A judgment is a piece of paper saying someone owes you money. It is not money, and it does not tell you where any money is. Everything a creditor does after entry aims at property the creditor has to identify first, and identifying it is a different body of law from taking it.
Here is what catches creditors: the order for examination under Minn. Stat. § 575.02 is not available to a creditor who has merely won. It is available to a creditor who has already tried and failed. The section conditions the entire remedy on an execution that “is returned unsatisfied, in whole or in part” — and not just any execution. It has to have gone to the sheriff of a particular county.
That is a strange design until you see what the chapter hands over once the predicate is met. This is not a deposition statute. The judge taking the examination can order property turned over, appoint a receiver, freeze transfers, and — under a separate section — have the debtor arrested and brought in.
What has to happen before a creditor can get an order for examination?
An execution has to have issued to the correct sheriff and come back unsatisfied. Section 575.02 states the condition and the entitlement in one sentence:
When an execution against property of the judgment debtor, or of any one of several debtors in the same judgment, is issued to the sheriff of the county where the debtor resides, or, if the debtor does not reside in the state, to the sheriff of a county where the judgment roll, or a transcript of a judgment, is filed, is returned unsatisfied, in whole or in part, the judgment creditor is entitled to an order from the judge of the district court of the district where the judgment was originally docketed or is subsequently filed, requiring the judgment debtor, or, if a corporation, any officer thereof, to appear and answer concerning the property, at a time and place specified in the order, before a judge or a referee therein named.
The county requirement is narrower than the execution statute. Under § 550.07, “[w]hen the execution is against the personal property or money of the judgment debtor, it may be issued to the sheriff of any county from the district court where the judgment was originally docketed.” Chapter 550 lets you send the writ anywhere. Section 575.02 counts only the writ sent to the county where the debtor resides — or, for a nonresident debtor, a county where the judgment roll or a transcript is on file.
“Returned unsatisfied” has a timetable attached. Under § 550.051, subd. 1, “[t]he writ of execution expires 180 days after its issuance by the court administrator,” and “[u]pon expiration of the writ or full satisfaction of the judgment, if earlier, the officer shall make a full inventory of the property levied on and return it with the execution.” The same subdivision warns that “[a] levy that is served with a writ of execution that has expired is void.”
“Is entitled to” is not discretionary. Once the predicate exists, the statute does not say the judge may order the examination.
Can’t a creditor just ask the debtor what he owns?
Yes — and there are two cheaper routes that require no failed execution at all. Confusing them with chapter 575 is the common mistake here.
Judgment debtor disclosure, § 550.011. Thirty days after docketing, with no writ:
Unless the parties have otherwise agreed, if a judgment has been docketed in district court for at least 30 days, and the judgment is not satisfied, the judgment creditor’s attorney as an officer of the court may or the district court in the county in which the judgment originated shall, upon request of the judgment creditor, order the judgment debtor to mail by certified mail to the judgment creditor information as to the nature, amount, identity, and locations of all the debtor’s assets, liabilities, and personal earnings.
The disclosure goes on a supreme court form, and the order “must contain a notice that failure to complete the form and mail it to the judgment creditor within ten days after service of the order may result in a citation for civil contempt of court.” Section 491A.02, subd. 9, does the same work for a conciliation court judgment once it is docketed in district court.
Post-judgment discovery, Minn. R. Civ. P. 69. The rule governing execution closes with a sentence lawyers underuse:
In aid of the judgment or execution, the judgment creditor, or successor in interest when that interest appears of record, may obtain discovery from any person, including the judgment debtor, in the manner provided by these rules.
“Any person,” by ordinary discovery devices — no court order, no writ, no waiting. For most cases this is the right first tool.
| § 550.011 disclosure | Rule 69 discovery | Chapter 575 examination | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Precondition | Judgment docketed 30 days | Judgment or execution | Execution returned unsatisfied |
| Who initiates | Creditor’s attorney, or the court | Creditor, by ordinary discovery | Court order, on the creditor’s entitlement |
| What it produces | A completed asset form, by certified mail | Answers, documents, testimony | Sworn examination before a judge or referee |
| Can it move property? | No | No | Yes — § 575.05 |
Who can be examined?
