Thank you, Wanda. There may be a way around the bankruptcy issue for you in the future. If your state allows prejudgment remedies, you can begin the suit by attaching your opponant's non-exempt real estate, personal property or garnishing his bank account or accounts receivable held by his clients. This assures you that there is something there to pay the judgment at the end of the case.

If the defendant goes bankrupt the attachment/garmishment makes you a secured creditor rather than unsecured. Although you may have secured priority creditors in line ahead of you, you still come in ahead of all the unsecured creditors on the list of those to be paid. The one exception is if your opponant files for bankruptcy within a certain number of days following perfecting your attachment/garnishment. In this case  your secured position would be set aside by the court as a preferential transfer. I do not practice in the area of bankruptcy. The law has recently changed and the number of days in which to set it aside may also have changed, but in most cases it is still a very valuable tool.

When you kick off the case with a prejudgment remedy very often the Defendant wants to pay you immediately rather than have the cash flow to his business interrupted or suffer embarrassment in front of his clients if you elect to garnish his receivables. In which event you would notify his clients to freeze the funds owed to your opponant in an amount equal to the debt owed to you. You will need a lawyer to make certain that you have observed all of the attachment/garnishment procedures, but it is worth the expense. You may also have statutory or common law causes of action available to you in your state which may allow you to recover attorney's fees.

In the event that you have won the case, but the defendant still refuses to pay you, most states have a variety of post judgment remedies. In Connecticut we have judgment liens to freeze the Defendant's assets. We also have wage, property and bank executions to seize property. There is also foreclosure of judgment liens on real estate.

If you are unable to find your opponant's hidden assets in order to pay your judgment, Connecticut has a procedure for examination of judgment debtor to locate his bank accounts, property, etc. If he fails to show up for the examination, a capias is issued upon plaintiff's motion for the arrest and detention of the judgment debtor until the next court date for his examination. It could be 30 to 60 days before I choose to schedule the examination up on a motion calendar again. In the mean time the judgment debtor sits in a jail cell until that date or he pays the judgment.

I had a case about ten years ago in which the judgment debtor failed to appear for examination of his assets. I had a capias issued, and sent a marshal out after him. The debtor refused to answer the door. The marshal knew he was in the house because his car was parked in the drive way, and the curtains in the windows were moving when the debtor looked out. The marshal parked in front of his house, and kept him a prisoner for four hours. Eventually the debtor tried to sneak out one of the windows . The marshal caught him and arrested him. It was amazing how fast the funds suddently appeared to pay the judgment. The marshal also charged the debtor a fee for his services in making the arrest. It kind of added insult to injury, but it solved the problem.

The point is that there is a vast range of remedies available for slow pay/no pay clients. Abstractors do not have to listen to excuses and delaying tactics. 

I should mention that in my earlier response to Wanda's posting above I was talking about slow pay/no pay clients in general rather than any title company or business entity in particular. There are of course legitimate clients that are experiencing difficulties, and do make an effort to enter into payment schedules to pay down their debt. If they exhibit some honest effort to pay the debt down without the need for litigation, the courtesy should first be extended to them. It is also less expensive than litigation.