Say a card company gets a $20,000 judgment against you, and you don’t pay a dime for ten years.
In Minnesota, if the 2026 rate held all ten years, it’s worth $28,000. In Texas, on the state’s ordinary judgment rate for November 2026, it’s worth $39,343.03. And if the card agreement carried an interest rate of 18 percent or more, a Texas judgment on it can be worth $104,676.71.
Same debt. Same decade. Texas is the state whose constitution says “No current wages for personal service shall ever be subject to garnishment,” except for court-ordered child support and spousal maintenance, Tex. Const. art. XVI, § 28, and it will let your judgment compound at up to 18 percent a year. It guards your paycheck and lets the balance run.
This is part of the series on whether Minnesota or Texas actually protects the person who owes. The series starts with wages at /news/minnesota-vs-texas-wage-garnishment-571-922/, where Texas wins going away. On interest, it’s not close the other way. On how long a judgment lives, the two states built completely different clocks.
Texas lets the card contract ride past the judgment
Texas has two judgment interest rates, and which one you get depends on the paperwork behind the debt.
If the judgment is on a contract that sets an interest rate, it earns post-judgment interest at “the lesser of” the contract rate, “which may be a variable rate”, or “18 percent a year.” Tex. Fin. Code § 304.002. Everything else gets the state rate in § 304.003. On the 15th of each month the consumer credit commissioner sets the rate “to be applied to a money judgment rendered during the succeeding calendar month”: the prime rate, but never below 5 percent and never above 15. § 304.003(b)–(c). The Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner’s Texas Credit Letter of October 21, 2026 put that rate at 7.00 percent for judgments rendered November 1 through 30, 2026.
Then the part that does the damage: “Postjudgment interest on a judgment of a court in this state compounds annually.” § 304.006. The judgment has to state its rate on its face. § 304.001.
Run the numbers. $20,000 at 7 percent, compounded once a year for ten years, is $39,343.03. At 18 percent it’s $104,676.71. That’s $84,676.71 of interest on a $20,000 judgment, and the debtor never borrowed another dime.
Minnesota’s judgment rate comes from the statute, and the card agreement isn’t in it
Minnesota’s judgment interest statute picks the rate by the size of the judgment. A judgment of $50,000 or less earns “simple interest per annum” at a rate the state court administrator sets each December from the one-year Treasury yield, “rounded to the nearest one percent, or four percent, whichever is greater”. Minn. Stat. § 549.09, subd. 1(c)(1)(i). Over $50,000, for a judgment finally entered on or after August 1, 2009 and outside the government and family-court categories, it’s “ten percent per year until paid.” Id., subd. 1(c)(2); 2009 Minn. Laws ch. 83, art. 2, § 35. Interest runs “on the unpaid balance of the judgment or award from the time that it is entered or made until it is paid, at the annual rate provided in subdivision 1.” Id., subd. 2. I went through how the court administrator’s figure is set and published at /news/minnesota-prejudgment-interest-on-verdicts/.
Notice what isn’t in it. The only “Except as otherwise provided by contract” language in § 549.09 sits in subdivision 1(b), the paragraph about interest before the verdict. The paragraphs that set the rate after judgment don’t mention a contract rate.
For 2026, the arithmetic is easy. The statute tells the administrator to use the one-year constant-maturity Treasury yield “for the most recent calendar month” before December 20. The Treasury Department’s own daily one-year yields for November 2025 ran from 3.60 to 3.71 percent. That rounds to 4, and 4 is also the floor. The State Court Administrator’s 2026 notice says the same: 4 percent. So a $20,000 Minnesota judgment earns 4 percent simple in 2026, $800 for the year. The rate is reset for each calendar year, and 4 percent is as low as it goes.
A Texas consumer judgment on an 18-percent card agreement earns four and a half times the Minnesota rate, and then earns interest on the interest. A Texan is safer at the employer’s payroll office. A Minnesotan is safer at the clerk’s counter.
One Minnesota rule worth knowing if you’ve been paying something. A creditor who’s received payments after judgment, other than through an execution levy with a proper return, has to file “an affidavit of partial satisfaction” before it asks the court administrator for an execution, listing the dates and amounts and how each payment was split among costs, interest, and principal. § 549.09, subd. 1(c)(3). If a collector’s numbers don’t match your bank statements, that affidavit is where to look.
