There is nothing more depressing or frustrating to discover that a judgment creditor has begun to garnish your wages. Suddenly your household budget won’t budget and you risk going into default on car loans, mortgage loans and other creditors. And sometimes you may not have known that the garnishment was going to happen.
Many credit card and personal loan companies include language in the small print allowing them to sue you in a different state. You truly may not have known that you were sued or that a judgment was issued. Now the judgment from another state was “domesticated” here in Georgia and suddenly 25% of your take home pay is being seized.
What can you do about this violation of your budget?
The law gives you two options – you can either mount a “collateral attack” on the judgment, or you can eliminate or reduce the debt in bankruptcy.
A collateral attack means that you would have to file a lawsuit in state court and argue that the judgment creditor made a substantial error such as failing to give you notice, or acting fraudulently.
In order to mount a collateral attack you are going to need to hire a lawyer (who will bill you by the hour) and you will need evidence to show how you were wronged. Often going this route is just not feasible financially plus it may take four to six weeks to get in front of a judge. Meanwhile your wages are being seized with every paycheck.
The second option would be to stop the garnishment immediately by filing a Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy. With very limited exception, the minute you file a personal bankruptcy case, all adverse creditor action must stop. This includes any wage garnishment. In many cases, the seized money will be returned to you within a matter of days.
Unfortunately, the longer you wait to stop the wage garnishment the more difficult it will be to get your money back quickly.
If you know that a suit has been filed against you (your credit report should show this) or if you think that you may have been sued, give us a call. We can find out exactly what you are facing and come up with a plan of attack to protect you and your family’s finances.