How a $60,000 MCA Judgment Becomes $100,000
Post-Judgment Interest at 9%

An unpaid judgment grows after the lawsuit ends. The debtor who treats the original award as the amount required to settle learns otherwise at the payoff table, where time has been billing at a rate the judgment itself prescribed.

The figures below form a mathematical illustration, not a reported case or a prediction about any creditor. The actual balance turns on the judgment, the payments, the applicable rate, and the other amounts the record supports. Most owners meet the interest schedule at the settlement table. The meeting rarely goes well.

The Case Ends and the Balance Keeps Time

The debt was fixed. The amount was not.

Entry of judgment starts a second ledger alongside the one the parties disputed at trial. Every month without payment adds a line the debtor never approved and cannot negotiate away after the fact. This is the arithmetic of neglect, and funders have no duty to interrupt it. Most observe that silence with discipline.

An outlandish balance built from an ordinary rate surprises the party who never ran the numbers. Counsel runs them first, because the schedule shapes every offer that follows.

Accrual From Entry Under CPLR 5003

Under the interest accrual provision for money judgments, every money judgment bears interest from the date of its entry. The date on a later collection letter starts nothing. The entry stamp on the judgment starts everything, which is why counsel asks for the entered judgment rather than the creditor spreadsheet.

Time, once entered on the docket, bills at the statutory rate until someone pays. The sentence reads like a closing, though the argument stands near its beginning, because the rest of the dispute concerns the rate and the credits rather than the principle of accrual itself.

Obtain the entry record with its stamp and keep it with the working file. Payments made, or missed, during negotiation change the accounting without changing the trigger, and the trigger decides the period over which the rate operates.

The Nine Percent Rate and the Consumer Exception

The statutory rate provision sets interest at nine percent per year except where another statute provides otherwise. For a business MCA judgment, that rate governs until counsel establishes otherwise. The lower two percent rate belongs to consumer debt, meaning obligations of a natural person arising from transactions of a personal, family, or household character.

A guarantor named alongside the company does not convert a commercial advance into household debt. The purpose of the underlying transaction controls the characterization, and counsel makes that call on the documents rather than the caption (the affidavit of confession, where one exists, describes a commercial purpose in its first lines, though exceptions reach counsel review like any other paper).

But the exception deserves a reading even where the facts argue against it. An extremely patient creditor is still a creditor, and the two percent argument raised without support spends credibility the debtor needs elsewhere. I have yet to see a creditor volunteer a lower number than the statute allows.

Rarely does a payoff letter explain which rate it applied. Ask for the calculation with the rate stated, and compare it against the provision rather than the letterhead.

Reading the $60,000 Illustration as Arithmetic

Assume a $60,000 judgment accruing simple interest at nine percent per year, with no payments and no additional costs included. The yearly addition under those assumptions is $5,400, a figure that looks modest beside the principal and proves extremely stubborn across time.

The distance between $60,000 and $100,000 is $40,000. Dividing that distance by $5,400 yields about seven years and five months of nonpayment, a span during which the file may sit untouched while the balance advances without correspondence. Whether this holds where payments crossed in the mail is a question for the accounting, not the headline. I drafted a payoff dispute in February, and the arithmetic looked colder than the weather outside the conference room.

That result establishes no universal date on which judgments reach round numbers. Payments, the precise accrual period, the legal treatment of partial transfers, and other supported amounts all move the actual account. The illustration compounds nothing, since each year percentage applies to the assumed principal without adding prior interest to a new interest bearing base, and any owner who assumed compound growth has built on sand.

For scale, the same assumptions produce $27,000 across five years, for an illustrated total of $87,000. The intermediate figure shows the method without suggesting any creditor must wait for a particular balance before enforcing. An inactive inbox establishes no inactive balance.

Resist the urge to reconstruct the payoff from the headline. Any acknowledgment of the balance, even casually, can narrow the room counsel needs. Simply request the schedule with starting amount, rate, dates, and credits, then review and analyze it against the entry record.

Settlement Review With the Balance Documented

Delancey Street can review the MCA obligation through its merchant cash advance settlement service, which offers a free, confidential initial review. Provide the entered judgment with a current account statement showing the interest the creditor claims.

The company is a debt settlement provider, not a law firm. Independently licensed counsel handles legal representation and should address disputes about interest, enforcement, or the validity of the judgment. Delancey Street ensures the proposal states what happens to accrual during any installment period and after a missed payment, because a round figure that leaves interest running against the company settles nothing. Independent counsel ensures no statement about the balance is made without review of the schedule both sides will sign.

Gather and preserve the accepted calculation with the executed terms. The schedule the parties sign at settlement becomes the schedule that governs completion, and time at last appears in the documents as a date, a payment, and a filing.