Who Can Garnish Wages?

Who can garnish wages is virtually unlimited. Anyone that has obtained a judgment against you can enforce or collect on the judgment by garnishing your wages unless it is the Internal Revenue Service or Franchise Tax Board. From a taxing authority you will receive a notice of levy and if you do not respond they will garnish your wages without obtaining a judgment. Your wages can also be garnished under rare circumstances if you have agreed to a wage assignment, which is different then wage garnishment.

All other parties must sue you by filing a complaint and serving you with the summons and complaint. Once served has been made the party can then obtain a judgment against you. If you ignore the complaint the party will be able to request entry of the judgment by default. If you choose to answer the complaint the party suing you will next be able to obtain a judgment by filing a motion for summary judgment by the court. If your debt and lawsuit are the result of a breach of contract like not paying a credit card company you will have very few defenses and they will most likely obtain a judgment against you.

Once the judgment is entered the next step is to enforce the judgment. Just because a party has obtained a judgment against does not necessarily mean they will spend more money to go through the process of enforcing the judgment. To enforce the judgment they can garnish your wages, levy on your bank accounts and record the judgment with the county in which you live hoping it will attach to any real property you may own.

If your wages are garnished you can file an exemption to reduce the amount that can be garnished each paycheck and even stop the garnishment altogether depending upon your circumstances. Filing bankruptcy will stop the garnishment of your wages and depending upon the circumstances get rid of the judgment forever too. Bankruptcy is not the only answer, but for many it is the permanent solution to making sure the enforcement of the judgment does not continue.

Many collection agencies improperly tell people that they are going to garnish their wages without having obtained a judgment in an attempt receive a payment. This could be a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and any contact with the collection agency should be documented for future prosecution if it continues.

Can a collection agency garnish my wages?

From what my clients have told me, this threat occurs with great frequency. The typical scenario is that the individual has to pay a credit account. The original creditor is Citibank or Capital One or failed in his attempt to get the person in default of payment. Individual debt is now called "bad debt". Many times the original creditor simply give and sell "bad debt" to an external company, as a collectionagency for pennies on the dollar, sometimes even less.

The collection agency then attempts to collect bad debt to realize their investment. Initially, there may be a phone call or two, then a letter from the agency for the individual. If the bill is not paid immediately in full, some collection agencies and makes efforts to a higher level or three, and start making threats to person.

The most common threat is that the individual wagewill be frozen. Often, the agency will tell the person that wages be garnished "next week" if the bill is not paid in full, or alternatively, if a substantial payment is not made in the account. If this happens, it can actually be a good thing, because the only debt collector violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act Fair Debt Collection Practices Actis a federal law that regulates and orders that a debt collector can do in your attempt to collect a monetary debt. In my experience, I discovered that many collection agencies violate the law on a daily basis.

I can say with certainty that there is no law on earth that allows the creditor, as the collection agency to garnish your wages without due process of law. due process, in short, is the ideal that we should allowpresent its case in a court of law. Everyone is entitled to his day in court, no matter how open and close the case may appear.

If a collector threatens to garnish your wages without the filing of a civil case, make sure you know exactly who is speaking, what company they are with their address and phone number again. Enter the date and time of the call as well. Then, contact a consumer attorney in your area to start a formal procedure againstthe debt collector. Under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, you are entitled to monetary damages and to recover their legal costs. In this sense, lawyers for many consumers do not pay a company to establish one of these actions, or charge a small fee and sought to recover the cost of offending the collection agency. If all goes well in your case, the debt must be paid, you end up with somedollars in his pocket, and legal fees are paid well.