Tag: Garnishment

Garnishment Survival Guide

“Your wages are subject to garnishment,”

That’s the first line in your most recent letter from HR. 

If You Do nothing 25% percent of your net earnings will be sent to whatever creditor has a judgement against you. 

Do something:  keep reading this if you live in Georgia and are subject to a wage garnishment.

I have three points to make here:

  • What to do in the short term,
  • What to do in the medium term, and
  • in the long run, what can we do to keep this from happening again. 

 

What is Wage garnishment 

A wage garnishment is an order from a judge, obtained after a judgement is secured against you, that allows a creditor to take money directly out of your check to satisfy the judgement they obtained.  

The fact that you are getting garnished means that a judgement has already been obtained by a creditor  and a judge has agreed that you are liable for an amount of money you owe to the creditor.  If everything happened the way it was supposed to, you should have gotten a copy of the complaint that was filed against you.  Due process requires that before the hearing to determine whether and how much you owe, you’re served with the complaint and have a chance to defend yourself against the complaint in court. That doesn’t always happen like it’s supposed to and we’ll discuss that later.

Georgia allows creditors, once they have a judgement, to take your wages directly from the source, your job, to collect on a judgement.  Your wages are protected to an extent by state and federal laws.  The cap is currently 25%. 

In this article we are going to look at the judgments you’re most likely to face.  Judgments for unpaid medical bills and credit cards.  There are a number of other judgments that we won’t worry about today.  

1.  Protect Your Paycheck 

The garnishment allows the creditor to take 25% of your paycheck, but that’s the max and that’s after other deductions are subtracted. 

There are a number of other exemptions under Georgia Law and you need to review them to find out if any of them apply to your situation. If you don’t fall under those exemptions there isn’t much you can do to stop a garnishment outside of bankruptcy.  

Notify your payroll department of your exemptions

If you pay falls under the scope of the exemption you need to make sure that your payroll is aware of it.  Theoretically, they should be aware of it as it is their job to follow the law, however, it’s always best to remind them of their duties and that you believe your income to be exempt from the garnishment. 

2.  Attack The Judgment

Your wages can only be garnished if a court has determined that you actually owe the money your creditor says you owe.  If you were at the hearing and lost, it is your job to appeal.  If you didn’t appeal, the matter is close and the judgement stands..  

However, If the judgement was a complete surprise to you (in other words, you weren’t properly served) you may have a chance to fight back.  This is a procedural attack on the judgement not one attacking the merit of the creditor’s claim. Attacking claims are hard though and will usually require the assistance of an attorney.  There are some legal aid societies that may be willing to help, but if you don’t qualify you’re on your own to either figure it out or hire an attorney. This is only a good thing to do if procedure truly wasn’t followed AND you have a good defense.  You don’t want to go to the trouble and potential expense of fighting the claim if you’re just going to lose anyways. 

3. Completely examine your finances. 

Your time is precious and limited.  Before you try to really hunker down and try to fight this, you need to take a look at your entire financial picture.  You need to ask yourself a question and it’s very important for you to reflect on it:

“If I handle this debt, will I still be able to pay all my other debts?”

If the answer is yes, there are a number of reputable credit counselors and social workers who can help people develop budgets.  Some organizations like the Salvation Army help people create budgets that, if adhered to, can help people to live within their means. 

If the answer is no, you need to look at other options, primarily bankruptcy.  There are tons of debt settlement companies out there and most of them are either outright scams or they don’t offer real, lasting solutions to your problems.

Bankruptcy attorneys are well versed in analyzing finances and determining whether or not you are able to get out of your financial troubles without the help of Bankruptcy. 

If you’re facing a garnishment, reach out to the attorneys at Harmon and Gorove.  They offer a free, no obligation consultation to help you decide your best course of action.

Don’t “Cosign” Your Good Credit Away

So, you’ve gone and done it.  You didn’t listen when we told you not to do it.  You said to yourself, it’s OK, I know my brother won’t skip out on this loan and leave me holding the bag.  Well, you were wrong and he did. Not only that but the truck loan he convinced you to cosign on was just wrecked and your brother also didn’t have insurance.  You’ve got yourself in a mess. Here’s what happens to your credit now.

Your brother was late with his payment or he’s skipped one entirely.  This is a big red flag. It’s also a big red flag to the credit ratings companies.  Your credit score is going to get dinged, probably to the tune of 20-30 points. Honestly, even if your brother doesn’t miss his payments you’re still going to have credit problems.  

One of the thing credit ratings companies look at is something called your Debt to Income Ratio.  This is a measurement of how your income stacks up to your total debt load.  Lets say your monthly income is $10,000 and your monthly payments on all your debts add up to $6,000.  That’s a Debt to Income ratio of 60% and you’re now considered high risk. This loan you’ve cosigned with your Brother is factoring into that DTI of 60% and that’s hurting your credit score and your ability to get new loans at the best interest rates, or at all.  So your credit is taking a hit for your brother and you don’t even get the benefits of having something to show for it.

