Judgment liens in Massachusetts

What to file, and where

Both routes to Massachusetts land run through an officer and the registry of deeds, and both turn worthless against an innocent buyer until the paper is deposited.

A levy on land not attached earlier in the case works one way. The officer deposits a copy of the execution, with a memorandum that it is held to take the defendant's land, in the registry of deeds for the county or district where the land lies, and until that copy is deposited the taking does nothing against a good-faith purchaser for value without notice. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 236, 4¹.

Attachment during the case is the other route, and it carries a trap in the clock. Deposit the copy of the writ within 3 days of the day the attachment was made and it takes effect from the moment it was made. Deposit it later and it takes effect only from the day it is deposited. That timing rule is Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 223, 66². And no attachment of land is valid against a later attaching creditor or a later good-faith buyer at all unless the officer deposits a certified copy of the writ and the part of the return covering the estate, which is the requirement of Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 223, 63³.

An owner's name on the writ is the part that quietly fails. An attachment is no good against good-faith purchasers as to a parcel where the owner's name, as it appears on the public records under which the owner took title, is left out of the writ, unless the writ is amended in time, and then only from the day the amended copy is deposited. That trap also sits in Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 223, 66. So the statute measures validity against the spelling the records already carry.

What the register does with it

The deposit does not finish the act. A register of deeds times it, then records it and indexes it by name.

On the deposited copy the register notes the day, hour and minute it arrived, then records it and enters in the chapter 36 indexes the name of each defendant whose land is attached as it appears in the copy, the plaintiff's name, and the court the writ is returnable to, all under Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 223, 65⁴. The minute is on the stamp because the statute tells the register to note it.

What it reaches

A Massachusetts execution reaches more than the land a debtor plainly holds, and chapter 188 pulls one large thing back out.

Taken on execution for a debtor's debts: all the debtor's land in possession, remainder or reversion, together with the debtor's rights of entry and of redeeming mortgaged land. So is land the debtor conveyed away to defeat, delay or defraud creditors. So is land the debtor paid for while record title sat in the seller or a third person with that intent, or on a trust that entitles the debtor to a present conveyance. All of this runs except as chapter 188 provides. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 236, 1⁵.

Chapter 188 is the homestead, and it is the large exception the first sentence points at. An estate of homestead is exempt from conveyance, descent, devise, attachment, seizure, execution on judgment, levy and sale for the payment of debts or legacies, except in the cases the section lists. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 188, 3(b)⁶.

How long it lasts, and renewing it

The statutes here set several short clocks on an attachment. They do not finish the story.

For land attached before judgment, the copy of the execution must reach the registry within 40 days of the date on the execution, and the attachment becomes void 40 days after that date unless the copy is deposited. That clock is Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 236, 4.

An attachment of real estate is dissolved by a release the plaintiff signs, acknowledges and records in the registry of deeds, or by a clerk's certificate that it has been dissolved or that the action is finally determined. That is Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 223, 132⁷, and it is how an attachment ends on purpose.

And then the open question. How long a Massachusetts attachment of real estate, or a levy on execution, lasts, and how a creditor might extend it, is not settled by the sections covered here. This page will not guess at it. For how that question is handled where the statutes do answer it, see how long a judgment lien lasts.

Land in another county

The filing office is fixed by where the dirt is, not by where the court sat.

A copy of the execution taking land is deposited in the registry of deeds for the county or district where the land lies, under Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 236, 4. So a debtor with parcels in three counties is three deposits, each in its own registry. Nantucket runs its own schedule: where land was attached there and judgment came from another county, or the reverse, the period to deposit the copy stretches to 70 days, and the attachment is void that many days after the execution date unless the copy is in. That variation is also in Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 236, 4.

Homestead here, in one paragraph

The homestead is the first thing a creditor of a Massachusetts homeowner runs into, and the amount depends on whether anybody wrote it down.

The automatic homestead exemption is in the amount of $125,000, defined in Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 188, 1⁸. Record a written declaration under section 5 and the figure becomes a declared homestead exemption of $1,000,000, also defined in Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 188, 1. For a home held by joint tenants or tenants by the entirety the automatic exemption stays whole and unallocated, and the owners together do not get more than $125,000. Where those same joint owners benefit from a homestead declared under section 3, the declared exemption likewise stays whole and the owners together do not get more than $1,000,000. Both caps sit in the joint-ownership clauses of Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 188, 1. So the exemption does not split per owner, which is the opposite of what co-owners tend to assume.

This exemption is not absolute. It does not apply to a sale for taxes, assessments, claims and liens; to a lien recorded before the homestead was created; to a mortgage as sections 8 and 9 provide; to a court order that a spouse, former spouse or parent pay support for a spouse, former spouse or minor children; or to ground rent on buildings standing on land the homestead owner does not own. Those exceptions are listed in Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 188, 3(b). It also does not apply to an execution to enforce a judgment based on fraud, duress, undue influence or lack of capacity, under Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 188, 3(b)(6).

Equity above the exemption is still reachable. When an execution is levied on a claimed homestead and appraisers find the premises worth more than the applicable exemption, they set off to the debtor so much of the premises, including the dwelling house, as equals the exemption, with the rest levied on like any land not exempt. That levy procedure is Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 236, 18⁹. The homestead protects a floor, not the whole house. Compare how other states draw that floor in homestead protection, state by state.