Freezing the assets of a defendant after getting a judgment is a critical component of any successful judgment collection. North Carolina Gen. Stats. 1`-358 permits a judgment creditor (the plaintiff) to obtain a court order to forbid any "transfer or other disposition of, or any interference with, the property of the judgment debtor not exempt from execution."
The broad language of this section is designed to capture all non-exempt property (that is, property that the Defendant is not able exempt from execution under NC Gen Stat 1C-1601) and preserve it so that the Plaintiff may have the Sheriff seize it to satisfy the judgment.
One word of caution with this is that each county has a different policy on handling these orders. You will want to know the tendencies of the Clerk of Court and the Senior Resident Superior Court judge in the county where you attempt to seek a 1-358 order. In addition, in certain instances, you can run into a situation where the properyt you are seeking to freeze is, itself, subject to a bankruptcy proceeding. For example, you may have a judgment against a corporation or LLC that is 100% owned by an individual person. If that person is in bankruptcy, they will argue that their shares in that business are part of the bankrtupcy estate. But what if the company itself owns separate property?
We have run into this situation before, and I can say that while we did prevail, it is not something you would want to try yourself (if you are representing yourself) or as an attorney inexperienced in these types of matters. You do run the risk of a trustee moving for sanctions for violating an automatic stay (which has happened to us), and must be prepared to navigate a narrow and tricky, trap-laden path to success. A win is there to be had, but again, I urge caution in these situations.
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