A consent judgment and a default judgment are both enforceable court orders, but they come from opposite situations: a default judgment is entered against you when you fail to respond to a lawsuit, while a consent judgment is a deal you negotiated with the other side and asked the court to approve. That single difference — whether you participated — shapes the terms you’re bound by, how hard the order is to undo, and what your financial exposure looks like going forward.
How a Default Judgment Gets Entered
A default judgment is a ruling in the plaintiff’s favor that happens because the defendant never responded. In federal court the process has two steps. After the defendant misses the deadline, the plaintiff asks the court clerk to note the “default” on the record. That notation isn’t the judgment itself. The plaintiff then separately asks for the actual default judgment.
Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a defendant has 21 days after being served to file an answer. If the defendant waives formal service, that extends to 60 days. The federal government gets 60 days from the date the U.S. Attorney is served.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 12 – Defenses and Objections Miss any of these windows and the door to default opens.
Who signs the judgment depends on the claim. When the plaintiff is owed a specific dollar amount that can be calculated from the paperwork — an unpaid invoice, say — the clerk can enter judgment without a judge, as long as the defendant is an adult who simply never appeared.2Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 55 – Default; Default Judgment For everything else, including unliquidated damages and claims against minors, the plaintiff has to ask the judge. In those cases the court may schedule a proof hearing where the plaintiff presents evidence to justify the dollar amount. You can show up and argue that the number is too high, but you can no longer contest whether you’re liable.
One protection sits in front of every default judgment. The plaintiff has to file an affidavit stating whether you’re in the military. If you turn out to be an active-duty servicemember, the court must appoint an attorney to represent you before any judgment is entered.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC 3931 – Protection of Servicemembers Against Default Judgments When military status is uncertain, the court can require the plaintiff to post a bond covering losses if the judgment is later overturned.
How a Consent Judgment Gets Entered
A consent judgment is what you get when both sides negotiate a deal and ask the court to stamp it as an official order. No judge decides who wins. The parties resolve the dispute themselves, submit the agreement, and the judge reviews the terms for fairness and legality before signing.
Once signed, a consent judgment carries the same legal weight as any judgment entered after a full trial. That’s the key advantage over a private settlement agreement: if the other side stops paying, you don’t have to file a new lawsuit. You go straight to the court’s enforcement tools. Wage garnishment, bank levies, and asset seizure are available immediately.
You may also see the term “consent decree.” It’s essentially the same concept. Courts tend to use “consent decree” when the order involves injunctive relief — directing someone to do or stop doing something — rather than just paying money. Government enforcement actions by agencies like the FTC or EPA often end in consent decrees. For private money disputes, “consent judgment” is the more common term, but the legal effect is the same.4Legal Information Institute. Consent Decree
Consent judgments with ongoing obligations, like structured payment plans, can sometimes be modified if circumstances change significantly. Under federal rules, a court can grant relief when “it is no longer equitable that the judgment should have prospective application.”5Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 60 – Relief from a Judgment or Order That is a high bar, not a loophole for buyer’s remorse. You’d need a genuine, unforeseen change that makes the original terms fundamentally unfair going forward.
The Practical Differences
The core distinction is participation. A default judgment reflects one side’s absence; a consent judgment reflects both sides’ involvement. Everything else follows from that.
A default judgment is not a ruling on the merits. The court doesn’t weigh evidence. It accepts the plaintiff’s allegations as true because nobody contested them, then enters judgment. The plaintiff typically receives exactly what was demanded in the complaint. A consent judgment is a negotiated compromise. The final terms often look different from what either side originally wanted: reduced payment amounts, installment plans, agreements to take specific actions, mutual releases of further claims.
Flexibility is the second practical difference. Default judgments are blunt. The plaintiff gets the full amount demanded, interest starts running, and collection begins. Consent judgments can include terms a court would never order on its own, like deferred payments tied to income milestones, confidentiality provisions, or agreements to dismiss related claims. Both sides get more control over the outcome than they’d get from a judge’s unilateral decision.
Can You Undo Either One
Your odds of overturning a judgment depend heavily on which type you’re dealing with. The standards, the timelines, and the practical difficulty differ substantially.
Challenging a Default Judgment
To challenge a default judgment, you file a motion under Federal Rule 60(b) asking the court to vacate it. Courts generally consider whether you had a good reason for missing the deadline, whether you have a legitimate defense to the underlying claims, and whether the plaintiff would be unfairly harmed by reopening the case. Courts tend to favor resolving disputes on the merits when they can.
The recognized grounds for relief include:
- Mistake or excusable neglect, like a medical emergency or a genuine misunderstanding about the deadline.
