A money judgment in an eviction case is a court order setting the exact dollar amount a former tenant owes the landlord for unpaid rent, property damage, and related losses from the tenancy. It converts the debt into a legally enforceable obligation that survives the tenant’s move-out and unlocks collection tools like wage garnishment, bank levies, and property liens. Winning it is one thing. Collecting on it is often much harder, and several forces, including bankruptcy, exempt income, and the judgment’s expiration date, can quietly empty it out.
What the Judgment Can Cover
Back rent is almost always the largest piece. Courts calculate it through the date of the final order, so the number keeps growing as the case drags on. It usually includes the base monthly rent from the lease plus a daily rate for the holdover period after the notice to vacate expired. Unpaid utilities the tenant was contractually responsible for get added too.
Property damage beyond normal wear and tear is recoverable, but only at the cost of restoring the unit to its prior condition. Replacing carpet ruined by pet stains counts. Upgrading to higher-end flooring than what was there does not. Contractor estimates and actual repair invoices carry far more weight than a landlord’s own guess.
Late fees are recoverable only when the lease spells them out, and many states cap them at a modest percentage of monthly rent. Filing fees are almost always added. Attorney fees can be included when the lease has a fee-shifting clause, and courts review whether the amount is reasonable.
Post-Judgment Interest
Interest begins accruing on the unpaid balance as soon as the judgment is entered. In federal court, the rate equals the weekly average one-year constant maturity Treasury yield published by the Federal Reserve for the week before the judgment date, compounded annually.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1961 – Interest State courts set their own rates, which vary widely. Over years of collection, the interest can add meaningfully to the total.
Security Deposit Offset
The tenant’s security deposit must be credited against the judgment. Nearly every state requires a written, itemized accounting showing exactly how the deposit was applied, with deadlines that typically run from 14 to 60 days after move-out. A landlord who skips that accounting can lose the right to keep any part of the deposit, which turns a clean money claim into a side fight over whether the landlord followed the rules.
What Can Shrink or Kill the Claim
Tenants don’t have to stay quiet, and a handful of defenses come up repeatedly in contested hearings. A landlord who hasn’t thought about them before court is at a serious disadvantage.
Failure to Mitigate
Most states now require landlords to make reasonable efforts to re-rent the unit instead of letting it sit empty and billing the former tenant for every remaining month on the lease. Reasonable effort means marketing the unit the way any other vacancy would be marketed. You don’t have to accept unqualified applicants, but you can’t leave the unit dark and run up the meter.
Courts will reduce the judgment by the rent a replacement tenant would have paid. If the unit sat empty four months but could have been re-rented after one, the landlord recovers one month of lost rent. Records of advertising, showings, and applications protect against this attack.
Other Common Tenant Defenses
- Improper notice. If the eviction notice was defective or served incorrectly, the case can collapse entirely. In many states, notice is jurisdictional, meaning the court has no authority to proceed without it.
- Habitability problems. A tenant who lived with a broken heater, mold, or plumbing failures can argue the landlord breached first. Courts may reduce the rent owed or award a counterclaim that offsets the judgment.
- Retaliation. If the eviction followed closely after the tenant complained to a housing authority or asked for repairs, many states create a legal presumption of retaliation within a set window.
- Waiver. Accepting partial rent after serving the notice to vacate can waive the right to evict on that basis and unravel the money claim with it.
Evidence and Where to File
The signed lease, an itemized rent ledger, before-and-after photos, and contractor estimates or invoices are the backbone of the case. The lease establishes the rent, late-fee provisions, and any attorney-fee clause. The ledger turns the claim from an assertion into arithmetic the judge can verify. Dated move-in and move-out photos make damage claims concrete. Vague damage estimates from memory get a frosty reception.
Where you file depends on the total claim. Small claims courts handle lower-dollar disputes with simplified procedures and faster timelines, but caps vary dramatically by state, from as low as $1,500 to as high as $25,000. Larger claims go to general civil court, which is slower and more formal and usually requires an attorney. Some landlords trim their claim to fit under the small claims cap to save on legal costs. For large judgments involving months of unpaid rent plus serious damage, civil court is unavoidable.
Collecting After You Win
The judgment is a piece of paper that says someone owes you money. It does not put money in your account, and the court will not collect for you. Every enforcement step is on the landlord to initiate, often at additional cost.
Locating the Tenant and Their Assets
Before you can garnish wages or levy a bank account, you need to know where the tenant works and banks. Public records searches of property records, court filings, and vehicle registrations can turn up addresses and employment. Skip-tracing services aggregate these databases for a fee.