A Minnesota judgment dies on schedule
Minnesota’s clock is simple and it doesn’t care what the creditor does in the meantime. “The judgment survives, and the lien continues, for ten years after its entry.” Minn. Stat. § 548.09, subd. 1. And “No action shall be maintained upon a judgment or decree of a court of the United States, or of any state or territory thereof, unless begun within ten years after the entry of such judgment.” Minn. Stat. § 541.04.
Docketing doesn’t move that date, and neither does a levy or a garnishment. Outside child support, the only way to buy more time is to sue on the judgment inside the ten years and get a new one. I covered entry, docketing, and renewal in detail at /news/minnesota-collecting-a-judgment-docketing-liens/, so I’ll keep this short.
The one thing a debtor needs to hear: renewal isn’t a one-shot deal. The Minnesota Supreme Court held that “Minnesota Statutes § 541.04 does not limit an action on a judgment to one renewal.” Dahlin v. Kroening, 796 N.W.2d 503, 509 (Minn. 2011). The court admitted “The potential for abuse with multiple judgment renewals is obvious.” Id. at 508. It left the fix to the Legislature. A judgment can live as long as a creditor keeps filing lawsuits on time.
A Texas judgment doesn’t die. It goes to sleep.
Texas measures from a different event. Not entry. The last writ.
(a) If a writ of execution is not issued within 10 years after the rendition of a judgment of a court of record or a justice court, the judgment is dormant and execution may not be issued on the judgment unless it is revived.
(b) If a writ of execution is issued within 10 years after rendition of a judgment but a second writ is not issued within 10 years after issuance of the first writ, the judgment becomes dormant. A second writ may be issued at any time within 10 years after issuance of the first writ.
(c) This section does not apply to a judgment for child support under the Family Code.
— Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 34.001
So a Texas creditor who gets a writ issued in year nine has, under subsection (b), until year nineteen to get a second one. A Minnesota creditor who levies in year nine still loses the judgment in year ten unless it has sued on it.
“Issued” has teeth, though. A San Antonio court held that issuing a writ “means more than the mere clerical preparation and attestation of the writ, and requires that it should be delivered to an officer for enforcement.” Hawthorne v. Guenther, 461 S.W.3d 218, 221 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 2015, pet. denied) (quoting Cotten v. Stanford, 147 S.W.2d 930, 933 (Tex. Civ. App.—Amarillo 1941, no writ)). A writ that was prepared but came back with a blank sheriff’s return didn’t count. Id. at 221–22.
And a sleeping judgment can be woken up. “A dormant judgment may be revived by scire facias or by an action of debt brought not later than the second anniversary of the date that the judgment becomes dormant.” Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 31.006. Scire facias is exactly as old as it sounds. In Hawthorne, the judgment had gone dormant, but the creditor had intervened in another lawsuit inside the two years seeking his debt, and that counted as an action of debt. The judgment was revived. 461 S.W.3d at 223.
Here’s the Texas case a Minnesota debt buyer should read. On April 22, 2009, a company called LHR, Inc. took a default judgment against a Texas couple. Nobody kept it alive, and it went dormant. In July 2020 a different company, two assignments down the line, asked the court to revive it. Its proof of ownership was two assignment documents, one transferring “accounts receivable” and the other “accounts”. The Waco court of appeals noted that “the two documents provided by Pharus do not make reference to a judgment, much less the judgment in this cause by style, cause number, or name of debtor”, held that the company “failed to affirmatively demonstrate its standing”, and dismissed its application. Pharus Funding, LLC v. Solley, No. 10-21-00173-CV, slip op. at 2, 4, 6 (Tex. App.—Waco Mar. 15, 2023, pet. denied). The chief justice dissented.
That’s the same chain-of-title problem Minnesota wrote into its default-judgment rules for debt buyers in 2013, which require “a valid and complete chain of assignment of the debt from the original creditor to the party requesting judgment” before a default on an assigned consumer debt. 2013 Minn. Laws ch. 104, § 3 (enacting Minn. Stat. § 548.101(a)(5)). Texas got there through standing.
The lien runs on its own ten-year clock in Texas
In Texas, a judgment becomes a lien on land when an abstract of it is recorded and indexed in the county. A “first or subsequent abstract of judgment,” recorded “if the judgment is not then dormant,” is a lien on the debtor’s nonexempt real property in that county, including property acquired later. Tex. Prop. Code § 52.001. The lien “continues for 10 years following the date of recording and indexing the abstract, except that if the judgment becomes dormant during that period the lien ceases to exist.” § 52.006(a).
