Proc. art. 2031 makes it cheap to obtain and costly to obtain wrongly.
Article 2031(A) sets out a procedure with almost nothing in it. A money judgment may be revived at any time before it prescribes, by an interested party, by the filing of an ex parte motion brought in the court and suit in which the judgment was rendered. The filing of the motion interrupts the prescriptive period applicable to the judgment – so the act of filing, not the eventual ruling, is what stops the clock. The motion must be accompanied by an affidavit of the holder and owner of the judgment stating that the original judgment has not been satisfied. A judgment is thereupon rendered reviving the original judgment. And then the sentence that defines the whole mechanism: “No citation or service of process of the motion to revive shall be required.“
The court may order the judgment debtor to pay additional court costs and reasonable attorney fees in connection with the revival action. Notice of the signing of the judgment of revival is mailed by the clerk of court to the judgment debtor at his last known address as reflected in the suit record.
Stop on that phrase. The only communication the debtor receives is a clerk’s letter sent to whatever address the suit record happens to hold – a record that may be nine or ten years old by the time revival is sought, and which nothing in the article requires anyone to refresh. Louisiana has built a maintenance mechanism that works whether or not the debtor is findable, and the price of that convenience is set out in paragraph (B).
Under 2031(B) the judgment debtor may, at any time after the signing of the judgment of revival, by contradictory motion, have the judgment of revival annulled, on showing that the judgment which has been revived was in fact satisfied before the revival was signed. And if the debtor proves the judgment had been satisfied before the motion to revive was even filed, the holder or owner of the judgment “shall pay all court costs, fees, and attorney fees incurred by the judgment debtor in opposing the ex parte order of revival and the cancellation of the judgment from the mortgage records.” (Acts 2003, No. 806, s. 1; Acts 2005, No. 205, s. 1, effective 1 January 2006.)
That is a clean allocation of risk and it points in one direction. Because revival requires a sworn statement that the judgment is unsatisfied, and because getting that wrong shifts the debtor’s costs and fees onto the holder, the value of knowing the true state of the account and the debtor’s real whereabouts is not diligence for its own sake – it is the thing that keeps a cheap procedure from becoming an expensive one.
The Short Version
A Louisiana money judgment prescribes ten years after the judge signs it, or ten years after it becomes final if there was an appeal, and a judgment from another state is barred ten years after its rendition. It may be revived as often as an interested party wants, but only before it prescribes, and revival is an ex parte motion in the original suit supported by the holder’s affidavit that the judgment is unsatisfied – no citation and no service, with the clerk mailing notice to whatever address the suit record still shows. Separately, filing the judgment with the recorder of mortgages creates a judicial mortgage, a general mortgage that also catches property the debtor acquires later; the effect of that recordation ceases ten years after the date of the instrument and is continued by recording a notice of reinscription. The two clocks are independent, and reinscribing the mortgage will not save a judgment that was allowed to prescribe.
Watch: Why Reinscription Is Not Enough
Two clocks, two offices, and the article that joins them.
Watch Overview
Clock Two: The Recordation Ceases From the Date of the Instrument
Not from the date of recording – which is a distinction with years in it.
| Article | What it provides | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 3299 | “A judicial mortgage secures a judgment for the payment of money.” | The instrument is a mortgage, not a lien, and the mortgage rules apply to it. Civil law |
| 3300 | “A judicial mortgage is created by filing a judgment with the recorder of mortgages.” | Filing creates it. Nothing else does, and the office is the recorder of mortgages for the parish. |
| 3303 | Judicial and legal mortgages are general mortgages, established over property the obligor owns when the mortgage is created and over future property of the obligor when he acquires it. | It catches immovables the debtor buys later in that parish, without any further filing. |
| 3302 | They burden all the obligor’s property made susceptible of mortgage by paragraphs 1 through 4 of article 3286. | The reach is defined by what can be mortgaged, not by a list of assets. |
| 3357 | Except as otherwise expressly provided by law, the effect of recordation of an instrument creating a mortgage or pledge or evidencing a privilege ceases ten years after the date of the instrument. | The ten years run from the instrument’s date, so a judgment filed years after signing has correspondingly less recordation left. |
| 3362 and 3364 | Reinscription is by recording a signed written notice of reinscription naming the mortgagor as named in the recorded instrument and giving the registry number or other recordation information, and declaring the instrument reinscribed; a notice recorded before the effect ceases continues that effect ten years from the date the notice is recorded. | Late is fatal to the reinscription, and the ten years then run from the notice rather than the instrument. |
Article 3303 is the one with no common-law equivalent in this set. A judgment lien in most states attaches to what the debtor owns and, where it reaches later acquisitions at all, does so by particular statutory language. Louisiana’s judicial mortgage is a general mortgage by its nature: it burdens the property the obligor owns when it is created and future property when he acquires it. A creditor who filed with the recorder of mortgages in a parish years ago, and whose debtor buys a house there next year, has security over that house without doing anything further – provided the recordation has not ceased and the judgment has not prescribed.
