will this work?

[junker]

so, if someone has a judgement against them, and a vehicle worth much more than exemption for their state, ie. florida exemption is 1k and you have car paid for worth 10k, COULD you wirte a promisory note to a trusted friend or realitive, and register a lien on that car title? then if creditor did a asset search, they would see the lien and not consider taking the car? is there some reason this wouldnt work?

[BigJohn]

If your friend stops being your friend, then you might owe the ex-friend the created debt.
If you do this before bankruptcy, it might be construed as fraud because you were hiding assets.

[junker]

there is a place on most car titles, that provide a space for release of lien. which could be done as soon as you get new title back from DMV. you dont have to record release of lien until you sell the car, but the lien would still show up at DMV as active. so friend could sign off on title as soon as you get it. No, you wouldnt want to do this if filing bk.i agree. but if you just have judgement and dont want to risk losing car it would work.

[cityish]

Now if you had "gifted" the car to your buddy or added him on as a second legal owner BEFORE you got a judgment, your free and clear since before the lawsuit you can do what you want with your stuff all day long.

Now if your going to file BK at some point, then this gets a lot more complicated and I would need to write a whole other post on how to avoid preferential treatment to a creditor if you do this. In short terms it means you file BK against your buddy, he takes the car back and after the BK is all over you two do whatever you want after.

This is an interesting topic, I was wondering about this very subject the other day.

I do not have a judgment against me --- yet -- but I anticipate one is coming because I'm currently being sued in a foreclosure and have defaulted on numerous credit cards.

My car is worth roughly $7k-$8k, it's paid for, and this is in Florida so I'm way over the exemption limit there.

I was thinking of "gifting" the car to my sister and brother-in-law since they helped me a great deal in the past when I was struggling with affording my house. My brother in law did work and repairs on the house, my sister loaned me money for a $2k plumbing job (which I paid back much later), etc. etc.

If I put my sister on the title as the legal owner and myself as the registered owner (so I can drive it to work etc.).... this might work. I just can't have the car taken away from me. I would be in such huge trouble with no transportation. I live 7 miles away from work and our public transportation here sucks...

On the other hand my brother in law is kind of conservative financially (which is a good thing'!) and I wouldn't want to cause any uncomfortable feeligns by asking them to do this. I wouldn't want him worrying or wondering if he could be liable for helping me hide assets --- even if I'm not really hiding assets, I wouldn't want him to feel funny about anything. So I hesitate to ask.

[ssdsco]

Anything wrong with borrowing money, putting a lien on the vehicle, spending the money on living expenses, keeping receipts or putting the borrowed money into an exempt asset such as your homestead or retirement account ??

The sole purpose would be to protect the money from judgement or the BK trustee.

Thanks