§ 680.120.Account Debtor

Not every asset a judgment debtor owns sits in a bank vault or a garage. Some of it is a right to be paid by someone else -- an unpaid invoice, a royalty stream, a note receivable. The "account debtor" is that someone else: the person or company on the hook to pay the judgment debtor.

This definition matters because reaching that kind of asset through the Enforcement of Judgments Law usually means directing a levy or notice at the account debtor, not at the judgment debtor directly. Knowing precisely who qualifies as an account debtor -- borrowed straight from the Commercial Code's definitions for secured transactions -- keeps the EJL's levy procedures aligned with the same commercial-law concepts that govern how these payment rights are created and transferred in the first place.

Practically, this term surfaces whenever a judgment creditor goes after a debtor's accounts receivable (§ 680.130) or general intangibles (§ 680.210) rather than cash or tangible goods.