I have about $25k in judgements from evictions 

It's very unlikely that you will have a claim or judgement that large and you won't incur the LLC overhead.

Just a short list its like 50 ways to leave your lover there are 50 gothcas in sub to. 1. the easiest for everyone to understand the sub to violated the Alienation clause in the mortgage or deed of trust and holder of the mortgage DT / Note decides to call the note due and payable and starts a foreclosure. 2. foreclosure started and the person who bought sub to has no means to pay it off or refinance it and the original sellers credit get trashed and if its a deficiency judgement state even on an owner occ like Texas lender sues original seller for the deficiency. 3. this kind of investing or acquiring assets tends to attract those with limited resources so they have no ability to fix things they decide to scale up and then it goes out of control and sellers are really harmed4. deal goes south and original seller sues or files complaint with AG. 5.

I sued them in small claims court, and now the judge has issued a default judgement in my favor.

The mom and pop investors well we know they tend to run with social media and how some looks as we have seen with some of the SM stars that have their projects in trouble. to me this is just going to go to judgement then Chapter 7 .

In other words, if there was a judgement against you, very difficult to impossible for them to come after your 401k money. 7) Your 401k avoid probate when passing onto your heirs. 

I have a close buddy who lives in LA, I would likely trust his judgement if it came down to it - but I would still get to know the area more.I dont think you are ready to invest out of state if you havent invested yet in yours.

  ( Umbrella)  So, if you had a claim/judgement on your car, for example, and the judgement was for an amount higher then the policy limit, the umbrella policy will kick in the rest. 

So, if the co-signer owns real estate a judgement can be used to lien that property to eventually force payment.

JPM&C final judgemental was the end of August and the property has another auction set on October 16th, 4 days from now.