judgment lien
- noun
- /ˈdʒʌdʒmənt liːn/
- Formal
:
gravamen judicial
- Although the tax lien is very broad, some classes of creditors, such as those with perfected security interests or who hold judgment liens, do have priority over the IRS's claim to your assets.
- judgment lien creditor
- judgment lien creditors
- rights of a judgment lien
Examples
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After winning the case, the attorney filed a judgment lien against the defendant's assets to collect the owed amount.
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But that does not mean that there will never be claims that any and every Judgment Lien Creditor could assert.
Academic text (2017) -
You can't even take out a loan secured by future payments, since the future payments are secured against judgment liens.
Blog text (3) -
Instead, the estate or trustee acquires only rights that, basically, any and every Judgment Lien Creditor could assert under the laws of the applicable state.
Academic text (2017) -
Social security is, during the working period of a worker's life, protected from bankruptcy, lawsuits, foreclosure, judgment liens from other debts, con artists, identity theft, friends and relatives asking for money, giant medical bills, and all the other things that can destroy someone's savings.
Blog text (3) -
By the time the language of the Bankruptcy Act was liberalized to grant broader judgment lien creditor rights to estate representatives and to remove the gap described above, the case law precluding the exercise of personal creditor rights was so well entrenched that the courts simply did not or could not re-evaluate the "old learning."
Academic text (2017) -
The creditor placed a judgment lien on the debtor's property to secure repayment of the loan.
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In many states, your property can be seized if a judgment lien is granted against you for unpaid debts.
Synonyms
30
9.4
A legal right to keep someone's property until they pay a debt
Surface Forms
Morphology
This is a straightforward noun–noun compound where 'judgment' (a court decision) specifies the source of the 'lien' (a legal claim on property). The overall meaning — a lien created by or based on a court judgment — is directly derivable from the constituents and follows common legal naming patterns, so a learner who knows both words will understand it.
Etymology
Judgment lien combines judgment (a 'court decision') and lien (an old word meaning a 'tie' or 'hold'). Imagine a court decision that 'ties' a debt to a house so a creditor can claim money from its sale, so today judgment lien means a court's claim on someone's property.