In any suit a defendant may, whether the suit is on the court docket or not, confess a judgment in the clerk's office for so much principal and interest as the plaintiff may be willing to accept a judgment or decree for. The same shall be entered of record by the clerk in the order book and be as final and as valid as if entered in court on the day of such confession. The clerk shall record such judgment or decree and the date and time of the day at which the same was confessed. The lien of such judgment or decree shall run from the time such judgment is recorded on the judgment lien docket of the clerk's office of the county or city in which land of the defendant lies.
Va. Code Ann. § 8.01-431
Judgment or decree by confession in pending suit
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case In re Dwyer (1994)
Most recently applied in T.D. Bank, N.A. v. Frey (May 2011)
Code 1955, § 8-355; 1962, c. 388; 1977, c. 617; 2012, c. 802; 2014, c. 330.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Virginia Law Portal (LIS). Reproduced from public-domain Virginia statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.