There are some states that won’t allow wage garnishment unless you have a court-ordered judgment for child support or spousal maintenance. However, it will allow a bank garnishment to collect civil money judgments.
garnishment
What do you understand by Bank account garnishment?
It means that a judgment creditor has legal rights to confiscate your checking account and apply the proceeds towards a legitimate, uncollected judicial judgment. Generally, through a garnishment, a creditor can take away possessions of any type of properties a debtor has. Bank account garnishment is quite successful because your bank is holding your money in the account. The bank has your money, but the plaintiff is legally requiring the bank to reroute the money to pay off the judgment.
When can a bank garnishment happen?
There are certain circumstances on which a judgment creditor can pursue a bank account garnishment. These are mentioned below:
- The plaintiff who is seeking a bank garnishment against you must have a valid, final and subsisting judgment from the court. A judge needs to sign the judgment to make it legal. The day when the judge signs the order against you and your creditor will enforce bank garnishment writ as long as all the requirements of the garnishment are satisfied.
- If you have filed an approved supersedes bond to stop execution on the judgment, then the creditor cannot get a writ of garnishment to get your bank account.
- The creditor has to sign an affidavit attached with the writ of garnishment. In that affidavit, the judgment creditor will take an oath and ensure that you do not possess in the State of Texas adequate property subject to execution to satisfy the judgment.
A judgment creditor does not have to prove whether you have adequate property in the state to satisfy the judgment, but he must mention it.
What can you do about a bank garnishment?
There is no guarantee whether you can beat a judgment or not. But if you are obligated on a judgment, you need to do several things to make sure that your judgment creditor heeds both the letter of the law and the spirit of the law while collecting that judgment.
For example, if you own non-exempt property that may be taken by a writ of execution and the judgment debtor files a writ of garnishment, then the judgment creditor can be accused of filing a wrongful garnishment. The judgment creditor is required to sign an affidavit where he takes an oath mentioning that you do not own sufficient property subject to execution to pay the judgment. If the said statement is found to be untrue, the judgment creditor will be accused of wrongful garnishment even if he had probable cause.
Therefore, it is the duty of the judgment creditor to make a reasonable inquiry and find out if you have any non-exempt property that can be seized by using a writ of execution. If you get such interrogatories, you need to respond to it completely and truthfully under oath. You cannot hide your assets and then make a claim that your judgment creditor wrongfully garnished your bank account.
Resources:
https://www.ftb.ca.gov/Bills_and_Notices/wage.shtml
http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/garnishments.htm
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 22nd, 2012 at 7:18 pm and is filed under Garnishment, Wage Garnishment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.