Oregon Judgment Collection: Six Clocks, Not One

Two subsections sit outside the table because they are not periods at all. Subsection (1) ends the remedies on full satisfaction of the money award, and subsection (2) ends a support arrearage lien on satisfaction of the particular unpaid instalment that created it – not of the judgment. Subsection (8) removes justice courts, municipal courts and county courts performing judicial functions from the section entirely; those judgments run on ORS 18.194 instead. The six figures above were counted from the enacted chapter rather than taken from a summary, and the subsection numbers are given so a reader can check every one of them.

Outside the county of entry, Oregon behaves like a recording state. At any time after a lien-creating judgment is entered and before the judgment remedies expire, a creditor may create a lien in any other county by recording the judgment in that county's County Clerk Lien Record – either a certified copy of the judgment document or a lien record abstract for it. The lien attaches to the debtor's real property in that county when the recording happens, and to property acquired there afterwards.

The first condition is about priority rather than validity. Under ORS 18.152 (4)(b), where a certificate of extension is recorded in another county before the lien there would have expired, the recording extends the lien "without loss of priority". Where it is recorded after that point, the recording still extends the lien – but the lien "is subordinate to all other interests that are of record on the date the certificate or lien record abstract is recorded." A late filing in Klamath County does not fail. It goes to the back of the queue, which on an encumbered parcel is a distinction without a difference.

The second condition is structural. ORS 18.152 (5): "When the judgment lien of a judgment expires in the county in which the judgment was originally entered, the judgment lien and any support arrearage lien created under this section expires in the other county or counties in which the judgment has been recorded." The out-county liens are dependents, not parallel liens. Whatever a creditor recorded in six counties dies on the day the home county's lien does.

Priority against an unrecorded conveyance is governed separately by ORS 18.165, and it contains a deadline expressed in an unusual way. A conveyance of the debtor's interest is void against the judgment lien unless the grantee is a purchaser in good faith for valuable consideration, the conveyance was delivered and accepted before the judgment was entered or recorded in that county, and the conveyance or a memorandum of it is recorded "within 20 days after delivery and acceptance of the conveyance, excluding Saturdays and legal holidays under ORS 187.010 and 187.020." Twenty business-ish days, not twenty calendar days, and the exclusion is in the statute. The section also preserves the lien's subordinate position where the creditor had actual, record or inquiry notice of a conveyance, where the conveyance is a fulfilment deed entitled to priority under ORS 93.645, and where the conveyance is a purchase-money mortgage, trust deed or other security instrument. Oregon's place among the docketing and recording states sits in our judgment lien guide by state.

Five of the sections this page has covered close with an identical subsection: this section does not apply to justice courts, municipal courts or county courts performing judicial functions. Those judgments live in ORS 18.194, which reproduces the structure with its own numbers: remedies end on full satisfaction; a civil money award expires ten years after entry; a criminal judgment twenty, and a criminal money award for restitution fifty; a certificate of extension may be filed in the court that entered the judgment and the clerk – not a court administrator – enters it in the docket of the court; a certificate filed after expiry has no effect; extended remedies run ten years from filing; and remedies may be extended only once. A creditor who files an ORS 18.182 certificate on a municipal court judgment has filed the wrong paper in the right court.

One difference is genuinely substantive. Under 18.194 (8) a certified copy of the certificate, or a lien record abstract for it, may be recorded in any county in which the judgment was transcribed or recorded as provided in ORS 52.635 or 221.351 – the justice and municipal court transcription statutes – with the effect provided by ORS 18.152 (4). The subordination rule follows the judgment into the other chapter.

And a 2025 Act sits immediately below the section in the published chapter, which is the kind of thing a summary loses. Section 1, chapter 395, Oregon Laws 2025 provides that notwithstanding ORS 18.194, judgment remedies for a judgment of conviction entered in a municipal or justice court for violating, before 1 July 2015, an ordinance or statute prohibiting possession of less than one ounce of marijuana, and which had not already expired, expired on the effective date of the Act, 26 September 2025. Subsection (2) then treats the sentence as completed and fully complied with as to those monetary obligations for the purposes of ORS 137.225 or 475C.397. A whole category of Oregon judgment remedies ended on a fixed date last year, by operation of law and without anybody filing anything.

Releasing a lien is its own mechanism and it is not a satisfaction. ORS 18.200 lets a creditor give a release of lien document to the debtor or to anyone else with an interest in the affected real property, for all the real property in a county or for a single parcel; the signature must be witnessed by a notary public; the administrator notes the filing in the register and the judgment lien record, including whether it covers a county or one parcel; the court administrator may charge no fee for it; and subsection (4) says in terms that filing a release "does not constitute a full or partial satisfaction of the judgment." The lien goes and the debt stays. ORS 18.202 then allows the administrator defined in ORS 25.010 – the child support enforcement administrator – to reinstate a lien it released, by recording a notice of reinstatement in the County Clerk Lien Record. A released Oregon lien is not always a permanently released one.

ORS 18.170 is unusually honest about uncertainty. Its lien record abstract form asks for the debtor's address, the last four digits of a taxpayer identification or social security number, the last four of a driver licence number and the state that issued it – and marks every one of them "(if known)". We work to that same standard. What happens at this firm is public-records research and skip tracing; it is not the practice of law, no Oregon private investigator licence stands behind it, and none is claimed on this page. On an Oregon file we supply the factual half – which counties hold the debtor's real property, whether the register entry a creditor is relying on exists, and which identifiers the record genuinely supports, with the rest marked unknown instead of guessed.

Every request begins with the lawful basis, stated by the requester and assessed independently by us. Enforcing an Oregon money award you hold in your own name meets it. Wanting to know where a person lives does not, and attaching a judgment number to that wish does not convert it. We do not pretext: no false identity is used with a county clerk, a circuit court administrator, a sheriff's civil division, an employer or a bank, and we do not misdescribe who is asking or why in order to move a request along.

Some Oregon subjects we simply will not look for, and the refusal is categorical rather than weighed. Anyone fleeing an abusive household. Anyone covered by an Oregon restraining order. Anyone whose whereabouts are shielded by a confidentiality programme or a sealing order. Whether the judgment is for four figures or seven changes nothing about that, and neither does how long it has gone unpaid – which is why it goes in front of a requester at intake and not into small print afterwards.

The remaining line is the one this industry blurs most often. We fall outside the Fair Credit Reporting Act because a consumer reporting agency is not what we are, and an Oregon lien-research file is not a consumer report. It cannot lawfully screen a tenant, a job applicant, a borrower or an insured. Where that turns out to be what a requester actually needs, we say so and name the FCRA-regulated route rather than take the work. Everything above is general legal information about ORS chapter 18 and is not legal advice – an Oregon lawyer is who applies it to a particular judgment. The Legislative Assembly publishes the chapter this page is built on at ORS chapter 18. Where the debtor has left Oregon entirely, our page on finding a judgment debtor who moved out of state and the broader skip tracing services overview describe how the search widens.