OK, so back to the issue at hand.  You’ve cosigned and now your on the hook.  Here’s the best ways to avoid massive hits to your credit or the possibility of ending up having to file bankruptcy.  First things first, monitor the borrower to make sure that their payments are on time and in full. This may mean you have to call them every month before the due date to gently remind them that the payment is due and make sure that they actually have the cash to cover that payment.  This is a hassle, and why we told you not to cosign to begin with. This will most likely pay off for you though because it will hopefully keep you from finding out the hard way (like nasty calls from bill collectors) that your brother hasn’t been making his payments and keep him from damaging your credit for years to come.

The next thing you should do is assume that your brother won’t be able to make his payment at some point and that you’ll occasionally have to step in to make the payment in order to keep your good credit score.  After you sign the loan you need to open up a separate savings account and place in that account enough money to cover payments for at least 6 months worth of payments. By doing this, you have a cushion built up in the event that your brother does what the lender thinks they’re going to do, quit paying the loan.  This also protects you in the event that your brother absconds with the truck. It’ll give you enough liquidity to call the lender and try to work out a deal. It’ll still hurt your credit but it hopefully won’t drive you into bankruptcy.

If you were convinced to cosign and now find yourself in financial trouble because of that loan, don’t worry.  We’ve given you a pretty hard time here today but in all honesty, people cosign all the time and it isn’t something that can’t be fixed.  The attorneys at Harmon and Gorove have the ability to make these issues go away using the tools provided in the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Our attorney have decades of experience in handling cases like this and we are willing and able to help you in your time of need.  Contact us today to schedule your free, no obligation consultation with one of our attorneys.  

Cosigning is ALWAYS a Bad Idea

We understand how hard it is to say no, especially to a friend or family member.  Let me say this loud and clear, when a family member of a friend asks about cosigning a loan for them, RUN FOR THE HILLS! JUST SAY NO! DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SIGN THAT LOAN!

No matter how sure you are that they won’t default on the loan, you may even feel it in your soul, DON’T DO IT.  If a lender is asking for a cosigner, there’s a good reason. It’s because they believe that the primary borrower won’t be able to make their financial obligations.  More often than not, the lender is right.

When it comes to cosigning, you’re being asked to guarantee a debt.  If the primary borrower doesn’t repay the debt, you’re on the hook for the debt and the creditor WILL come after you. You’ll be on the hook for late fees, collection costs, attorneys fees and the principal balance of the loan.  If the debt goes into default it WILL show up on your credit report. The bottom line is, cosigning is always a bad idea.

Cosigning is always a bad idea.  Have I made myself clear up to this point? Cosigning a debt puts you in the worst possible situation.  You receive no benefit from the loan you’re cosigning. You aren’t getting a student loan to improve your education, you’re not getting a house to live in and build equity in, you’re not getting that flashy new car to ride around town in. You’re just on the hook for all of it.  You can have you bank accounts and assets seized, your paycheck garnished, you could be subject to litigation and you could ultimately end up in bankruptcy.

We understand that it’s difficult to refuse to help someone you love.  Telling friends or family members no is one of the toughest things you can do. However, it may be the best thing you can do for your relationship.  Think about what your relationship will be like if your friend or family member defaults on the loan or even just misses a payment. That’s going to show up on your credit at a minimum and will likely bring your score down 20 or more points.  The damage that cosigning can do to relationships can not be understated. You’ll be left with a loan and a relationship that will be severely damaged from here forward.

If you’ve cosigned a loan with someone who has missed payments or defaulted on a loan completely and you find yourself on the hook for their mistakes the attorneys at Harmon and Gorove can help.  We are experts in dealing with these kinds of issues through the bankruptcy code.  Contact us today for a free, no obligation consultation about how we can help you get out from under these debts and get your life back.

Why does Bankruptcy Exist?

Why does bankruptcy exist?  I can tell you from more than 10 years of legal experience, that is the question most often asked by creditors who are baffled as to why they lose out when someone files bankruptcy against a debt that is owed to them.  While it can be unfortunate for the creditor, for the person needing protection that bankruptcy offers, the choice is stark.

First, let’s look at a little bit of the history of bankruptcy.  For hundred of years, if you couldn’t pay back your debts, your assets were often seized to satisfy those debts and if you didn’t have enough assets to cover the debts owed, you’d be thrown in jail.  While this doesn’t make much sense, being that if you’re imprisoned you can’t exactly work to pay off your debts, it was the law in Great Britain and even in colonial times here in America. This all changed with the Financial Panic of 1837.  This was the first time that debtors were able to file for bankruptcy protection voluntarily. Changes have occurred over the past 180 years that have made bankruptcy fairer for the debtor and the creditor.

