About Wage Garnishment

Garnishment....

A Garnishment is a court ordered seizure of typically up to 25% of your salary from each paycheck. A creditor takes you to court, and obtains a judgment to authorize the procedure.

An employer is legally bound to garnish your wages if they are notified by a court to do so. They may not want to, but it is not grounds for dismissal.

Usually, if you get legally served, you will have your wages garnished, so be prepared. If you were in financial trouble before, it will soon get worse, as you lose 25% of your pay check.

If you have multiple court cases, it is our understanding that there is a limit on the total amount that can be taken from your paycheck to pay debts via garnishment. In our area it is 25% total, if you have several cases, they have to "line up" one after another.

You must be served to be notified of the case pending. We have heard cases where the creditor's process server served the wrong person, (i.e. Joe Smith Sr, vs. Joe Smith Jr) who lived in another state. In most cases, process servers cannot serve a minor. If you can prove that you were not served, you can beat them in this case.

If you get your wages garnished, and quit or lose your job, the creditor can get a court order to seize any money necessary to cover the judgment from your bank account. They assume any money there came from you, even if it is a joint account. If you have a joint account with someone other than whom you were married to at the time the debt occurred, you may want to remedy the situation. If you have a joint account with a parent, for example, the amount in that account is at risk, even if the parent is the only person who actually deposits money into the account. Many people these days have joint accounts with people with people other than with whom they are married. In these cases, if you can prove that a percentage of the money seized came from someone who was not responsible for the debt, you can get that part back.

If the money in the account seized came from Social Security, Disability, Railroad Retirement, and several other specific sources, you are, in many cases immune to this type of account seizure. Do a bit more research to see if you fit into a category in your state, and prepare to file an appeal in court. Prove that the income came from another source than the person who was garnished, and you stand a very good chance of getting back your money from the people who took it in the first place.

How can you "beat" a garnishment?
That's a tough one. Unless your income is from a protected source, (see above, protected income sources are also garnishment immune), or you file Bankruptcy, you are stuck. If you have a job, or they can find a Bank Account in your name, you will pay. You may be ordered in for asset hearings, which determine where your assets are hidden. Missing an Asset Hearing can get you a contempt of Court citation, which in turn can get you an orange jumpsuit and "three hots and a cot" for a term. Asset Hearings are serious issues.

And, of course, by now your credit is a wreck. You have the original account, the collection account (usually real attorneys), and now the judgment will show up as an additions score "ding". We have seen it all before, and cleaned up the mess. We can do it again. At CCFG Credit Repair and Restoration, we are not attorneys. We do not offer professional Legal Counsel. We do, however, know how the world really works, and have learned from various situations that our clients have found themselves in over the years. We though we would share our education with you.