Read those two together. A Texas creditor can record a fresh abstract as long as the judgment is awake. Let it go dormant and the lien dies with it.
There’s one more wrinkle, and it’s my favorite in the Texas code. A judgment in favor of the state or a state agency “does not become dormant”, and its lien can run for 20 years and be renewed for 20 more. § 52.006(b). Texas trusts the state’s judgments more than yours.
Minnesota’s lien, by contrast, runs “From the time of docketing” and ends when the judgment does, ten years after entry. § 548.09, subd. 1. Bring a Texas judgment to Minnesota and those ten years are measured from “the original date of entry in the foreign jurisdiction”, Minn. Stat. § 548.27, which I covered at /news/minnesota-enforcing-out-of-state-judgments-548-26/.
So which one is harder to outrun?
Depends what you’re outrunning.
If it’s time, Texas is harder. A Texas creditor who gets a writ into an officer’s hands inside the first ten years has ten more under § 34.001(b) to get a second one out, and even a lapse leaves two years to revive. In Minnesota the creditor has to file a whole new lawsuit before the tenth anniversary of entry, every time.
If it’s the balance, Minnesota is far kinder. A small Minnesota judgment earns simple interest at a rate pegged to Treasuries with a 4 percent floor. A Texas judgment on a card agreement can compound at up to 18 percent.
And neither state lets a judgment quietly expire if the creditor is paying attention. In Minnesota, Dahlin says the lawsuits can keep coming. In Texas, a second writ or a timely revival does the same job. Neither clock helps you against a creditor who owns a calendar.
How do I find out whether there’s a judgment against me?
Look it up. Minnesota Court Records Online (MCRO), the Judicial Branch’s public access site, has a Judgment Search that, in the court’s own words, lets users “search by debtor name for judgment details, including any satisfactions for docketed money judgments.” It covers Minnesota’s state district courts.
A few things that trip people up:
- The judgment might be older than you think. The ten years run from entry, not from when you found out. A default judgment entered while you were at a different address is still a judgment. Whether it was properly entered is a separate fight, and I covered default judgments at /news/minnesota-default-judgment-rule-55/.
- A conciliation court judgment becomes a district court judgment only when it’s filed there. “Once filed in district court the judgment becomes and is enforceable as a judgment of district court,” and it gets docketed once the creditor files an affidavit of identification. Minn. Gen. R. Prac. 518(a).
- A judgment is also how the disclosure-order path starts. Once one’s been docketed for 30 days, the creditor’s lawyer can order you to disclose your assets, and ignoring that order is how a Minnesotan ends up facing a contempt citation over a debt. I walked through that at /news/minnesota-no-imprisonment-for-debt-art-1-sec-12/.
What should a paid judgment look like on the record?
Satisfied, on the docket, with a date. If yours doesn’t, it isn’t finished.
Section 548.15 tells the court administrator to “enter the satisfaction in the judgment roll, and note it, with its date, on the docket.” Minn. Stat. § 548.15, subd. 1. A judgment is satisfied on the record when one of these is filed:
- an execution satisfied, to the extent the sheriff’s return says;
- a certificate of satisfaction signed and acknowledged by the creditor;
- the same certificate signed and acknowledged by the creditor’s attorney, unless the attorney’s authority was revoked and recorded;
- a court order, made on motion, requiring a certificate of satisfaction or directing that satisfaction be entered without one; or
- for a judgment docketed on transcript in another county, a certified copy of one of those from the original court.
Id., subd. 1(1)–(5).
And the creditor has a deadline. When a judgment is satisfied other than by an execution return, “the judgment creditor or the creditor’s attorney shall file a certificate of it with the court administrator within ten days after the satisfaction or within 30 days of payment by check or other noncertified funds.” Id., subd. 1.
Two details matter for old consumer judgments. The attorney’s power to sign a satisfaction doesn’t last forever: “the authority of an attorney to satisfy a judgment ceases at the end of six years from its entry”. Id., subd. 1(3). On a judgment more than six years old, the law firm that won it can’t sign the satisfaction on its own authority anymore. And § 548.15 doesn’t put a price on a creditor who drags its feet. Its answer is clause (4), the motion. If you’ve paid and the docket still shows the judgment open, that’s the tool.
