| Instructions
These instructions are to help you
if you would like to have a civil judgment opened. Court
procedures can be confusing. This guide will give you useful
information and the necessary forms to fill out to ask a judge
to open a judgment against you.
Every case is
different and these instructions are to be used as a guide only;
if you think you need more help you may want to get an
attorney. You can also go to a
Court Service Center or contact the
Connecticut Network for Legal
Aid or
find additional information at the Law Libraries.
Court Staff can help you understand the legal process, and while
they may give you procedural information, they cannot
give you legal advice.
To file a
motion to have a civil judgment opened you have to fill out the
following 2 forms:
By filing an
Appearance form you are telling the court that you are
acting as your own attorney and giving the court your mailing
address. Once you file an Appearance, all court notices and
papers filed about your case that are filed after your
Appearance will be sent to the address on your Appearance.
The Motion to
Open Judgment is to be filled out by the party who wants to have
a judge open the case. There is a space on the form for you to
give the reason why the judgment should be opened. You must sign
the motion in front of the Court Clerk. Please do not sign the
Motion to Open Judgment before you
arrive at the Clerk’s office.
The Motion to
Open Judgment has a filing fee. If you cannot afford to pay the
fee, there is a form you can use to ask the court to excuse you
from paying the fee. It is the
Application for
Waiver of Fees (JD-CV-120). Do not sign this form until you are in front of a
court clerk or a notary public.
The court
will have a hearing on your Motion to Open Judgment. It will be
scheduled in one of two ways. First, the motion can come up on
a Court Short Calendar;
in this case you would wait to get a calendar from the court and then follow
the instructions printed on it. A second way to have your motion
scheduled is to ask that the Clerk assign a date. In this case
you must have the motion delivered to, or served on, the other party by
a State Marshal. The Clerk’s Office or the Court Service Center
can give you a
list of State
Marshals. The State
Marshal will charge a fee for delivering this paper. You must
pay this fee unless the court decides that you cannot afford to
pay. You can ask the court to decide to have the Marshal’s fee
paid by the Court by filling out and filing the
Application for
Waiver of Fees form (JD-CV-120). You should file the Application for
Waiver of Fees at the same time that you file the Motion to Open
Judgment.
You may go to
any Court Service Center for help filling out these or any other
forms.
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