A more powerful option is a debtor’s examination, sometimes called a supplemental proceeding. The court orders the former tenant to appear and answer questions under oath about employment, bank accounts, real estate, and other assets. The questions are limited to collection; the tenant cannot relitigate whether the debt is valid. A tenant who fails to appear after proper service can be held in contempt and have a bench warrant issued.
Wage Garnishment
Wage garnishment directs the tenant’s employer to withhold part of each paycheck. Federal law caps the garnishable amount at the lesser of 25 percent of disposable earnings or the amount by which weekly disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour as of 2026, making the protected floor $217.50 per week).2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1673 – Restriction on Garnishment A tenant earning $217.50 or less in disposable weekly pay cannot be garnished at all. Some states set lower caps, and the more protective limit applies.3U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 30: Wage Garnishment Protections of the Consumer Credit Protection Act
Bank Account Levies
A bank levy freezes funds in the tenant’s account and transfers them to the landlord. The process starts with a writ of execution from the court that issued the judgment, which is then served on the bank. The bank freezes the account, and after any applicable exemption review period, hands over the available funds. You have to know which bank, which is one reason the debtor’s examination matters.
Property Liens
Recording a judgment lien against the debtor’s real property blocks a sale or refinance until the debt is cleared. This is a long game. It may produce nothing for years, then pay out in full when the tenant eventually tries to sell. Recording fees are generally modest.
Income That Can’t Be Touched
Some income is off-limits regardless of how large the judgment is. Federal law protects Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, veterans’ benefits, federal retirement and disability payments, military pay and survivor benefits, federal student aid, and FEMA assistance from garnishment by private creditors.4Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Can a Debt Collector Take My Federal Benefits?
When a bank receives a garnishment order, it must review the account for direct deposits of protected federal benefits from the preceding two months and leave that amount alone. The automatic protection applies only to direct deposits. If benefits come in by paper check and are deposited manually, the bank may freeze the full account and force the tenant to prove the funds are exempt.4Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Can a Debt Collector Take My Federal Benefits? A bank levy against a tenant whose only income is Social Security will usually produce little or nothing.
Credit Reports: Mostly a Non-Issue
A common assumption is that the judgment will tank the tenant’s credit and pressure them into paying. That’s largely outdated. Since July 2017, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion have excluded civil judgments from consumer credit reports under the National Consumer Assistance Plan. Public records had to include a name, address, and Social Security number or date of birth and be refreshed every 90 days to appear, and civil judgments almost never meet those criteria.5Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Removal of Public Records Has Little Effect on Consumers’ Credit Scores The judgment is still a public court record and may show up on tenant-screening background checks, but the credit-score leverage is gone.
How Long the Judgment Lasts
Money judgments expire. Most states set a window of five to twenty years, with ten years the most common. If the debt is still unpaid as the deadline approaches, the landlord has to file a renewal application to extend collection, usually for another full term. Miss the deadline and the judgment becomes unenforceable, even if the tenant finally has the money.
Renewal is routine, but easy to forget. A landlord who gave up on collection years ago should still calendar the expiration. A tenant who was judgment-proof at 25 may own a home at 35.
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is the biggest threat to collection. Unpaid rent is general unsecured debt. In a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, it’s typically discharged entirely, wiping out the claim. Chapter 13 doesn’t eliminate the debt but folds it into a court-supervised repayment plan where the landlord may see only pennies on the dollar.
Narrow exceptions exist. A lease obtained through fraud may produce a nondischargeable debt, and rent that accrues after the filing date isn’t discharged. For the ordinary nonpayment eviction judgment, bankruptcy is the end of the road. Because there’s no way to stop a tenant from filing, collection should move promptly rather than sit on the shelf.
Taxes on What You Can’t Collect
Most individual landlords use cash-basis accounting and generally cannot deduct unpaid rent as a bad debt. The reason is simple: cash-basis landlords only report rent when they actually receive it, so rent that was never collected was never income, and there’s nothing to write off.6Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 453, Bad Debt Deduction
Accrual-basis landlords may have a different result, because they recognize rental income when it’s due regardless of whether it comes in. If accrual-basis rent was reported as income and later became uncollectible, it can qualify as a business bad debt in the year the debt becomes worthless, provided the landlord took reasonable steps to collect.6Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 453, Bad Debt Deduction A judgment that produced nothing after garnishment attempts and a debtor’s examination helps establish worthlessness.
Repair costs for tenant-caused damage are deductible as ordinary rental expenses in the year they’re paid, regardless of whether the judgment is ever collected. That deduction is separate from the bad debt question and available to any landlord.