When lawyers run into a cognovit clause, they tend to assume one of two things: Minnesota abolished confession of judgment, or the clause in the note does the work. Both are wrong, and the second one is wrong in a way that matters.
Minnesota authorizes confession of judgment in two separate statutes. Section 548.22 lets a debtor put his own verified statement in front of the court administrator and have judgment entered against himself. Section 548.23 goes further — it lets an attorney file a plea of confession, on the strength of an instrument the debtor signed earlier. And § 548.23 has one clause that most drafted cognovit language can’t survive:
…but such instrument must be distinct from that containing the bond, contract, or other evidence of the demand for which judgment is confessed.
A confession-of-judgment paragraph sitting inside the promissory note is, by the statute’s own terms, not the instrument § 548.23 requires. The authorization has to be its own document.
Consumer credit has another layer, on the books since 1984 and rarely opened by state-court practitioners: 16 C.F.R. § 444.2(a)(1) makes it an unfair act or practice to so much as take or receive a consumer obligation containing a cognovit or confession-of-judgment provision. Not to enforce it. To take it.
This article is statute and rule only. Any example below is invented.
What does § 548.22 actually require?
A signed, verified statement from the defendant that recites the facts — filed with the court administrator, with no complaint and no summons.
The statute is one paragraph. Broken into its elements, a § 548.22 confession requires:
- A statement filed with the court administrator. Judgment “may be entered in the district court by confession and without action, upon filing with the court administrator a statement ….”
- Signed and verified by the defendant. Not by an agent, not by counsel.
- Authorizing entry of judgment for a specified sum. A range, a formula, or “all amounts due” is not a specified sum.
- A concise recital of the facts. For money, the writing “shall state concisely the facts out of which the debt arose, and show that the sum confessed is justly due or to become due”; for a contingent liability, the facts constituting it and that “the sum confessed does not exceed the same.”
- Ministerial entry. “The court administrator shall enter judgment for the amount specified, as in other cases, and shall attach the judgment to the statement, which shall constitute the judgment roll.”
Stop on that last one. In an ordinary case the judgment roll is assembled under § 548.08 from the summons, pleadings, motions, orders, and judgment. Under § 548.22 the roll is two pieces of paper. No complaint to test, no answer, no motion practice, nothing for a judge to look at before entry.
The statute ends with the consequence: “The judgment shall be final, and, unless special provision be made for a stay, execution may issue immediately.”
“Verified” carries real weight here. Under Minn. Stat. § 358.116, a document filed with a Minnesota court need not be notarized unless a court rule specifically requires it; signing constitutes “verification upon oath or affirmation” if the signature sits immediately below a declaration in substantially this language — “I declare under penalty of perjury that everything I have stated in this document is true and correct” — with the date and the county and state of signing noted. A person who signs knowing the document is false in a material respect “is guilty of perjury under section 609.48, even if the date, county, and state of signing are omitted from the document.” The verification isn’t a formality. It’s the hook a later challenge hangs on.
What is § 548.23, and why is it the section that matters?
It’s the true cognovit provision — and it carries the separate-instrument requirement.
Section 548.23 provides that judgment “in the cases mentioned in section 548.22 may also be entered in the district court in the manner therein provided, and with like effect, upon filing with the court administrator a plea of confession signed by an attorney of such court, together with an instrument signed by the debtor authorizing such confession ….”
So it takes two documents: a plea of confession signed by an attorney of the court, and a debtor-signed instrument authorizing it — and the instrument “must be distinct from that containing the bond, contract, or other evidence of the demand for which judgment is confessed.”
If you’re reviewing a loan file, that sentence is the whole ballgame. The usual drafting habit — a confession-of-judgment or warrant-of-attorney paragraph inside the note, the guaranty, or the settlement agreement — produces an authorization that isn’t distinct from the instrument evidencing the demand.
