I'm not a lawyer and nothing I say hereafter should be considered legal advice. But as a general rule, I'd say Sue the BG. I'd never fail to sue just because the bad guy doesn't have any money TODAY, because I wouldn't know what he may have TOMORROW. What I'd want to get is a judgement against the BG. Every state has its own particular statute of limitations restrictions on how long a judgement is good for. In some states (like Virginia) it used to be 20 years, and then you could go through a process that would extend it another 20 years if you had to. It may still be that way. I don't know. But I know a lot can happen to reverse a mans financial fortunes in 20-40 years. In Virginia, it used to be that once you sued and got a judgement, you could turn it into a lien against the judgement debtors real estate by doing what was referred to as "docketing" that judgement. There were two different courts in the courthouse in the county I'm thinking of. One was called General District Court. I forget what the other was called but it was a higher court and that's where you had to get General District Court judgements "docketed" (if you wanted your judgement to be a lien against the judgement debtors real estate.) Once you "docketed" your judgement, your lien priority against his real estate came right behind the last pre-existing mortgage or other real estate lien that was already against the property, and it came next in priority before any new mortgage or lien. So, any lender who wanted to lend new money on that property after a judgement attached, unless his loan was collateralized by a pre-existing credit-line-deed-of-trust, had to consider your judgement just like it was a previous mortgage, and had to pay you out if he wanted to be ahead of you in lien position on that property. In the event property you had a judgement lien against was sold while your docketed judgement was in force, if all the prior mortgages and other liens ahead of you got paid out from the proceeds of the sale, and if there were still enough money left over, your judgement lien had to be paid out too before the seller ever realized any benefit for himself. Also very importantly, if a judgement debtors Mama or Daddy died and left their home to him, a docketed lien in that county attached to that property too, and the debtor couldn't sell that property either without paying off the mortgages and liens against it,) before he realized anything for himself from the sale. As I recall, this was all "county specific". You had to have your judgement docketed in the the county where the property was physically located in order for a judgement to attach as a lien on any property a debtor owned in that county. But you could get a General District Court judgement in one county and then "docket" it in the higher court in another county where the defendant owned property. And, you could do this in several counties simultanously. For example, if you learned that your debtor had a beach house in another county, you could docket your judgement in that county, and at the same time, if you could find out where a judgement debtors parents or grandparents owned property (that he/she might one day inherit) you could docket your judgement in that county too, and hope they died before your judgement elapsed. I don't guarantee any of this to be true today, or true in your state, this is just the way I remember it used to be in Virginia 10-20 years ago, and anyway, each state is different and yours may have very different procedures. But most of them probably have something very much like this.