Article 3357’s trigger is the trap. The effect of recordation ceases ten years after the date of the instrument, not ten years after it was recorded. A judgment signed in one year and filed with the recorder of mortgages three years later does not get ten years of recordation from the filing; it gets what is left of ten years from the judgment’s own date. A creditor who diaries reinscription from the recording date will be late, and article 3364 gives no relief for lateness: only a notice recorded before the effect of recordation ceases continues it.
Article 3305 handles judgments from outside Louisiana and is stricter than most creditors expect. Filing an authenticated copy of a judgment of a court of a jurisdiction foreign to this state – the United States, another state, or another country – creates a judicial mortgage only where special legislation so provides, or where it is accompanied by a certified copy of a Louisiana judgment or order recognising it and ordering it executed according to law. In all other cases the foreign judgment creates a judicial mortgage only once a Louisiana court has rendered a judgment making it the judgment of the Louisiana court, and that Louisiana judgment has been filed in the same manner as other judgments. Our note on domesticating foreign judgments covers the general sequence; in Louisiana the point is that recognition has to happen before the mortgage exists at all.
Article 3368 Joins the Two Clocks, and Most Published Guidance Predates It
“Notwithstanding the reinscription” is the phrase that decides it.
A creditor could read articles 3357, 3362 and 3364 and conclude that diligent reinscription keeps a judicial mortgage alive indefinitely regardless of what happens in the suit record. La. Civ. Code art. 3368, headed “Cancellation of judicial mortgage arising from judgment that has prescribed”, forecloses that reading in its first word.
Notwithstanding the reinscription of a judicial mortgage created by the filing of a judgment of a court of this state, the recorder shall cancel the judicial mortgage from his records upon any person’s written request to which is attached either a certificate from the clerk of the court that rendered the judgment that no suit or motion was filed for its revival within the time required by Article 3501, or a certified copy of a final and definitive judgment of the court rejecting the demands of the plaintiff in a suit or motion to revive.
Three features are worth naming. The cancellation is mandatory – “the recorder shall cancel”. It may be triggered by any person, not only the debtor, which matters where a purchaser or a competing creditor wants the record cleared. And the proof is a clerk’s certificate of a negative: that no revival suit or motion was filed in time. That is a document a title examiner can obtain, which is why an unrevived Louisiana judicial mortgage is not a durable encumbrance no matter how carefully it has been reinscribed.
This is also where a good deal of the material circulating about Louisiana is simply out of date. Guidance drafted under the pre-2005 recordation regime states that filing a notice of reinscription continues the mortgage’s effect without the necessity of filing a judgment reviving the original judgment. Under the articles now in force that proposition is reversed by article 3368. The recordation articles were substantially reworked by Acts 2005, No. 169, s. 1 – with Acts 2005, 1st Ex. Sess., No. 13, s. 1 moving its effective date to 1 July 2006, a note that appears on the face of the legislature’s own page – and amended again by Acts 2014, No. 281, s. 1, effective 1 January 2015. Any summary that does not account for those acts is describing a regime that has not applied for two decades.
The practical rule is therefore short and it is the reason this page is organised around two clocks rather than one. Reinscription preserves the recordation. Revival preserves the judgment. Only revival preserves both.