Section 548.23 also sets the filing fee: the same fee as a civil action, “except that if the amount of the judgment confessed is not greater than the jurisdictional limit of the conciliation court, the fee shall be in the amount of the filing fee for an action in conciliation court.” Those limits are in Minn. Stat. § 491A.01, subd. 3a(a) — $20,000 generally, $4,000 where the claim involves a consumer credit transaction as paragraph (b) of that subdivision defines it. See our conciliation court overview.
A third mechanism sits next door, and people often mix it up with these two. Section 548.24 permits parties to submit an agreed case without action — but it requires an affidavit that “the controversy is real, and that the proceedings are had in good faith,” and the court “shall hear and determine the case.” That’s adjudication by stipulation, not confession, and it’s the only one of the three that puts a judge between the paperwork and the judgment.
What happens the moment the judgment is entered?
Everything that follows an ordinary money judgment, with none of the wait.
Because § 548.22 makes the judgment final and permits execution immediately absent a stay, the whole post-judgment machine starts at once. Under § 548.09, subd. 1, docketing makes the judgment “a lien, in the amount unpaid, upon all real property in the county then or thereafter owned by the judgment debtor” — though not on registered land unless also recorded under §§ 508.63 and 508A.63 — and “[t]he judgment survives, and the lien continues, for ten years after its entry.” Thirty days later, § 550.011 authorizes an order compelling the debtor to disclose “the nature, amount, identity, and locations of all the debtor’s assets, liabilities, and personal earnings,” with a contempt warning on the order.
So a signature on a form can produce, without a lawsuit, a ten-year lien on real property and a compelled financial disclosure backed by contempt. See docketing and collecting a judgment and what remains exempt.
Can a confessed judgment be undone?
There are two routes, and they aren’t the same route.
The first is Minn. R. Civ. P. 60.02, which lets a court “relieve a party or the party’s legal representatives from a final judgment” on six enumerated grounds — clauses (a) through (f), running from mistake and excusable neglect through a void judgment to “[a]ny other reason justifying relief from the operation of the judgment.” The motion must be brought “within a reasonable time,” and for grounds (a), (b), and (c) “not more than one year after the judgment, order, or proceeding was entered or taken.” The rule preserves the court’s power “to entertain an independent action to relieve a party from a judgment, order, or proceeding.” We cover it in the default-judgment setting here.
Whether Rule 60.02 reaches a judgment entered “without action” under § 548.22 is a real open question, not a settled one. There was no civil action, no service, and arguably no “party” in the ordinary sense. We’d brief it. We wouldn’t assume it.
The second route is statutory, and it doesn’t depend on that answer. Minn. Stat. § 548.14 provides that any judgment obtained in a court of record “by means of perjury, subornation of perjury, or any fraudulent act, practice, or representation of the prevailing party, may be set aside in an action brought for that purpose by the aggrieved party in the same judicial district within three years after the discovery by the aggrieved party of such perjury or fraud.” The court may enjoin enforcement, command satisfaction, compel restoration of property, and “make such other or further order or judgment as justice shall require.”
See how well that fits. A § 548.22 statement must be verified and must show that the sum confessed is justly due. If it wasn’t, the verification was false, and § 548.14 runs three years from discovery, not from entry.
Is a confession of judgment lawful in consumer credit?
No — and the federal prohibition kicks in the moment the paper is taken, not when it’s filed.
The FTC’s Credit Practices Rule, 16 C.F.R. part 444, provides in § 444.2(a):
In connection with the extension of credit to consumers in or affecting commerce, as commerce is defined in the Federal Trade Commission Act, it is an unfair act or practice within the meaning of Section 5 of that Act for a lender or retail installment seller directly or indirectly to take or receive from a consumer an obligation that:
(1) Constitutes or contains a cognovit or confession of judgment (for purposes other than executory process in the State of Louisiana), warrant of attorney, or other waiver of the right to notice and the opportunity to be heard in the event of suit or process thereon.
