The essential facts are undisputed. Blasucci and his wife took title to the residential property in 1976. The Blasuccis gave a first mortgage to First Fidelity Bank in 1986 and a second mortgage to Washington Savings Bank in 1987. Washington Savings instituted a foreclosure action against the Blasuccis in May 1990 and obtained final judgment of foreclosure the following October. First Fidelity and Washington Savings subsequently assigned their mortgages to Martin Tave and the Sylvia T. Cohen Revocable Trust (Tave and Cohen). The property was sold at sheriff's sale in June 1994 to Tave and Cohen, who took subject to the First Fidelity mortgage which they held and subsequently discharged. Tave and Cohen conveyed the property to Gourkanti in October 1997.

Siegel did not obtain his default judgment against Blasucci until July 1992, almost two years after the entry of the foreclosure judgment. Siegel claims that his judgment, docketed in July 1992 and revived in November 2011, was a lien against Blasucci's real property that was not extinguished by the
October 1990 foreclosure judgment and subsequent sheriff's sale. He contends that either Washington Savings or Tave and Cohen was required to amend the foreclosure complaint to include him as a subsequent encumbrancer in order to bind him to the foreclosure judgment. We disagree.

We addressed this issue in Morsemere Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass'n v. Nicolaou, 206 N.J. Super. 637 (App. Div. 1986). Morsemere, a foreclosing mortgagee, obtained final judgment of foreclosure against Nicolaou. Id. at 640-41. After entry of the foreclosure judgment, DiPrima obtained a default judgment against Nicolaou. Id. at 641. DiPrima subsequently purchased the property at sheriff's sale. DiPrima then filed a motion to intervene in the foreclosure action and for payment of surplus funds. Ibid.

We held that a lien claimant such as DiPrima cannot be made a party to a foreclosure suit after entry of final judgment. Morsemere, supra, 206 N.J. Super. at 641-42. We reasoned that N.J.S.A. 2A:50-30, which operates to bind the holders of unrecorded interests existing at the filing of the foreclosure to the judgment and allows those holding such interests to intervene as of right upon recording, did not apply "because DiPrima's lien did not exist `at the time of the filing of the complaint' or even at the time the foreclosure judgment was entered." Ibid. Instead, we held that N.J.S.A. 2A:50-37 was controlling, and thus a creditor who obtains a money judgment subsequent to entry of the foreclosure judgment "may participate in any surplus after prior claiming lienholders (at the time of the foreclosure judgment) have been paid or satisfied." Morsemere, supra, 206 N.J. Super. at 642-43.