{"id":341,"date":"2011-10-07T22:59:44","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T22:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.westcoastbk.com\/blog\/?p=341"},"modified":"2012-09-12T06:42:47","modified_gmt":"2012-09-12T06:42:47","slug":"garnishment-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westcoastbk.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/garnishment-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"Garnishment Laws"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ryan C. Wood<\/a><\/p>\n

Garnishment is the result of a lawsuit and the enforcement of the judgment obtained in the lawsuit.\u00a0 The good news is that filing for bankruptcy protection will stop the wage garnishment and get rid of the lawsuit forever.<\/p>\n

Many collection agencies threaten to garnish wages to attempt to scare people into making payments on delinquent accounts.\u00a0 The fact is that they must first file a lawsuit against you, served you with the lawsuit, obtain a judgment, then writ of garnishment or writ of execution, then serve the earnings withholding order on your employer.\u00a0 Whew, that is a lot of steps.\u00a0 The hardest part of this process is usually personally serving you with the lawsuit.\u00a0 Once they have served you it will only be a matter of time before they can obtain a judgment against you.\u00a0 Of course you may have a valid defense.\u00a0 If so, seek the counsel of an experienced attorney to represent you.\u00a0 In most cases that involve credit cards there are no valid defenses.\u00a0 It is a straightforward breach of contract for failure to pay.\u00a0 So if you are behind on a credit card or owe money to someone the question always is, \u201cAre they going to take the time, effort and money to follow the garnishment laws and actually be able to legally garnish your wages?\u201d\u00a0 Who knows?<\/p>\n

What is certain is once all the necessary steps have been completed to garnish your wages it hurts your income severely.\u00a0 The amount that can be garnished varies from state to state, but what is garnished is deducted from your net income.\u00a0 Yes, after federal and state taxes are deducted, healthcare costs or other deductions, then thee garnishment is deducted.\u00a0 Ouch. \u00a0Each state has exemptions you can claim to reduce the amount that can be garnished each paycheck.\u00a0 Depending upon your circumstances, like have ten kids you have to feed, you could reduce the amount garnished quite a bit.\u00a0 Even though you can be legally garnished that does not mean you will not be allowed to live and eat.<\/p>\n

Every check will be garnished until the judgment is satisfied in full up to ten years.\u00a0 The judgment is only good for ten years and must be renewed if it is not satisfied in full.\u00a0 The amount of the judgment will be more than what you originally owed too.\u00a0 Do not forget that there will be attorney fees and costs added into the judgment and you will have to pay that back too.<\/p>\n

For more information about garnishment and how bankruptcy can help, contact our Oakland bankruptcy lawyers<\/a> today.\u00a0 If you are located on the Peninsula, contact our Redwood City bankruptcy attorneys<\/a> for more information about garnishment and bankruptcy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Garnishment is the result of a lawsuit and the enforcement of the judgment obtained in the lawsuit. The good news is that filing for bankruptcy protection will stop the wage garnishment and get rid of the lawsuit forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westcoastbk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westcoastbk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westcoastbk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westcoastbk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westcoastbk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.westcoastbk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":724,"href":"https:\/\/www.westcoastbk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions\/724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westcoastbk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westcoastbk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westcoastbk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}