In RI, judgments are forced paid before sale because they do constitute a lien on property, however, we have the same situation here... less than half of the purchase searches we receive contain the name of any buyers..  If my memory serves me from the original post here this is a situation of child support... these types of things show up on a credit report as well as recorded in land evidence.  It would have been a liability on the part of the closing attorney to have identified this lien before title was ever run.  Being a small state where things are done a bit differently anyway, a lien could be placed in the city where you live.  If you buy a house in another city, the lien would not be found by an examiner. I know this is the case in CT also, but how does it work in other parts of the country?