nevada enforcing-judgment
State tax domestication
<p>With any judgement the judgement has to be domesticated in the jurisdiction you are trying to enforce it in. So for example, I owe taxes in California.</p>
<p>Now, California has a levy on my account, in a bank in California (California routing number but the bank is in new york). Now, I have another account at a bank branch in Nevada at a different bank.</p>
<p>In order to levy my Nevada account, can California &quot;get it for free&quot; with their existing judgement, or do they have to domesticate the judgement in Nevada and then serve the levy?</p>

<h2>No</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Faith_and_Credit_Clause" rel="nofollow noreferrer">full faith and credit clause</a> of the Constitution mean that a judgement in one state is enforcable everywhere in the USA.</p>
<p>To enforce the judgement against a foreign asset, you would have to take the California judgement to the foreign court and ask them to enforce it - which is normally allowed.</p>

<p>A judgment creditor collects money from bank accounts using what is called a writ of garnishment.</p>
<p>This is because (1) a writ of garnishment is a court order directing someone who owes a judgment debtor money or property to turn that money or property over to the judgment creditor instead, and (2) a bank deposit in a bank account is technically a debt that the bank owes to the bank account owner.</p>
<p>If the bank has branches in both California and Nevada, a writ of garnishment issued based upon the California judgment can be presented to the bank in which you have an account and be directed to pay the money over to the California judgment creditor. Whether this is possible depends upon whether the bank in California where the writ of garnishment is served is the same entity as the bank in Nevada where the customer/judgment debtor has an account. Writs of garnishment are served upon &quot;persons&quot; (natural or legal), not upon accounts or bank branches. If the person upon whom the writ of garnishment needs to be served can be served with process and subjected to the jurisdiction of the California courts, it doesn't need to go to Nevada.</p>
<p>If the bank at which the funds are deposited in Nevada does not have a branch in California, then the California judgment creditor has the &quot;register&quot; the California judgment in Nevada at which point it becomes also a Nevada judgment and can be enforced as a Nevada judgment with a Nevada writ of garnishment at that point. The registration is ministerial and merely requires filing of a one page form, a certified copy of the California judgment, and a filing fee. This would be done pursuant to the Nevada Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act (Nevada Revised Statutes §§ <a href="https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-017.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">17.330 to 17.400</a>).</p>
<p>Finally, it is worth noting that a slightly different state court process is usually used in state tax cases than in non-tax cases. Often, rather than litigating a case to judgment in court, what happens is that the state taxing authority files what is called a &quot;distraint warrant&quot; in a state court of general jurisdiction, which is effectively a registration of a judgment entered in the state's administrative tax debt process in a court for purposes of collection as a money judgment through the state court process. Like a judgment registration in another state, this is generally a ministerial process (usually without even a filing fee for the state taxing authority), that isn't actively litigated and can be done without notice having to be served upon the tax debtor. Unfortunately, however, due to the fact that this is such a summary procedure, scammer often issue fake distraint warrants and try to collect them from unsuspecting scam victim.</p>