The debtor, an officer of a corporate debtor, and — under a different section — third parties holding the debtor’s property or owing the debtor money.
Section 575.02 reaches “the judgment debtor, or, if a corporation, any officer thereof” — and says nothing about anyone else. Notice the entity vocabulary. The chapter’s History lines trace it to the Revised Laws of 1905, with § 575.02 amended in 1979 and 1986 and its neighbors untouched since 1986, and it is written in the entity vocabulary of its era. It does not on its face name a limited liability company’s governor or a partner in a partnership, and a creditor pursuing a non-corporate entity should not assume the word “corporation” carries it there.
Third parties come in through § 575.07, on easier terms. It applies “[a]fter the issuing or return” of an execution — not only after a return — and requires only “proof, by affidavit or otherwise, to the satisfaction of the judge, that any person has property of the judgment debtor, or is indebted to the judgment debtor in an amount exceeding $10” before the judge may require that person — “or any officer thereof if a corporation” — to appear and answer. Ten dollars is a threshold the Legislature has left alone for well over a century.
Where does the examination take place?
Not necessarily where the judgment is. The second sentence of § 575.02 protects the person being examined:
If the person required to answer is, at the time of the service of the order, a resident of the state, or has an office in the state for the regular transaction of business in person, that person cannot be compelled to attend, pursuant to the order or to any adjournment, at a place without the county of residence or of the place of business.
The order issues from the district court where the judgment was originally docketed or is subsequently filed. But a Minnesota resident, or a person with a Minnesota office for the regular transaction of business in person, cannot be pulled outside the county of residence or of the business office — and because the protection extends to “any adjournment,” it cannot be defeated by continuing the examination elsewhere.
What does the examination actually compel?
Sworn testimony from the debtor and from witnesses called by either side — and it strips one privilege while substituting another. Section 575.04:
Upon appearing or being brought before the judge or referee, the judgment debtor, or officer required to answer for a corporation, may be examined under oath, and witnesses may be required to appear and testify on behalf of either party, and the debtor may be represented by counsel; and no person, on such examination, shall be excused from answering any question on the ground that the examination will tend to convict the person of the commission of a fraud, but an answer shall not be used as evidence against the person in any criminal proceeding.
That clause is the most consequential in the chapter and it is easy to read past. A debtor who moved assets ahead of the judgment cannot decline to describe the transfers on the ground that describing them would tend to convict him of fraud. In exchange he gets a bar on using the answer as evidence against him in a criminal proceeding. Both halves are narrow: the compulsion is stated as to fraud, and the protection as to criminal proceedings — not the civil case, where a fraudulent transfer claim is exactly what the answers may build. If a referee takes the examination, “the referee shall certify the testimony and proceedings to the judge.”
Can the judge do anything besides listen?
Yes, and here chapter 575 stops resembling discovery. Section 575.05 gives the judge three powers in three sentences:
The judge may order any of the judgment debtor’s property in the hands of the judgment debtor or of any other person, or due to the judgment debtor, not exempt from execution, to be applied toward the satisfaction of the judgment. The judgment debtor’s earnings for personal services within 30 days preceding the order cannot be so applied, when it appears by the judgment debtor’s affidavit that they are necessary for the use of a family supported, wholly or partly, by the judgment debtor’s labor. The judge may appoint a receiver of the debtor’s unexempt property, or forbid a transfer or other disposition thereof, or any interference therewith, until further order therein.
