After all, you may need to know where to serve legal documents related to enforcement of your judgment. Also, it is likely that wherever your debtor lives, is where you are going to find assets that can be turned into payment towards your money judgment.

You likely knew the correct address of your debtor at the time you filed your original complaint in your law suit. You would have needed an address in order for the court summons to be served on your adversary.

If your judgment is fairly new, there is a good chance that the judgment debtor is still at the same address, maybe not. The longer it has been since you filed your complaint against him, the greater the chance that he has moved to a different address.

Perhaps the debtor is being very clever at eluding you. In spite of this, most of the time it is possible to discover the exact location of your debtor’s residence.

I believe the easiest place to start a search to discover the location of a judgment debtor is by pursuing what factual information you already possess. What do you already know about the debtor that you can investigate further with the idea of gaining further knowledge that you don’t have. For example, you may already know of a house that he lived in at one time. You may know how and where to contact people who should know the debtor and know things about him.

If you know the debtor’s past address, it would make sense to go by that neighborhood and talk to former neighbors of the debtor. If you don’t come across suspiciously, many people will tell you everything they know about someone. This is especially true if you don’t look like a bill collector or private investigator. It is not too difficult to come up with a simple pretext to use for why you are interested in finding your skip. A skip is the person whose whereabouts you are trying to discover. Be sure to avoid telling your potential informants that you are attempting to enforce your judgment. This method of post judgment investigation is frequently successful and generally quite easy to do.

What if you know how to contact people that know the skip and know things about him. Naturally this could include member of the debtor’s family. You might want to use a pretext with close family members. You don’t want to arouse any suspicions on their part about whether or not they should talk to a stranger about their family member. Once again, be careful about disclosing that you are attempting to collect a court judgment.

I find that family members will sometimes disclose a whole lot of information about the judgment debtor. Sometimes they will do it even when they have a clear understanding that you are seeking to collect a judgment debt.

My personal favorite source of information about a debtor is any ex-spouse or former boy friend/girl friend of the debtor. There is a good reason why they are exes. Exes are usually a veritable artesian well, flowing freely with reliable information about your common adversary. They are understandably upset with their ex and willingly share knowledge that helps further the judgment enforcement process. You may want to read a previous post about what a great help exes can be to your collection efforts. Here is the link: http://www.enforcementinstitute.com/?p=308

If you know of friends or co-workers of the debtor, contact them and see if you can find a sympathetic ear. Often you will hit pay dirt on one of these people.

If your judgment debtor is a real scum bag, it is reasonable to think that there are other people out there who have been done wrong by this jerk. Think about how to identify who these people might be. They might be your treasure chest of information that you need in order to locate your skip.

I have discovered that many judgment debtors have been sued more than once. If you think about it, this should be no big surprise. Whenever a jerk has lost multiple law suits, you can figure he has a few enemies around. If you go to the court house and check the court records, don’t be shocked to find more judgments against your debtor besides your own. If you contact the other judgment creditors you will likely find people with knowledge about your common adversary, and are more than anxious to share information. Just be careful that you don’t divulge information that could lead to one of the other judgment debtors putting their wage garnishment or other enforcement action in place before you can get yours in place.

There are many many more ways to discover a judgment debtor’s residence. Without going into other ways to gain this knowledge, for now, think about these various categories of people that can help you. When you contact a possible source of info on your skip, handle the conversation wisely. If you do, your source may tell you much more than merely the current address of the debtor.

Listen carefully. Be especially sensitive to detect whether any area where the potential informant has negative feelings about your debtor. If you can get your source to tell you about these negative feelings, you stand a good chance of gaining a cooperative informant. Listen well, and ask gently probing questions.