§ 8.01-453.When and how payment or discharge entered on judgment docket.

Section 8.01-453 gives the clerk two ways to learn that a docketed judgment has been paid. If the judgment was rendered somewhere else and later docketed here, a certificate from the clerk of the rendering court establishing satisfaction is enough. Otherwise, the judgment creditor himself — or his duly authorized attorney or other agent — can direct the clerk in writing to enter satisfaction, and where there is more than one defendant, the entry states which one paid it.

The section also lets a creditor do something short of full satisfaction: record a separate instrument releasing the judgment’s lien as against one or more specific parcels of real property, even when the judgment as a whole has not been paid off and the clerk has not entered full satisfaction. That costs the creditor the ordinary recordation fee for each instrument under § 17.1-275, but it frees a particular piece of property — useful when a debtor needs to sell one parcel while the rest of the judgment remains outstanding.