A turnover order, a receiver, and an injunction against dissipation — in the same proceeding where the creditor first learns what exists. The earnings carve-out is the debtor’s to raise: thirty days of personal-service earnings are shielded only “when it appears by the judgment debtor’s affidavit” that they are necessary to support a family the debtor’s labor supports. No affidavit, no carve-out. Broader protections live in Minnesota’s exemption statutes, and any receiver appointed here operates against chapter 576’s framework.
The proceeding has a hard stop. Section 575.06: if a person alleged to hold the debtor’s property “claims an adverse interest therein, or denies the debt, such interest or debt may be recovered only in an action against such person by the receiver” — though the judge may forbid a transfer “until a sufficient opportunity is given to the receiver to prosecute the action to judgment and execution, and may vacate or modify such order at any time on such security as the judge may direct.” A contested claim gets litigated in a new lawsuit brought by the receiver, not resolved from the bench.
What happens if the debtor does not show up?
Section 575.02 supplies no sanction of its own. The consequence comes from the general contempt chapter — and from a section of chapter 575 most people never read.
Section 588.01, subd. 3, defines constructive contempts as “those not committed in the immediate presence of the court, and of which it has no personal knowledge,” arising from listed acts and omissions including clause (3), “disobedience of any lawful judgment, order, or process of the court,” and clause (8), “disobedience of a subpoena duly served, or refusing to be sworn or to answer as a witness.” Under § 588.02, a court “may punish a contempt by fine or imprisonment, or both” — subject to a limit specific to this category: “When it is a constructive contempt, it must appear that the right or remedy of a party to an action or special proceeding was defeated or prejudiced by it before the contempt can be punished by imprisonment or by a fine exceeding $50.”
Section 575.03 is something else — not a penalty for ignoring an order, but a substitute for the order.
Instead of the order provided for in section 575.02, upon proof by affidavit that there is danger that the debtor will leave the state or hide, the judge may issue a warrant requiring the sheriff of any county where the debtor is to arrest and bring the debtor before such judge to answer concerning the debtor’s property.
The debtor is then examined on oath and “ordered to give bond that the debtor will attend, from time to time, before the judge or referee, as directed, during the pendency of the proceeding, and will not in the meantime dispose of any portion of property not exempt from execution; and, in default of giving such bond, the debtor may be committed to jail as for a contempt.”
A civil arrest warrant, on affidavit, in a money case. It is not available on a hunch — the affidavit must show that “there is danger that the debtor will leave the state or hide” — but it is on the books, and a debtor treating a Minnesota collection file as something to outlast by moving is reading the wrong chapter.
How is this different from garnishment?
Garnishment takes; chapter 575 finds, and then directs. Section 571.71 authorizes garnishment “[a]s an ancillary proceeding to a civil action for the recovery of money,” by which “a creditor may issue a garnishment summons as provided in this chapter against any third party” in three listed instances, including clause (3), “at any time after entry of a money judgment in the civil action.” The summons is aimed at whoever holds the debtor’s money; it does not compel the debtor to testify, and it presupposes the creditor already knows which bank, employer, or receivable to serve. Chapter 575 is how you learn that. The two are sequential far more often than they are alternatives.
The order of operations
- Start with Rule 69 discovery or a § 550.011 disclosure order. Neither needs a writ, and most collectible cases never reach chapter 575.
- If chapter 575 is coming, issue the execution to the right sheriff — the debtor’s county of residence, or, for a nonresident, a county where the judgment roll or a transcript is filed.
- Diary the 180-day writ expiration under § 550.051, subd. 1, and get the officer’s return into the file.
- Move for the order, and set the examination in the debtor’s county.
- Ask for more than testimony. Section 575.05 relief is available in the same proceeding, and a creditor who comes prepared only to ask questions leaves it on the table.
For a debtor the priorities invert. The examination is under oath and the fraud privilege is gone, so the answers are permanent. The earnings carve-out requires an affidavit. Exemptions must be claimed. And the threshold question is always whether the judgment should exist at all — whether service was good, and whether a motion to vacate is the better fight.