The definitions draw the fence line: a “consumer” is “[a] natural person who seeks or acquires goods, services, or money for personal, family, or household use,” § 444.1(d), and an “obligation” is “[a]n agreement between a consumer and a lender or retail installment seller,” § 444.1(e). Three things come straight out of that text.
The violation is complete when the creditor takes the paper. The verbs are “take or receive,” and the prohibition reaches conduct “directly or indirectly.” A creditor that never files anything has already done the thing the Rule defines as unfair.
The clause doesn’t have to say “confession of judgment.” Paragraph (a)(1) sweeps in a “warrant of attorney” and any “other waiver of the right to notice and the opportunity to be heard in the event of suit or process thereon.” Read it next to its neighbors — (a)(2) on executory waivers of exemption, (a)(3) on wage assignments, (a)(4) on nonpossessory security interests in household goods — because a clause drafted to dodge one frequently lands in another.
Commercial credit is untouched. A confession of judgment in a business loan or a personal guaranty of a business obligation is outside part 444 entirely — and §§ 548.22 and 548.23 draw no consumer/commercial line at all.
Which creditors are outside the Credit Practices Rule?
Depository institutions — and the rules that used to cover them are gone from the Code of Federal Regulations.
Sections 444.1(a) and (b) define “lender” and “retail installment seller” by reference to persons operating “within the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission.” That jurisdiction is bounded by 15 U.S.C. § 45(a)(2), which empowers the Commission to act against persons, partnerships, and corporations “except banks, savings and loan institutions described in section 57a(f)(3) of this title, Federal credit unions described in section 57a(f)(4) of this title, common carriers … [and] air carriers and foreign air carriers subject to part A of subtitle VII of title 49,” along with certain Packers and Stockyards Act entities.
Parallel prohibitions for depository institutions used to live in the banking agencies’ own rules. Today, 12 C.F.R. part 227 does not appear in the Code of Federal Regulations, and 12 C.F.R. part 706 appears as “[RESERVED]”.
So the federal prohibition binds a narrower group of creditors than a first read of “the Credit Practices Rule” suggests — and a missing parallel rule isn’t a safe harbor. Other unfairness authority, state consumer-protection law, and the limits in §§ 548.22 and 548.23 all work independently.
Does the Rule give a borrower a claim?
Nothing in part 444 creates one. The Rule declares the conduct “an unfair act or practice within the meaning of Section 5” of the FTC Act, § 444.2(a), and part 444 provides no remedy, no damages provision, and no enforcement section.
It does contain § 444.5, a state-exemption mechanism: on application by a state agency, the FTC may determine that a state requirement “affords a level of protection to consumers that is substantially equivalent to, or greater than, the protection afforded by this rule,” in which case the corresponding provision “will not be in effect in that State to the extent specified.” This article doesn’t assert that any such determination exists as to Minnesota.
So for a consumer’s lawyer, the Rule matters indirectly: it’s a federal standard of conduct that informs a state unfair-practices theory, and it’s a reason the clause never should have been in the document. See our Consumer Fraud Act and Deceptive Trade Practices Act guide and debt collection practices overview.
A generic illustration
What follows is invented and doesn’t describe any actual person, transaction, or dispute.
A fictional supplier, Northgate Supply Co., sells a machine to a fictional buyer, Alder Fabrication LLC, on a deferred-payment note. The note contains a paragraph headed “Confession of Judgment” authorizing any attorney to appear and confess judgment for the unpaid balance. You can say three things without knowing anything else:
- Part 444 doesn’t apply. The buyer isn’t a natural person acquiring goods for personal, family, or household use. § 444.1(d).
- Section 548.23 is still a problem. The authorization sits inside the note, and the statute requires it to be “distinct from that containing the bond, contract, or other evidence of the demand.”
- Section 548.22 is off the table on this paper. There’s no statement signed and verified by the defendant reciting the facts and showing a specified sum justly due.
Change one fact — make the buyer a natural person financing a household appliance — and it becomes a federal problem: the supplier committed an unfair act under § 444.2(a)(1) when it took the note, whether or not it ever used the clause.