- Improper service — you were never properly served, so you didn’t know about the lawsuit.
- Fraud or misconduct by the plaintiff in obtaining the judgment.
- Newly discovered evidence that couldn’t have been found earlier with reasonable effort.
- A void judgment, meaning the court lacked jurisdiction over you or the subject matter.
- Any other extraordinary reason justifying relief.
Timing is critical. For claims based on mistake, newly discovered evidence, or fraud, you must file within one year of the judgment. For other grounds, the rule requires only a “reasonable time,” but waiting months without explanation will sink your chances.5Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 60 – Relief from a Judgment or Order State courts set their own deadlines, and some are shorter.
Challenging a Consent Judgment
A consent judgment is a different problem. Because both parties agreed to the terms, courts treat the judgment more like a contract than a court ruling. Deciding the deal was bad, or realizing you could have negotiated better, gets you nowhere.
The narrow grounds mirror the reasons for voiding a contract:
- Fraud, coercion, or duress — one side was tricked or pressured into agreeing.
- Mutual mistake, where both parties were operating under a significant factual misunderstanding.
- Lack of authority, meaning the attorney who signed off didn’t actually have the client’s permission.
Courts start from the presumption that adults who signed a deal should be held to it. If you can’t point to something that undermined the voluntariness or fairness of the agreement itself, a court won’t step in just because the outcome feels worse than you expected.
What Happens After the Judgment
Both types of judgments carry the same enforcement tools once they’re entered. The consequences are worth understanding before you’re on the receiving end.
Post-Judgment Interest
In federal court, interest begins accruing from the date the judgment is entered. The rate is tied to the weekly average one-year Treasury bill yield for the week before the judgment date.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1961 – Interest The rate fluctuates — in recent years it has ranged from under 1% to over 5%. State courts set their own rates, and some impose fixed statutory rates that can be significantly higher. Interest accrues on the unpaid balance only, not on interest already accumulated.
This matters more for default judgments than consent judgments, because a consent judgment can build interest terms directly into the deal, including a lower rate, a grace period, or a waiver of interest on timely payments.
Judgment Liens
A money judgment can become a lien against the debtor’s real property, which prevents the property from being sold or refinanced without satisfying the judgment first. The process varies by jurisdiction. In most states, the creditor records or dockets the judgment with the appropriate county office.
Federal judgment liens last 20 years under federal law and can be renewed for one additional 20-year period if the creditor files a renewal notice before the original period expires.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 3201 – Judgment Liens State lien durations vary widely, with most falling between 5 and 20 years, and many states allow renewals. Filing fees to record a lien are modest, often between $10 and $70, but the lien itself can freeze your ability to sell property or tap home equity for years.
Collection Tools
Once a judgment is entered, the creditor can use post-judgment discovery to find your assets. Federal Rule 69 allows interrogatories, document requests, and depositions aimed at bank accounts, real property, income sources, and other assets.8Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 69 – Execution From there the creditor can pursue wage garnishment, bank account levies, and seizure of non-exempt property. These tools apply equally to default and consent judgments. Once the order is on the docket, the enforcement mechanisms are identical.
A Tax Trap in Consent Deals
Consent judgments that settle a debt for less than the full amount owed can create a tax bill that catches people off guard. When a creditor forgives $600 or more of debt, they’re required to report the canceled amount to the IRS on Form 1099-C.9Internal Revenue Service. About Form 1099-C, Cancellation of Debt The IRS treats the forgiven amount as taxable income unless an exception applies.
The most common exception is insolvency. If your total liabilities exceeded the fair market value of your total assets immediately before the cancellation, you can exclude the forgiven amount from income, up to the amount by which you were insolvent.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 108 – Income from Discharge of Indebtedness Other exclusions cover debt discharged in bankruptcy and certain qualified farm or real property business debt. If you sign a consent judgment that cuts what you owe by a significant amount, talk to a tax professional before the next filing deadline.
Credit Reporting
Since July 2017, the three major credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — have stopped including civil judgments on credit reports entirely. That change came out of the National Consumer Assistance Plan, a settlement between the bureaus and over 30 state attorneys general. Bankruptcies are now the only public record appearing on consumer credit reports.11Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A New Retrospective on the Removal of Public Records
That doesn’t make a judgment invisible. Judgments are still public records. Background check companies, landlords, and some lenders look beyond the standard credit report. A recorded judgment lien will show up in a title search when you try to sell or refinance. And if the underlying debt was already in collections before the lawsuit, that collection account may still appear on your credit report even though the judgment itself does not.