Madgett Law, LLC handles Minnesota post-judgment collection and post-judgment defense — debtor disclosures and Rule 69 discovery, executions and returns, chapter 575 examinations and turnover motions, receiverships, and, on the other side, exemption claims and challenges to judgments that should never have been entered. To discuss a Minnesota judgment, send us a message or call 612-470-6529.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 575.02 (order for examination of debtor; predicate of an execution issued to the sheriff of the county where the debtor resides, or for a nonresident to a county where the judgment roll or a transcript is filed, returned unsatisfied in whole or in part; creditor “is entitled to” the order from the district court of the district where the judgment was originally docketed or is subsequently filed; debtor or, if a corporation, any officer thereof, to appear and answer concerning the property before a judge or referee; second sentence limiting attendance, and any adjournment, to the county of residence or of the place of business for a state resident or a person with a Minnesota office for the regular transaction of business in person; History line: (9450) RL s 4320; 1979 c 53 s 1; 1986 c 444). § 575.03 (warrant against debtor as an alternative to the § 575.02 order, on affidavit proof of danger that the debtor will leave the state or hide; arrest by the sheriff of any county where the debtor is; examination on oath; bond to attend and not dispose of nonexempt property; commitment to jail as for a contempt on default of the bond). § 575.04 (examination under oath; witnesses on behalf of either party; debtor may be represented by counsel; no excuse from answering on the ground the examination will tend to convict of fraud; answer not usable as evidence in any criminal proceeding; referee certifies testimony and proceedings to the judge). § 575.05 (order applying nonexempt property in the hands of the debtor or any other person, or due to the debtor, toward satisfaction; 30-day personal-service earnings carve-out on the debtor’s affidavit of family necessity; appointment of a receiver of unexempt property; order forbidding transfer, disposition, or interference until further order). § 575.06 (adverse claimants; contested interest or debt recoverable only in an action by the receiver; interim order forbidding transfer pending the receiver’s action). § 575.07 (examination of a person holding the debtor’s property or indebted to the debtor in an amount exceeding $10, after the issuing or return of an execution, on affidavit or other proof). § 550.011 (judgment debtor disclosure; judgment docketed at least 30 days; creditor’s attorney as an officer of the court may, or the district court shall on request, order disclosure by certified mail; supreme court form; required notice that failure to complete and mail within ten days after service may result in a citation for civil contempt). § 550.051, subd. 1 (writ of execution expires 180 days after issuance; levy served with an expired writ is void; officer’s full inventory and return upon expiration or full satisfaction). § 550.07 (execution against personal property or money may be issued to the sheriff of any county from the district court where the judgment was originally docketed). § 491A.02, subd. 9 (judgment debtor disclosure for a conciliation court judgment, or a district court judgment on removal, docketed in district court). § 571.71 (garnishment as an ancillary proceeding to a civil action for the recovery of money; garnishment summons against any third party; clause (3), at any time after entry of a money judgment). § 588.01, subd. 3 (constructive contempts, including clause (3), disobedience of any lawful judgment, order, or process of the court, and clause (8), disobedience of a subpoena duly served or refusing to be sworn or to answer as a witness). § 588.02 (power to punish contempt by fine or imprisonment; for constructive contempt, the right or remedy of a party must have been defeated or prejudiced before punishment by imprisonment or a fine exceeding $50). Minn. R. Civ. P. 69 (writ of execution as the process to enforce a money judgment; procedure per Minn. Stat. ch. 550; discovery in aid of the judgment or execution from any person, including the judgment debtor, in the manner provided by the rules). All statutory text from the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes; rule text from the Revisor’s Minnesota Court Rules, Civil Procedure, published under Minn. Stat. § 3C.08, subd. 1. Chapter 575 carried no 2026 currency banner as of August 9, 2026.
This article is general legal information about Minnesota law. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and no outcome is promised or implied. Whether any particular collection remedy is available depends on the judgment, the forum, the county, the property, and the exemptions actually claimed.