Execution: Priority Follows the Order of Seizure
La. Code Civ. Proc. art. 2292 ranks ordinary creditors by when they seized, not when they filed.
A money judgment is executed by a writ of fieri facias directing the seizure and sale of the judgment debtor’s property, under La. Code Civ. Proc. art. 2291. What happens next is one of the clearest civil-law departures on this page.
Article 2292(A) provides that, to the extent not otherwise governed by Chapter 9 of the Louisiana Commercial Laws, a seizing creditor, by the mere act of seizure, acquires a privilege on the property seized, which entitles him to a preference over ordinary creditors. Paragraph (B) then ranks competitors: when several seizures of the same property are made by ordinary creditors, the seizing creditors acquire a privilege and are entitled to a preference among themselves according to the order of their seizures. (Acts 1989, No. 137, s. 18, effective 1 September 1989.)
A “privilege” in Louisiana is a real right in the property, and here it is generated by the act of seizure itself rather than by a filing. So among ordinary creditors chasing the same movable, rank is set by who seized first – which puts a premium on acting on accurate information quickly, and puts a corresponding penalty on seizing the wrong thing, at the wrong bank, or at a former employer.
For discovery in aid of execution, article 2451 lets the judgment creditor examine the judgment debtor, and his books, papers or documents, upon any matter relating to his property, either under articles 1421 through 1515 or under articles 2452 through 2456; and it separately allows the creditor to examine any person upon any matter relating to the judgment debtor’s property under articles 1421 through 1474. The mechanics of garnishment, the wage percentage, the exemption figures and the 180-day rule that governs a wage garnishment’s continued effect are set out in our Louisiana wage garnishment laws and Louisiana asset exemptions from creditors references, and this page does not restate them. The point that belongs here is the sequencing: a seizure’s rank depends on when it happens, so the information behind it has to be right before it happens.
What We Establish, Parish by Parish
Sourced, dated facts. The motion, the affidavit and the advice belong to counsel.
What is above is general information about how the Louisiana Civil Code and Code of Civil Procedure read on these subjects. What follows from it for any one judgment is a matter for Louisiana counsel. Nobody here files a motion to revive, swears the holder’s affidavit that a judgment is unsatisfied, files a judgment with a recorder of mortgages, records a notice of reinscription, causes a writ of fieri facias to issue, or approaches a judgment debtor about money. The revival affidavit in particular is the holder’s own sworn statement, and given the cost-shifting in article 2031(B) it must stay that way.
Our part is establishing the facts those steps rest on. Where is the judgment debtor now, confirmed against more than one independent record, and how does that compare with the last known address the suit record still carries. Which of Louisiana’s sixty-four parishes hold immovable property in the name, including property acquired after the judicial mortgage was filed, which article 3303 reaches and which nobody finds without looking. What the parish conveyance and mortgage records show about the state of the encumbrance. Every finding is delivered with the record it came from and the date it was checked.
Two things bound the work. Before a parish is searched, the requester states the lawful reason – a judgment to enforce, a party to serve, an asset to identify – and the search itself draws on Louisiana public records and lawfully licensed data only. And the means are limited as strictly as the ends: nobody here uses a pretext, presents themselves as someone they are not, or leaves a clerk of court, a recorder of mortgages or an employer with a false understanding of who is asking. This firm is not a licensed private investigator, holds no Louisiana investigative licence, does not practise law and does not collect debts.
Two positions are fixed whatever the parish. This firm is not a consumer reporting agency, and nothing it hands over is a consumer report – none of it is compiled or released so a decision can be made about renting to someone, employing or promoting them, or underwriting credit or insurance for them. Where that is what a requester actually wants, we say no and name a screening provider regulated to supply it. Separately, where the shape of a request suggests the person sought has walked away from a relationship, has taken out a protective order, or would be put in danger by being located, the request is refused and the reason given. Holding a judgment against someone does not alter it.
Our Commitment
You get the Louisiana record as the parish offices actually hold it: what the conveyance and mortgage records and the suit record establish, what they only suggest, and what they do not answer, each with its source and the date checked. Because revival rests on a sworn statement and carries a cost-shifting risk, we are deliberately careful about what we will call established, and we say so when the records will not carry it.
