Wage Garnishments Timothy G. Cook, Attorney at Law Attorneys Atlanta Georgia

Wage Garnishments and Bank Garnishments

I have provided the information below to help people dealing with wage and bank garnishments. Bankruptcy will stop both wage and bank garnishments. The automatic stay in Bankruptcy law stops the garnishment cold. The creditor is forced to immediately dismiss the garnishment lawsuit when a bankruptcy petition is filed.

In the State of Georgia, the following takes place in a wage or bank garnishment action. In order to file a wage or bank garnishment, the creditor must have obtained a judgment against you in Court prior to the garnishment action. To obtain a judgment the creditor files a lawsuit against you and waits to see if you file an answer. IT IS IMPORTANT TO DETERMINE IF YOU WERE EVER PERSONALLY SERVED WITH THE LAWSUIT. If the creditor serves you personally or serves an adult at your residence with the lawsuit, you have been served and the clock is ticking for you to file an answer to their lawsuit. You should be aware that collection firms will attempt to serve you at a location where you may have previously lived with the address they have on file from the credit card application or billing address and then claim to the Judge they have served you by serving someone you don't even know at your former address. If you have no knowledge of the judgment that has been obtained against you then your first step is to investigate the state court case file where the judgment that was obtained against you to see how the creditor claims they served you and if they have a valid judgment. On the garnishment lawsuit, the creditor is supposed to list the Court and the amount of the judgment obtained against you. If the judgment was obtained out of state then you should contact the Clerk for the specific Court and obtain copies of the summons, complaint, entry of service, and Judgment.

Another recent tactic by creditors is to put under their terms and conditions of the account that you agree to allow any dispute of the debt to be decided by their hand picked arbitrator in a state that may be far away from where you live. Once they obtain an arbitration judgment against you in their arbitration company then they will domestic the award as a judgment against you in Georgia. In some cases you may not have even been personally served with notice of the arbitration proceedings. Don't ignore notices of arbitration. Respond to them immediately.

The creditor filing the garnishment must serve you by certified mail with a copy of the garnishment action within three days of having served your bank or employer with the garnishment. Keep the envelope the garnishment was sent to you in with the postmark to determine if the creditor complied or not.

It is important to understand that by the time a garnishment action has been served upon you there is very little you can do to stop it short of bankruptcy. If you are going to contest the garnishment, you must file an answer (or traverse) with the State Court Clerk where the garnishment has been filed within 15 days of the bank or employer furnishing their answer to the Court. The statute does not specify a specific number of days to file a traverse, but if you have not filed one within 45 days of the bank or employer being served you are probably out of luck. In Georgia the only defenses to the garnishment are whether the underlying judgment is valid, the amount of the judgment is valid, and whether the creditor filed and served the garnishment according to the Georgia Statutes. Even if you file a traverse the bank or employer is forced to comply with remitting your property or wages until such time as the Court orders otherwise. If the creditor produces a Judgment that was incorrectly obtained, you have to file a separate action in the state court where the Judgment was obtained. The Court handling the garnishment can then decide whether to stop the garnishment until the other Court who issued the judgment can determine if the judgment is valid.

Creditors have routinely been filing bank garnishments against joint bank accounts. They hope that the joint owner will just let it go without a fight since it is usually a husband and wife checking account. If you are a joint holder of a bank account and the judgment is not against you, then you need to file a traverse in the bank garnishment action to fight this. If a creditor files against a joint account, they are only entitled to the portion of money in the account that each party has contributed to the amount taken by the garnishment. If you are the only one working and the person being garnished is not, the creditor is not entitled to the money in your bank account.

The information you obtain at this website is not, nor is it intended to be, legal advice. You should consult an attorney for individual advice regarding your own situation.

The Law offices of Timothy G. Cook represents clients in the North Atlanta Metro area, including Woodstock, Dallas, Acworth, Kennesaw, Canton, Roswell, Cartersville, Sandy Springs, and other communities in Cobb, Paulding, Bartow, Fulton, and Cherokee counties.

Timothy Gordon Cook