Opinion ID: 2613526
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: a deficiency adjudication must be recorded in the office of the county clerk in order to establish the judgment creditor's lien priority

Text: To be considered a lien on real property, a judgment must be filed of record in the office of the county clerk. [2] The Court of Appeals rested its holding on Wingrod's act of recording its foreclosure decree before Neil's like decree was placed of record. In this it erred. The dispositive issue here does not deal with the priority of recorded foreclosure decrees, but with the priority of recorded deficiency orders. Neil recorded its deficiency while Wingrod did not. Neil's judgment lien is hence superior to that of Wingrod. Qui prior est tempore potior est jure. [3] A foreclosure decree authorizes merely the sale of the specific land that is mortgaged. It does not represent a recovery of money and hence will not support a general execution. [4] It is the postjudgment deficiency adjudication which determines the amount of deficiency and then allows a general execution to issue against the property owned by the debtor other than that which has been foreclosed. [5] Not until there is a judicial determination of a deficiency [6] can a general execution issue. To keep the deficiency alive, execution upon the deficiency must be issued within five years. [7] The deficiency instrument must be recorded if it is to be established as a judgment lien against the real property of the debtor. The statutory scheme prevents the automatic entry of deficiency. That adjudication, which cannot be effected in advance of sale and does not deal with issues on the merits, [8] is part of postjudgment process. [9] A deficiency order does not legally transform itself into a lien until its sine qua non prerequisites have been met by: 1) a timely filing of a motion for deficiency judgment (within 90 days of the sale); [10] 2) the court's ascertainment that a deficiency exists in the 12 O.S.1990 § 686 sense; [11] and 3) the order (memorial) is entered and recorded. If the deficiency's entry were automatic  in the sense that it could be effected ex lege and without judicial intervention  there would no doubt be merit to the argument that the lien of a post-foreclosure monetary deficiency recovery should be allowed to attach at the time the foreclosure decree is recorded (after its entry upon the court clerk's record). At common law, the deficiency was automatic and called for no judicial intervention. [12] Since § 686 mandates a hearing and a determination of deficiency in accordance with the statutory formula, it cannot be said that a foreclosure decree alone, once recorded, may serve to establish the priority of a § 706 lien whose underlying amount of obligation is not yet in legal existence.