806.39.Enforcement of foreign judgments.

Section 806.39 governs what happens when a party tries to enforce, in Wisconsin, a judgment from another jurisdiction that was expressed in a foreign money. Subsection (1) requires that if the foreign judgment is recognized in this state as enforceable, the enforcing judgment must be entered as provided in Section 806.36, whether or not the original foreign judgment gave the debtor an option to pay in an equivalent amount of U.S. dollars. Any satisfaction or partial payment already made on the foreign judgment must be credited against the amount of foreign money the judgment specifies, even after the judgment is entered in Wisconsin.

Subsection (2) confirms that, notwithstanding subsection (1), a foreign judgment may be filed and entered in the judgment and lien docket under Section 806.24. Subsection (3) draws a boundary around all of this: if a judgment on a foreign-money claim was entered in another state only in U.S. dollars, without ever stating a foreign-money amount, it must be enforced here in U.S. dollars only.