Chris wrote:
can anyone tell me if there's a statue of limitations of federal
judgments.
i had an overseas company obtain a default judgment against me 12
years ago
for $500,000.00 and i was wondering if there ever comes a point that
the
judgment can not be legally collected. thanks
This is a joint question of state and federal law. Federal law would
control questions of the validity of the judgment and its inherent
duration (if not unlimited) because a federal court issued it.
However, from a more practical perspective, state law would control
what can be done to collect the judgment. I suspect that a state court
generally lacks jurisdiction to enforce a federal judgment on its face.
However, procedures exist to reduce a "foreign" judgment (i.e., from
another state or the federal government) to a judgment from a given
state's court -- and thereby making it enforceable by that state's
courts.
Depending on the state, there may or may not be a statute of limitation
to enforce a judgment and/or reduce a foreign judgment to an in-state
one. So the answer would depend on what state the judgment creditor
seeks to collect your assets from.
