An abstract is a brief summary of a judicial judgment, usually written by a Barrister or academic for publication in law reports. This article is about the concept of abstraction in general. ... A judgment or judgement (see spelling note below), in a legal context, is synonymous with the formal decision made by a court following a lawsuit. ... A barrister (advocate in Scotland and the Channel Islands, barrister-at-law in Ireland and elsewhere) is a lawyer found in some Common law jurisdictions who principally, but not exclusively, represents litigants as their advocate before the courts of that jurisdiction. ... Plato is credited with the inception of academia: the body of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations. ... In law, a reporter is a series of books which contain court opinions. ...
Abstracts are of particular use in legal research because they condense the essential points of long, complex judgments into a few paragraphs. A researcher can use abstracts to investigate how relevant a particular case is to the issue at hand, and hence to decide whether he or she should go on to read the entire judgment. The tone of this article is inappropriate for an encyclopedia. ...
Thus, if, prior to the issuance of the writ of execution, the claimant obtained an abstract of judgment and filed it for record in the appropriate county clerk's office thereby creating a child support lien, the constable may seize all of a child support obligor's nonhomestead real property and all of the obligor's personal property.
An obligee or his or her attorney or agent may prepare an abstract of judgment after a court has found the obligor to be in arrears.
The abstract of judgment must contain, among other things, the names of the plaintiff and defendant; the number of the suit in which the court rendered the judgment; and the amount of the balance due, if any, for child support arrearage.