Texas does it through the land records. Satisfaction “may be shown by recordation of” an execution return showing the details of the judgment, or a release “signed by the party entitled to receive payment of the judgment or by that person’s agent or attorney of record and that is acknowledged or proven for record in the manner required for deeds.” Tex. Prop. Code § 52.005.
Pay a judgment and walk away, and in either state you may find it still sitting there when you try to refinance.
Madgett Law, LLC
Madgett Law, LLC works both sides of Minnesota judgment enforcement: docketing and transferring judgments, running renewal actions before the ten-year date, and, for people on the other end, testing whether a judgment was validly entered and what of theirs a creditor can reach. We also work with people who’ve been sued, gotten a judgment, and started hearing from collectors, going through what’s actually possible and negotiating where that’s the right move. Read about that side on our bankruptcy avoidance page. If you’ve found a judgment you didn’t know about, or one you paid that still shows open, send us a message.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 548.09, subd. 1 (lien from docketing; judgment survives and lien continues ten years after entry). Minn. Stat. § 548.27 (foreign judgment; date of entry is the original date of entry in the foreign jurisdiction). Minn. Gen. R. Prac. 518(a) (conciliation court judgment filed in district court becomes enforceable as a district court judgment and is docketed). Minn. Stat. § 541.04 (action on a judgment must be begun within ten years after entry). Minnesota State Court Administrator, 2026 Interest Rates on State Court Judgments and Arbitration Awards (mncourts.gov, State Court Administrator’s Office, Interest Rates page) (4% for calendar year 2026; 10% for judgments exceeding $50,000 finally entered on or after August 1, 2009, with the stated exceptions). 2009 Minn. Laws ch. 83, art. 2, § 35 (ten percent rate for judgments over $50,000; effective date). Minn. Stat. § 549.09, subd. 1(b) (preverdict interest; “Except as otherwise provided by contract”), subd. 1(c)(1)(i) (judgments of $50,000 or less: simple interest; rate set by the state court administrator from the one-year constant maturity Treasury yield for the most recent calendar month, rounded to the nearest one percent, or four percent, whichever is greater), subd. 1(c)(2) (over $50,000: ten percent per year), subd. 1(c)(3) (affidavit of partial satisfaction before execution), subd. 2 (accrual on unpaid balance from entry until paid). Minn. Stat. § 548.15, subd. 1 (entry of satisfaction; five methods; attorney’s authority to satisfy ceases six years after entry; certificate due within ten days, or 30 days for payment by check or other noncertified funds). Minn. Stat. § 550.011 (disclosure order after 30 days docketed). 2013 Minn. Laws ch. 104, § 3 (enacting Minn. Stat. § 548.101; para. (a)(5), chain of assignment). Dahlin v. Kroening, 796 N.W.2d 503, 508–09 (Minn. 2011). U.S. Department of the Treasury, Daily Treasury Par Yield Curve Rates, 2025 (1 Yr column, November 2025 entries). Minnesota Judicial Branch, Minnesota Court Records Online (MCRO) home page (Judgment Search). Tex. Const. art. XVI, § 28 (no garnishment of current wages except court-ordered child support and spousal maintenance). Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 34.001(a)–(c) (dormancy; second writ; child support excluded); § 31.006 (revival by scire facias or action of debt within two years of dormancy). Tex. Prop. Code § 52.001 (first or subsequent abstract is a lien if the judgment is not then dormant); § 52.005 (recorded satisfaction); § 52.006(a) (lien lasts ten years from recording and ends on dormancy), (b) (state judgments do not become dormant; 20-year lien, renewable once). Tex. Fin. Code § 304.001 (judgment must state its rate); § 304.002 (contract judgments: lesser of contract rate or 18 percent); § 304.003(b)–(c) (monthly rate; prime, 5 percent floor, 15 percent cap); § 304.006 (annual compounding) (Texas Constitution and Statutes, Texas Legislative Council). Texas Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner, Texas Credit Letter, vol. 46, no. 17 (Oct. 21, 2026) (postjudgment interest rate 7.00 percent, 11/01/26–11/30/26). Hawthorne v. Guenther, 461 S.W.3d 218, 221–23 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 2015, pet. denied); Pharus Funding, LLC v. Solley, No. 10-21-00173-CV, slip op. at 2, 4, 6 (Tex. App.—Waco Mar. 15, 2023, pet. denied). This article is general legal information about Minnesota law. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and no particular outcome is promised or implied.