The judgment only gives the creditor the legal right to try to seize your property, to garnish your wages or to seek a court order requiring payment. State exemption laws usually protect a certain amount of your property from seizure pursuant to a court judgment. A local legal services program, an attorney or a credit counseling agency can provide a list of exempt property in your state and advise whether your state's law allows your home or any other valuable property to be taken and sold by a creditor with a judgment against you. Often the information is also available in pamphlet form. To be judgment-proof, your wages or other income must also be exempt from seizure.
Federal law limits the amount of wages that a creditor can seize.
Your state's law may supplement this protection. In certain states no wages can be garnished at all. Finally, Social Security and other government benefits cannot be seized at all. For these reasons, the threat of a court action on an unsecured debt is not nearly as real or dangerous as the threat of a landlord's eviction action, a bank's foreclosure on a mortgage, a car's repossession or a utility's termination of gas or electricity service. These latter four actions usually happen quickly with a minimum of legal process and expense to the creditor.