Judgment liens in Georgia

What to file, and where

Rendition is not recording. A Georgia judgment reaches title to real property only when it lands in a specific office and the indexes catch it.

Under O.C.G.A. 9-12-86¹, a judgment, decree, or order, or a writ of fieri facias issued on it, does not affect or become a lien on title to real property until it is recorded with the clerk of the superior court of the county where the land is and entered in the indexes to the applicable records there. Two acts, one office. Record it and index it, or it sits on the title not at all.

A second register decides contests with other people. Each superior court clerk keeps a general execution docket, and under O.C.G.A. 9-12-81² a money judgment obtained in the county of the debtor's residence creates no lien against good-faith third parties without notice unless the execution issued on it is entered on that docket. The lien dates from the entry. So the day you win is not the day you have priority over a buyer who did not know.

What it reaches

A Georgia judgment binds from a date earlier than the recording acts above.

Except as the Georgia Code otherwise provides, judgments of the superior courts, the magistrate courts, and the other courts of the state are of equal dignity and bind all the defendant's property, real and personal, from the date of the judgment. See O.C.G.A. 9-12-80³. Equal dignity means a magistrate judgment is no weaker than a superior court one for this purpose.

Read that date beside the recording requirement and the tension resolves. The judgment binds property from its date, but it does not touch title to real property until it is recorded and indexed, and it loses to an innocent third party until the execution hits the general execution docket. One statute grants the reach. The others say what a creditor must do before anybody else is bound to respect it.

How long it lasts, and renewing it

Georgia measures the life of a judgment by dormancy, and the clock is seven years.

Seven years after rendition, if no execution has issued and been entered on the general execution docket of the county where the judgment was rendered, the judgment becomes dormant and may not be enforced. See O.C.G.A. 9-12-60⁴ (a)(1). Child support and spousal support sit outside this, since the dormancy rules of subsection (a) do not apply to Georgia judgments or orders for either.

The seven years restart more than one way. Recording the execution on the general execution docket, and every entry under paragraph (2) or (3), begins a new seven-year period, and when an entry or notice is filed for record the execution must be recorded or rerecorded with all its entries. See O.C.G.A. 9-12-60. An officer authorized to levy can keep it alive by making an entry on the execution that the clerk enters, with its date, within seven years of issuance and record. See O.C.G.A. 9-12-60 (a)(2). A bona fide public effort to enforce in the courts works too, so long as seven years never pass between such entries, or between such an entry and an officer's entry under paragraph (2).

Miss all of that and the door is not yet shut. A holder may renew or revive the judgment by an action or by scire facias, at the holder's option, within three years from the time it becomes dormant. See O.C.G.A. 9-12-61⁵. The general shape of these clocks is laid out in how long a judgment lien lasts.

Land in another county

Georgia records by county, and a judgment reaches land one county at a time.

Under O.C.G.A. 9-12-86, a Georgia judgment or writ of fieri facias becomes a lien on title to a parcel only when recorded with the clerk of the superior court of the county where that parcel is located. Recording in the county where the debtor lives does nothing to a lot two counties over until it is recorded there as well.

Homestead here, in one paragraph

Georgia shields a set dollar amount of a debtor's property, more of it when the property is the home.

Under O.C.G.A. 44-13-1⁶, a debtor's real or personal property, or both, is exempt from levy and sale by any process under Georgia law in the amount of $5,000.00, or $21,500.00 for property that is the debtor's primary residence. The exemption is not absolute. No court or officer may enforce a judgment, execution, or decree against property set apart under the section, except for taxes, for the purchase money, for labor done on it, for material furnished for it, or for the removal of encumbrances.

A separate set of figures applies in bankruptcy. In lieu of the exemption in Code Section 44-13-1, a debtor who is a natural person may exempt, for purposes of bankruptcy, the property the subsection lists. See O.C.G.A. 44-13-100(a)⁷. The residence item covers the debtor's aggregate interest, not exceeding $21,500 in value, in property the debtor or a dependent uses as a residence, in a cooperative that owns such property, or in a burial plot; where title is in one of two spouses who is a debtor, the amount is $43,000. State to state comparison lives in homestead protection, state by state.

Where the records live

Two offices, both run by the clerk of the superior court, decide a Georgia judgment lien.

Title to real property is reached through the indexes to the applicable records, kept by the clerk of the superior court of the county where the land is. Priority against innocent third parties runs off a different book in the same office, and the lien against such parties dates from the entry of the execution on the general execution docket. See O.C.G.A. 9-12-81.

So a searcher in Georgia asks one clerk for two things. The recorded judgment and index entry that bind title, and the general execution docket entry that fixes the date against anyone who bought or lent without notice. Where to look for other states is collected in how a judgment becomes a lien, state by state.