Art. 2452.Court Where Motion Filed and Examination Conducted

Article 2452 answers a practical question: when a judgment creditor wants to examine the debtor about assets, which Louisiana court handles it? The default answer is the court that rendered the underlying judgment. Paragraph A sends the motion, and the examination itself, back to that court unless one of the situations in Paragraph B applies.

Paragraph B addresses a debtor who has moved, or who was never domiciled in the parish where the judgment was rendered. If the debtor is an individual domiciled in Louisiana, but in a different parish from where the judgment was rendered, or has relocated to another parish since the suit began, the creditor gets a choice of venues: the parish of the debtor's current domicile, the parish where the judgment was rendered, or the parish where the underlying debt was incurred.

A nonresident debtor gets a broader set of options still. The creditor can file the examination petition, and conduct the examination, in any parish where the debtor can be found, or in the court that rendered the judgment. That flexibility matters because a nonresident debtor may have no fixed domicile in Louisiana at all, so pinning the case to one required parish would make the remedy unworkable.

One procedural detail attaches whenever a creditor uses an alternate venue under Paragraph B: a certified copy of the judgment has to be attached to the written motion for examination. That gives the court hearing the motion, which did not render the judgment itself, proof of the judgment's existence and terms before ordering the debtor to appear.