Question about judgements

[scotthay]

My CH7 was filed on 6/4, I had a few pending collection actions in the court going on at the time, one of which had filed a motion for default judgement. On 6/6 the court granted the default judgement and closed the case. It was later noted on the court docket that there was a notice of bankruptcy and a note of a change in counsel for the collector.

I questioned my lawyers paralegal about what will happen with it and they told me nothing, it isn't going to be reversed, but since there is a bankruptcy stay on it then it will basically just stop.

Should I care about this judgement at all? Will it effect me in some way down the road? Is there something else I should do about it now or at some point?

Thanks for any insight.

[scotthay]

I just found this online at some other lawyers site;

" A judgment entered after a bankruptcy case was filed on a debt which existed prior to when the case was filed, should be handled in a different way. It should be the creditor’s responsibility to remove a judgment in these circumstances."

Sounds good, but how would you go about making this happen (make the creditor do something) and is this something I need not worry about at this point and just deal with it down the road once I am through the BK process?

[JSFleischman]

The judgment should not have been entered once the bankruptcy case was filed, though it's unlikely that anyone knew about the bankruptcy filing at the time (it was a 2 day difference, and the motion for default judgment was already filed and in process).

You should contact the lawyer for the creditor and ask that the judgment be vacated by stipulation (mutual agreement). Get the judgment vacated by the court.

If you do nothing then the judgment won't affect you in the real world, but it will show up on your credit report so you'll need to explain the sequence of events over and over.

[scotthay]

Does it matter when I do that? Is there some time frame it needs to happen in?

Thanks!

[JSFleischman]

Sooner is better than later.

[scotthay]

I just wanted to follow up on this, I spoke with my attorney at the 341 meeting about this and he didn't think it was necessary, but I prodded him a bit and he said he would take care of it for me. I just noticed online that there was an "Entry Vacating Judgment and Dismissing the case without prejudice filed and signed" noted on that case, so it has been taken care of.