Judgment liens in Texas

What to file, and where

In Texas the lien comes from one act: an abstract of judgment, recorded and indexed. Nothing less does it.

A Texas judgment becomes a lien on the debtor's real property when an abstract of judgment is recorded and indexed, so long as the judgment is not dormant at that moment. Tex. Prop. Code 52.001¹ names the act. Not the signing, not the entry. What makes the lien is the abstract, recorded and indexed.

There is a case where the recording does the work and still produces no lien. If the defendant has posted security or is excused from posting it, and the court finds that the lien would not substantially increase how far the creditor's recovery is secured, weighed against the cost to the defendant after all appeals are exhausted, then the recorded abstract is not a lien. Tex. Prop. Code 52.0011(a)² sets that out. The record exists. No lien does.

What it reaches

Attachment runs to the debtor's real property, with one large thing carved out.

A Texas judgment lien does not reach real property that is exempt from seizure or forced sale. Tex. Prop. Code 52.001 excludes property exempt under Chapter 41, the Texas Constitution, or any other law. Chapter 41 is the homestead chapter, under Tex. Prop. Code 41.001³. So the home that most debtors care about most is usually the one the abstract cannot touch.

How long it lasts, and renewing it

An ordinary lien runs 10 years, and the thing that ends it early lives in a different code.

A Texas judgment lien continues for 10 years from the date the abstract is recorded and indexed, and it ends sooner if the judgment becomes dormant inside that period. Tex. Prop. Code 52.006⁴ says both. Lien and judgment do not share a clock, and the shorter one wins.

Dormancy is set elsewhere. If no writ of execution issues within 10 years after a Texas judgment is rendered, the judgment is dormant and execution may not issue unless it is revived. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code 34.001(a) draws that line. And if a first writ issues in time but no second writ issues within 10 years after the first, the judgment becomes dormant too; a second writ may issue any time within 10 years after the first. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code 34.001(b) covers the second step. Revival is by scire facias or by an action of debt, brought not later than the second anniversary of the day the judgment became dormant, under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code 31.006.

Texas itself is on a longer clock. A lien for a judgment in favor of the State of Texas or a state agency lasts until the earlier of the 20th anniversary of recording, the day the judgment is satisfied, or the day the lien is released, under Tex. Prop. Code 52.006. That lien may be renewed once, for another 20 years, by filing a renewed abstract before the first 20 years run out. Private creditors get 10 and a dormancy trap. The state gets 20 and a renewal.

Land in another county

County by county is how the abstract works, and that is easy to forget until it costs something.

A Texas abstract of judgment reaches real property only in the county where it is recorded and indexed, including property the debtor acquires there afterward. Tex. Prop. Code 52.001 draws the boundary. Land in another county is untouched until the abstract is recorded there as well. An abstract filed in Harris does nothing to a ranch in Bexar until it is filed in Bexar too.

Homestead here, in one paragraph

Constitutional protection shields the Texas homestead, and it is wider than most debtors expect and narrower than most believe.

Homestead protection covers a family or a single adult against forced sale for the payment of all debts except the ones the constitution lists, under Tex. Const. art. XVI, sec. 50(a)⁵. That list runs to eight items: the purchase money of the homestead, the taxes due on it, an owelty of partition under 50(a)(3), the refinance of a lien including certain federal tax liens under 50(a)(4), work and material for improvements under 50(a)(5), an extension of credit meeting the section's conditions under 50(a)(6), a reverse mortgage under 50(a)(7), and the conversion and refinance of a manufactured home lien under 50(a)(8). An ordinary judgment debt is not one of them.

Home equity credit carries its own leash. It must be secured by a voluntary lien created under a written agreement with the consent of each owner and each owner's spouse, under Tex. Const. art. XVI, sec. 50(a)(6). Its principal, added to the outstanding principal of all other debts secured by valid encumbrances of record against the homestead, may not exceed 80 percent of the home's fair market value on the date the credit is made, under Tex. Const. art. XVI, sec. 50(a)(6)(B). And it must be without recourse for personal liability against each owner and spouse, unless they got it by actual fraud, under Tex. Const. art. XVI, sec. 50(a)(6)(C).

Texas also guards against dressing a debt up as something else. All pretended sales of the homestead involving any condition of defeasance are void, under Tex. Const. art. XVI, sec. 50(c). No mortgage, trust deed, or other lien on the homestead is ever valid unless it secures a debt the section describes, whether the owner acts alone or with a spouse, under Tex. Const. art. XVI, sec. 50(c). A lien that does not fit the list is not a weak lien in Texas. It is no lien.

Size is set in acres, not dollars. A homestead not in a town or city runs to not more than 200 acres, and an urban one to not more than 10 acres of contiguous lots, under Tex. Const. art. XVI, sec. 51⁶. In the Property Code the rural figure splits by claimant: 200 acres for a family, 100 acres for a single adult not otherwise entitled to a homestead, under Tex. Prop. Code 41.002(b)⁷, with the urban limit held at 10 acres under Tex. Prop. Code 41.002(a). Burial lots travel with the homestead: a homestead and one or more burial lots are exempt from seizure for the claims of creditors, except for encumbrances properly fixed on homestead property, under Tex. Prop. Code 41.001(a).

Whether a given place is urban or rural turns on a checklist, not on a feeling about the neighborhood. Property is urban if, when the designation is made, it sits within a municipality's limits or its extraterritorial jurisdiction or a platted subdivision, and is served by police protection, paid or volunteer fire protection, and at least 3 of electric, natural gas, sewer, storm sewer and water service, under Tex. Prop. Code 41.002(c). An urban homestead must also be used as a home, or as both a home and a place to carry on a calling or business, under Tex. Const. art. XVI, sec. 51. Temporary renting does not change its character when no other homestead has been acquired, under the same section.

Where the records live

What a creditor files, and what can erase the lien, are not in the same place.

Recording and indexing the abstract of judgment with the county, repeated county by county, is what makes and keeps the lien under Tex. Prop. Code 52.001. The pending appeal carve-out points the other way: if the defendant has posted security or is excused from it, and the court makes the finding the section requires, the recorded abstract is no lien under Tex. Prop. Code 52.0011(a). So a title search can turn up an abstract and still be reading a document that secures nothing.

How this sits beside other states is a wider question. The map of filing acts is set out in the state-by-state view of how a judgment becomes a lien, the homestead comparison in homestead protection, state by state, with the clocks in how long a judgment lien lasts. This page is Texas only. A rule that holds in Dallas is reversed in plenty of places a creditor would not expect, and whether to record an abstract, chase a second writ, or revive a dormant judgment is a question for counsel with the file open. What a page can do is narrower. It names which record to ask for, and which county stamped it.