We Collect Consent/Confessed Judgment Notes in Maryland.

What is a Confession of Judgment (and how can it help me get paid)? A Confession of Judgment, sometimes called a Stipulated Judgment, is used very specifically in the circumstance when your customer acknowledges he owes you a certain amount of money, but claims that he is financially incapable of paying the full amount of the debt right now. A Confession of Judgment is a document your customer signs – and you really want the principal of the company to agree to joint liability along with the company itself - which confirms the amount due and either agrees to pay that amount in full by a certain time (i.e., when your customer expects payment from a job) or agrees to a payment plan. The payment plan option is the most commonly used type of judgment agreement and the schedule of expected payments is set forth in the Confession of Judgment. If your customer signs the Confession of Judgment and fails to make the promised payments, you can file the Confession of Judgment directly with the court and you immediately have a Judgment ready to be collected upon (as opposed to filing a typical lawsuit for the collection of monies due or foreclosure of a lien, which starts with a Complaint and can drag on for months or even years until you get an arbitrator or judge to render a judgment in your favor – and then may continue to drag on if your judgment debtor directs his attorneys to file paperwork which could conceivably make you have to start all over again).   If this Confession of Judgment document makes it easier for you to collect from your customer in the event he is unable (for whatever reason) to stick to his payment plan, why on earth would he agree to sign it? Well, it keeps him from having to defend a lawsuit, for one thing – which means paying an attorney on top of what he owes you (and most attorneys won’t even take a case unless they get a few thousand dollars from a new client up front). It also prevents you from coming after his license bond, if he has one, which in turn would interfere with his ability to keep working under his contractor’s license. In return, you expect your customer to put his own name on the line, along with his company's name, which gives you added security regarding the probability of eventual payment in return for your patience in allowing your customer extra time to satisfy his debt.   If your customer is honorable and fully intends to pay his debt once his financial situation improves, he will understand the benefit of signing a Confession of Judgment versus defending a lawsuit. If your customer refuses to understand that the Confession of Judgment is the best compromise for both of you under the circumstances, well, you might as well start the litigation process now. In my experience, you show me a customer who won’t sign a Confession of Judgment, and I’ll show you a company who has repeatedly benefited from not paying its bills – either through being allowed to pay a greatly reduced amount when it actually does pay, or by avoiding payment entirely when a frustrated credit manager writes the debt off, not wanting to go to the expense of hiring an attorney to file a lawsuit – because you almost never – again from my experience working in law firms – recover the legal expenses paid to chase money. A Confession of Judgment signed by a company and its principal almost always ensures that - unless your customer closes the company doors and files for bankruptcy – you will eventually get your money, with interest, without having to pay thousands of dollars in legal fees that you may not be able to recover.   So what do you do with a Confession of Judgment once your customer signs it? Hopefully, nothing. Hopefully, you sit back and collect the payments your customer agreed to make when he signed the Confession of Judgment. If your customer misses a payment, it is typically considered a good practice (although not required by the statutes governing judgments by confession) to send your customer a letter reminding him of the overdue payment. If payment is still not received within a reasonable time, you file the Confession of Judgment with the court for a nominal fee (currently $20.00 in District Court, opposed to the $125.00 required to file a Complaint in the Circuit Court of Maryland), then record a certified copy of the Confession of Judgment with the Circuit Court. Once the Confession of Judgment is recorded, your debtor will be unable to buy, sell, or refinance property without paying off the Judgment amount in full, including all interest and costs as set forth in the Judgment. (This is a big reason why you want to get the owner of the company to sign personally on the Confession of Judgment, because the Judgment will attach to his personal real estate, not just real estate owned in the company name.)   So what if you do have to file your Confession of Judgment - then what? Well, then you go about collecting your money. In my experience, the most efficient way of doing this is to find out who owes your debtor money and serve a writ of garnishment (court stamped documents ordering payment to you from your customer’s belongings) on them. This includes everything from your debtor’s bank to the general contractor your debtor is working for to rent monies your debtor is collecting for a rental property he owns. If you have bank account information on your debtor, a bank garnishment is usually attempted first, but often if a customer knows you are about to get a judgment against him, the first thing he does is switch banks. In this case, if you are patient and wait a few months, long enough to let your debtor think you gave up on him, you can pay a couple of hundred dollars to a decent asset investigator, get fresh bank information, and proceed with a garnishment. One last item on judgment collection – it doesn’t always need to be aggressive or even proactive. A recorded judgment sits on the books for a period of twelve years in Maryland and will be there If the defendant wants to refinance, sell, or buy a home. In that case, out of the clear blue sky one day you will get a phone call from a title company asking you to add up everything you’re owed and get it to them in writing, as they will be cutting you a check from escrow. In my experience, these phone calls happen far more often than you would expect, usually in cases when a judgment debtor does not appear to have anything worth pursuing at the time you get your judgment, and it is always a lovely surprise. Again, this is why it is very important to get your customer’s name personally on the dotted line. Company names come and go (it is very common for a company to change its name to try and avoid payment of a judgment – even changing an “Inc.” to an “LLC” works sometimes), but John Doe will remain John Doe forever (or, if he does become “Mohammed Ali Doe” to pursue a religious calling, the paper trail left behind will not shake off John Doe’s debts).   WE ARE NOW ACCEPTING CONFESS JUDGMENT NOTES IN ALL 50 STATES FAX A COPY OF YOUR NOTE TO : 443-213-1480. OUR NEW ACCOUNT TEAM WILL CONTACT YOU TO DISCUSS YOUR OPTIONS.


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If you have a valid court awarded judgment of $5,000.00 or more, we will use every method at our disposal to recover the full amount of the unpaid judgment plus any interest that the judgment has accrued since it was issued. We will track the judgment debtor down even if he or she has moved to another state. We have access to both private and public databases that allows us to 'skip-trace' the debtor and to locate any assets that he or she may have. As allowed by law, we will garnish wages, attach bank accounts, and seize assets as necessary. If possible, we will try to do so without any notification or confrontation. In short, we will enforce the judgment that was legally and rightfully awarded to you by the courts! We neither charge an application fee nor require you to cover any upfront expenses. We purchase the judgment from you for a percentage of anything that we are eventually able to recover from the judgment debtor. .

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