Four practice notes
- Read the clause against § 548.23’s separate-instrument requirement first. That alone disposes of most cognovit language before you reach any other question.
- On the consumer side, run § 444.1(d), then 15 U.S.C. § 45(a)(2). Personal, family, or household use is the first gate. The creditor’s identity is the second.
- If a confessed judgment has been entered, calendar both clocks. Rule 60.02’s one-year outer limit for grounds (a), (b), and (c) runs from entry; § 548.14’s three years run from discovery of the perjury or fraud.
- Don’t draft a confession of judgment into any consumer document. Taking it violates the Rule. No version of that clause improves a consumer creditor’s position.
Madgett Law, LLC represents Minnesota consumers and small businesses in debt collection defense, judgment and post-judgment disputes, and consumer-protection claims, and advises businesses on the enforceability of credit documents. If a judgment has been entered against you without a lawsuit, or someone’s asked you to sign a document authorizing one, send us a message or call 612-470-6529.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 548.22 (elements of a confession of judgment — statement filed with the court administrator, signed and verified by the defendant, specified sum, concise recital of the facts out of which the debt arose, judgment roll consisting of the statement and judgment, finality, and immediate execution absent a stay); § 548.23 (plea of confession signed by an attorney together with a debtor-signed authorizing instrument; requirement that the instrument “be distinct from that containing the bond, contract, or other evidence of the demand”; filing fee, including the conciliation-court fee alternative); § 548.24 (submission of an agreed case without action; good-faith affidavit; court determination); § 548.08 (composition of the judgment roll in an ordinary action, for contrast); § 548.09, subds. 1–2 (docketing; ten-year lien on real property; registered-land recording under §§ 508.63 and 508A.63; judgment creditor’s affidavit); § 548.14 (action to set aside a judgment procured by perjury or fraud, within three years after discovery; available relief); § 550.011 (judgment debtor disclosure after 30 days, contempt notice); § 358.116 (signature below a penalty-of-perjury declaration constitutes verification upon oath or affirmation for documents filed with a Minnesota court; perjury under § 609.48 for a knowingly false document); § 491A.01, subd. 3a(a) (conciliation court jurisdictional limits — $20,000 generally; $4,000 for a consumer credit transaction) — all from the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes, 2025 Minnesota Statutes. Minn. R. Civ. P. 60.02, cls. (a)–(f) and the concluding paragraph (grounds for relief from a final judgment; “within a reasonable time” and the one-year outer limit for (a), (b), and (c); preservation of an independent action) — Minnesota Rules of Civil Procedure as published by the Office of the Revisor of Statutes. 16 C.F.R. part 444 (FTC Credit Practices Rule): § 444.1(a)–(b) (lender and retail installment seller, “within the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission”), § 444.1(d) (consumer), § 444.1(e) (obligation), § 444.1(f) (creditor), § 444.2(a)(1) (unfair to take or receive a consumer obligation constituting or containing a cognovit or confession of judgment, warrant of attorney, or other waiver of the right to notice and the opportunity to be heard), § 444.2(a)(2)–(4) (companion prohibitions), and § 444.5(a) (state exemption on FTC determination of substantially equivalent or greater protection) — eCFR, title 16, part 444. 15 U.S.C. § 45(a)(2) (scope of Federal Trade Commission authority; exclusion of banks, savings and loan institutions described in 15 U.S.C. § 57a(f)(3), and Federal credit unions described in § 57a(f)(4)). Status of 12 C.F.R. part 227 (not present in the current Code of Federal Regulations) and 12 C.F.R. part 706 (“[RESERVED]”) — eCFR, title 12, as of September 30, 2026.
This article is general legal information about Minnesota and federal law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. It does not describe any actual case, transaction, or client; the illustration is invented. Whether any provision discussed here applies to a particular document depends on facts this article does not address. No outcome is promised or implied.