Judgment liens in New York

What to file, and where

Priority in New York starts with a filing act in a named office, not with the date on the judgment.

A transfer of the debtor's interest in real property is not effective against the judgment creditor from the moment the judgment is docketed with the clerk of the county where that property is located. That is what CPLR 5203¹ provides, subject to the exceptions the section lists. So the county is the thing to get right. A judgment docketed where the debtor lives does nothing to land held two counties away.

A clerk does not docket on request. Immediately after the judgment-roll is filed, the clerk dockets the money judgment. CPLR 5018² puts the two acts in that order, which means the roll is the event that sets everything downstream in motion.

What it reaches

The priority covers the debtor's interest in real property against which a money judgment may be enforced.

The statute frames it narrowly. CPLR 5203 reaches the judgment debtor's interest in real property against which a money judgment may be enforced, and no more. What counts as enforceable property is a separate question, and the homestead exemption below is the largest part of the answer.

How long it lasts, and renewing it

The clock runs ten years from an act that is not docketing, and three different sections can change that number.

Priority runs until ten years after the judgment-roll was filed. The statute measures from the roll, not from the day a particular county clerk stamped the docket. CPLR 5203 lays the clock there. That is the trap, and it is laid out across the library in how long a judgment lien lasts.

Death moves the date. A judgment lien existing against real property when the debtor dies expires two years after the death or ten years after the judgment-roll was filed, whichever is later. By CPLR 5208³ the later of the two governs, which can carry a lien past its ordinary end.

Renewal is a separate action, not a filing. During the year before ten years have passed since the first docketing, an action may be commenced on the judgment; the resulting judgment is designated and docketed as a renewal judgment, and its lien takes effect when the original ten years run out. That timing comes from CPLR 5014⁴, so the window opens once and closes once. There is also a court-ordered extension under CPLR 5203, available on the creditor's motion with notice to the debtor, but it buys back only the time the creditor was stayed or the time needed to finish a sheriff's sale begun before the ten years expired. It is restoration, not a fresh decade.

Land in another county

Reaching land in a second county is a filing, and the statute says what that filing is worth.

File a transcript of the docket of a judgment docketed in the county where it was entered, with the clerk of any other county in the state, and that clerk dockets the judgment. CPLR 5018 provides the mechanism. A judgment so docketed by transcript has the same effect as a docketed judgment entered in the supreme court within that county, which is the whole point of moving it.

Homestead here, in one paragraph

New York exempts a principal residence by county tier, and the dollar figures printed in the statute are no longer the figures in force.

Four kinds of home qualify. CPLR 5206(a)⁵ covers a lot of land with a dwelling, shares in a cooperative apartment corporation, a condominium unit, or a mobile home, where it is owned and occupied as a principal residence; it does not apply where the judgment was recovered wholly for the purchase price. And the protection is conditional on living there: under CPLR 5206(c) the exemption ceases when the property stops being occupied as a residence by a person for whose benefit it continues, unless the absence runs no more than one year and follows injury to or destruction of the dwelling.

The amounts move on a schedule. Every three years beginning April 1, 2012, CPLR 5253(a)⁶ adjusts the CPLR 5206 exemption, so the figures written into the statute are base amounts rather than current ones. CPLR 5206(a) sets three base tiers: $150,000 for Kings, Queens, New York, Bronx, Richmond, Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland, Westchester and Putnam; $125,000 for Dutchess, Albany, Columbia, Orange, Saratoga and Ulster; and $75,000 for the remaining counties, each measured in value above liens and encumbrances.

For the amounts actually in force, the Department of Financial Services publishes a table. Read beside the statute's county tiers, its 2024 row for the $150,000 base gives $204,825, the $125,000 base gives $170,700, and the $75,000 base gives $102,400. Those amounts took effect April 1, 2024, and the next adjustment is scheduled for April 1, 2027. A figure quoted after that date is a stale one. The library tracks the same question across states in homestead protection, state by state.

Where the records live

Two offices and two acts carry the whole system.

The lien begins with docketing by the county clerk of the county where the property is located, under CPLR 5203. Docketing itself follows the filing of the judgment-roll, under CPLR 5018. So the record to find is the docket in the right county, and the date to ask about is the day the clerk stamped it.