Judgment liens in Oregon

What to file, and where

Creation of the lien is not a creditor's act. It is the court administrator's note in the circuit court register.

When the court administrator notes in the circuit court register that a judgment creates a judgment lien, the lien attaches the moment the judgment is entered, to every piece of real property the debtor then owns in that county. ORS 18.150¹ puts the attaching event at entry and ties it to the note, not to a recording the creditor arranges.

That note goes in when the filed judgment document includes a money award and meets the statutory form requirements, unless a listed exception applies. ORS 18.150 puts the act of creation in the clerk's hands rather than the creditor's. What a creditor watches for is the note, because without it there is no lien to speak of.

What it reaches

What the debtor owns at entry is covered, and so is what the debtor buys later.

An Oregon judgment lien attaches to real property the debtor acquires in the county after entry and before the lien expires. ORS 18.150 extends it forward in time, so a house bought two years after the judgment is caught the day the debtor takes title.

There is a wall it does not cross. Property the debtor acquires after the underlying debt is discharged in bankruptcy is not caught, though ORS 18.150 presumes the debt not discharged until the debtor proves otherwise. The burden sits on the debtor.

Two kinds of judgment stand outside this section. ORS 18.150 does not apply to justice courts, municipal courts, or county courts performing judicial functions. And a small claims judgment under $3,000, exclusive of costs, gets no lien note unless the creditor has separately created one under ORS 46.488.

How long it lasts, and renewing it

Ten years for a civil judgment. One extension, and a late filing that does nothing.

Judgment remedies for a civil judgment expire 10 years after entry, except as ORS 18.180² to 18.190 provide. ORS 18.180 sets that clock. ORS 18.152(4)(b)³ speaks of the time the judgment lien would otherwise expire under ORS 18.180 to 18.190, which ties the lien's life to those same remedies. Criminal judgments run longer, except as ORS 18.180(4) provides: 20 years, and 50 years where the judgment includes a money award for restitution.

A creditor extends by filing a certificate of extension in the court that entered the judgment, which the administrator enters in the court register and the judgment lien record. ORS 18.182⁴ allows the filing only while the remedies have not expired and while no full satisfaction document for the money award is on file. Extended remedies last another 10 years from the certificate's filing, and the remedies may be extended only once.

Timing is the whole game. A certificate filed after the remedies have already expired under ORS 18.180 has no effect, subject to ORS 18.190. For a judgment already recorded in a second county, recording a certified copy of the certificate or a lien record abstract there before the lien would otherwise expire extends it without loss of priority; ORS 18.152 provides that a recording made after that moment still extends the lien, but drops it behind every other interest of record on the day of recording. One day late, and the statute sends the lien to the back of the line. See how long a judgment lien lasts, and how to renew it.

Land in another county

A circuit court note covers one county. Reaching into any other takes a recording the creditor makes.

After a judgment that creates a judgment lien is entered under ORS 18.150, and before the remedies expire, a creditor may create a lien in any other Oregon county by recording the judgment in that county's County Clerk Lien Record. ORS 18.152 accepts either a certified copy of the judgment document or a lien record abstract. In the new county the lien attaches to all the debtor's real property there when the judgment is recorded, and to property acquired there afterward and before the lien expires.

These secondary liens are tethered to the first. When the lien expires in the county where the judgment was originally entered, ORS 18.152 expires it, and any support arrearage lien created by recording, in every other county too. If the home county clock runs out, ORS 18.152 provides that the recordings elsewhere fall with it.

Homestead here, in one paragraph

A homestead is exempt from sale on execution, from the lien of every judgment, and from liability for the owner's debts, up to a stated amount.

Value under ORS 18.395(1)⁵ runs to $40,000, and where two or more household members are debtors whose homestead interests are subject to execution, their combined exemptions may not exceed $50,000. ORS 18.395 also requires the homestead to be the actual abode of and occupied by the owner or the owner's spouse, parent or child. The exemption is not impaired by temporary removal or temporary absence with the intention to reoccupy, nor by removal or absence, nor by the sale. That protection carries one year past removal, absence or sale, whichever comes first, under ORS 18.395(3). A purchaser's interest under a land sale contract is reached, and so are a floating home and a manufactured dwelling, under ORS 18.395(9) and (10).

Small judgments meet a harder bar. A homestead that is the debtor's or a listed family member's actual abode may not be sold on execution to satisfy a judgment that at entry does not exceed $3,000, except as subsection (7) provides, under ORS 18.395(5). But the judgment stays a lien, and the property may be sold once the debtor sells it or it stops being that abode. And under ORS 18.395(7), the bar falls away where a single creditor holds two or more judgments whose amounts at entry add up to more than $3,000. Where an owner has taken a discharge or conveyed the homestead, ORS 18.395(4) fixes value for the leviable surplus at the petition date or the conveyance's effective date, whichever comes first. For judgments not discharged, or entered after discharge, the conveyance date controls. Oregon's broader homestead picture sits in homestead protection, state by state.

Where the records live

Two records matter, and they sit in different places.

In the county of entry the lien lives in the circuit court register, where the administrator's note under ORS 18.150 is the act that creates it. There is no separate recording to make at home; the note is the record.

Everywhere else the record is the County Clerk Lien Record, where a creditor records the judgment under ORS 18.152 to reach land in other counties. One register the court keeps, one record the creditor builds. Oregon's place in the wider map sits in how a judgment becomes a lien, in all fifty states and DC.