Greenberg

INTRODUCTION

This is an appeal from an order quashing a judgment creditor’s writ of execution seeking to recover postjudgment interest. A judgment of marital dissolution ordered the husband to pay attorney fees to the wife’s former attorneys, who were named in the judgment. When judgment was entered, the husband informed the wife of his intention to pay the attorney fees to the wife’s former attorneys. Claiming that the former attorneys’ right to attorney fees was “derivative” of the client’s right to those fees, the wife prohibited any payment to her former attorneys, and the husband did not satisfy the judgment for more than seven months. We conclude that entry of a judgment ordering payment of attorney fees to the former attorneys gave them an independent statutory right to enforce the judgment pursuant to Family Code section 272. Section 272 also gives the wife certain rights regarding a judgment awarding attorney fees to her former attorneys, but those rights do not include the power to prohibit the judgment debtor from satisfying the judgment. Here the husband did not pay or tender satisfaction to the judgment creditor, and did not deposit the disputed amount into…