At times, a person’s debts can become so overwhelming that they become paralyzing.  Debts can feel like a type of financial bondage that steals a person’s hope for future prosperity and ability to take care of his or her family.  From my ten years of experience, I have found that none of my clients actually want to file bankruptcy and all of them desperately want to have the financial capacity to repay their creditors. Unfortunately, they have reached a point in their life where they feel that this is simply impossible.

This is where bankruptcy becomes a type of safety net.  The reasons for bankruptcy are numerous. First, bankruptcy serves to provide a debtor with a fresh start and renewed sense of hope.  The Supreme Court has stated that this fresh start is the “essence of modern bankruptcy law” and that debtor is provided with special protections in bankruptcy called exemptions “to ensure that bankruptcy will provide a fresh start.” Local Loan Co. v. Hunt, 292 U.S. 244 (1934).

From the perspective of macroeconomics, bankruptcy is an essential part of capitalism. In an economy without bankruptcy protections if a business fails you’re out of luck but in our country bankruptcy can serve as a fail safe.  Without this fail safe what business person would ever take a risk with his or her money? It is obvious that no one starts a business just to file bankruptcy, bankruptcy itself provides for an invaluable safety net that will allow a person to take the debts from the past and move forward into a brighter future.

Many creditors often ask, what about me?   While it is not obvious why bankruptcy would benefit creditors, creditors are protected by the law as well.  First of all, we assume that a person who is looking at filing bankruptcy has exhausted all other financial options.   For the most part, debtors generally don’t have much more than their household goods and furniture, a car, and a home, if they’re lucky. The reality of the situation is, no one is going to get paid back in full. By assuming bankruptcy is unfair for creditors, must also acknowledge that the alternative probably wouldn’t be better either.

Understanding all this we realize that bankruptcy is an equalizing force among creditors. Creditors are broken up into roughly three different classifications: The first is secured creditors like your mortgage or car loans, the second is a priority creditor like alimony or child support, and the third is just unsecured like a credit card or medical bill.  An example of this works would be a situation like this. A debt collection law firm is attempting to collect on a credit card issued by a bank and the debt collection law firm pursued a garnishment suit against the debtor in magistrate court. They won and got a judgment, and started garnishing the debtor’s paycheck to the fullest extent allowed by law.  By doing this the debt collection law firm collected $1,500.00 in three months for the bank.  The problem with this is that there is a section of the bankruptcy law that says that if an unsecured creditor is paid more than $600 within 90 days of the debtor filing bankruptcy (even if it’s court ordered), that creditor was given preferential treatment.  This means that the bankruptcy trustee can force the bank to turn over the $1,500 so the trustee can distribute that money to the unsecured creditors in equal shares. So, from that perspective, even creditors may benefit by some equalization under the bankruptcy code.

With all this said, I hope I’ve answered the question, Why does bankruptcy exist. It exists for both the creditor and the debtor.  It helps to ensure fair treatment of the creditors and to help the debtor get a fresh start. If you feel that you may be in need of a consultation with a bankruptcy attorney give the caring and compassionate attorneys at Harmon and Gorove a call to schedule a free, no obligation consultation with an experienced bankruptcy attorney. With our expertise you may be able to regain your financial freedom and start down the road to prosperity.

Garnishment? My paycheck? Really?

The long and short of it is, yes, garnishment of wages can happen to you.

Finding yourself in a situation where you are experiencing financial difficulties can often create an immense amount of stress and people who find themselves in this unfortunate situation often don’t know who to turn to. When you have exhausted your other options one of the best solutions is to file for bankruptcy protection with the help of a qualified Attorney.

One of the concerns people face when dealing with financial hardship is the reality that your wages may be garnished by a creditor. If this happens, it magnifies the burden and will likely pose even greater problems than you were previously facing. Depending where you live there are federal and state laws in place that limit the amount that creditors can receive in a garnishment. However, when money is already tight any income you lose will have a dramatic effect on you.

When creditors seek a garnishment, they must first file suit in court and notify you of the pending legal action. Generally speaking, in Georgia, creditors can take no more than 25% of your disposable income or the amount that is above 30 times the federal minimum wage, whichever is less.

Rather than continuing to deal with unnecessary stress, many consider filing for bankruptcy protection as it causes all of the collection actions to cease immediately, under penalty of law.  In Georgia, we may even be able to recover some of your garnished wages. All of your creditors collection actions will be put on hold until your bankruptcy status has been determined and your case discharged. While many people view bankruptcy as giving up, we look at it as a form of relief when there are simply no other options available.

Filing for Bankruptcy allows you to get your finances back on track to give you more freedom and peace in your life.  When filing for Bankruptcy it is important to seek out a highly qualified attorney who SPECIALIZES in filing consumer bankruptcies. The attorneys at Harmon and Gorove have filed more than 5,000 successful bankruptcy cases and will put their knowledge and experience to work for you.  Contact our office today to arrange a FREE consultation with one of our highly trained attorneys.