Louisiana Judgment Questions
How long does a Louisiana judgment last?
Ten years, and the clock starts at the signing. La. Civ. Code art. 3501 provides that a money judgment rendered by a trial court of this state is prescribed by the lapse of ten years from its signing if no appeal has been taken, or ten years from the time the judgment becomes final if an appeal has been taken. A judgment of another state, a United States possession or a foreign country is barred by the lapse of ten years from its rendition.
How many times can a Louisiana judgment be revived?
There is no limit. Article 3501 provides that an interested party may have a money judgment rendered by a court of this state revived as often as he may desire, and that a judgment so revived is subject to the same ten-year prescription again. The one condition is timing: revival must happen before the judgment prescribes.
How is a Louisiana judgment revived?
By ex parte motion. La. Code Civ. Proc. art. 2031(A) requires the motion to be brought in the court and suit in which the judgment was rendered, accompanied by an affidavit of the holder and owner of the judgment stating that the original judgment has not been satisfied. Filing the motion interrupts the prescriptive period, no citation or service of process is required, and the clerk mails notice of the signing of the judgment of revival to the debtor at his last known address as reflected in the suit record.
What happens if a Louisiana judgment is revived when it was already paid?
The debtor can undo it and the holder pays. Under article 2031(B) the judgment debtor may, by contradictory motion, have the judgment of revival annulled on showing the revived judgment was in fact satisfied before the revival was signed; and if the debtor proves it had been satisfied before the motion to revive was filed, the holder or owner must pay all court costs, fees and attorney fees the debtor incurred in opposing the ex parte order and in cancelling the judgment from the mortgage records.
What is a judicial mortgage and how is one created?
It is the Louisiana instrument that secures a money judgment. La. Civ. Code art. 3299 provides that a judicial mortgage secures a judgment for the payment of money, and article 3300 that a judicial mortgage is created by filing a judgment with the recorder of mortgages. Under article 3303 it is a general mortgage, established over property the obligor owns when it is created and over future property when he acquires it.
When does a Louisiana judicial mortgage need to be reinscribed?
Before the effect of recordation ceases, which article 3357 fixes at ten years after the date of the instrument rather than the date of recording. Article 3362 provides for reinscription by recording a signed written notice naming the mortgagor as named in the recorded instrument, giving the registry number or other recordation information and declaring the instrument reinscribed; article 3364 continues the effect for ten years from the date the notice is recorded, but only where the notice was recorded before the effect ceased.
Does reinscribing a judicial mortgage keep it alive if the judgment prescribed?
No, and this is where older guidance is wrong. La. Civ. Code art. 3368 provides that notwithstanding the reinscription of a judicial mortgage created by filing a judgment of a court of this state, the recorder shall cancel it on any person’s written request accompanied by a certificate from the clerk of the rendering court that no suit or motion was filed for revival within the time required by article 3501, or by a certified copy of a final judgment rejecting a revival demand.
What does your firm do on a Louisiana judgment, and what will it not do?
We establish, from Louisiana public records and lawfully licensed data, where a judgment debtor is and which parishes hold immovable property and mortgage records in the name, including property acquired after the judicial mortgage was filed – each with its source and date. We file no motion to revive, swear no holder’s affidavit, record nothing with a recorder of mortgages, advise on nothing, and approach no debtor. This firm is not a licensed private investigator, is not admitted to practise, and is not a collection agency; neither is it a consumer reporting agency, so its findings may not be used to screen a tenancy, decide employment, or underwrite credit or insurance. An enquiry that appears directed at someone who would be harmed by being located is refused.
Two Clocks Run at Once. Both Need the Same Facts.
Revival is filed in the parish where the suit was brought; reinscription is recorded where the property is. Identify the judgment debtor and give a lawful basis for the search, and you will receive a current location alongside the parishes whose conveyance and mortgage records carry that name – sourced and dated, usually within 24 hours. Contact us and we will tell you honestly what the conveyance and mortgage records support.
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