§ 35.003.Filing and Status of Foreign Judgments

The heart of the chapter, and its economy is the point.

A copy of a foreign judgment authenticated in accordance with an act of congress or a statute of this state may be filed in the office of the clerk of any court of competent jurisdiction of this state.

No lawsuit is required. The creditor does not sue on the judgment, serve a petition, or obtain a Texas judgment; an authenticated copy is filed with a clerk.

Authentication is the one formal requirement, and it is satisfied by the federal statute governing authentication of state records — the certification a clerk of the rendering court supplies.

The clerk shall treat the foreign judgment in the same manner as a judgment of the court in which it is filed.

A filed foreign judgment has the same effect and is subject to the same procedures, defenses, and proceedings for reopening, vacating, staying, enforcing, or satisfying a judgment as a judgment of the court in which it is filed.

Read that sentence in both directions, because it runs both ways.

For the creditor it means the full Texas enforcement apparatus becomes available — execution, turnover, garnishment — from the moment of filing.

For the debtor it means the Texas procedures for attacking a judgment become available too. The judgment can be reopened, vacated or stayed on the same grounds a Texas judgment could be, which is a real protection against a filing that should not have been made.

What the debtor cannot do is relitigate the merits. Full faith and credit forecloses that, and the defences available go to the judgment’s validity — jurisdiction, finality, satisfaction — rather than to whether it was rightly decided.