How To Fight a Garnishment Without a Lawyer
The dictionary defines garnishment as “a court order to an employer to withhold wages or send money to court or to the person who has won a lawsuit against an employee.” You don’t however need to hire an expensive lawyer who will charge you hundreds of dollars an hour for his services to fight a garnishment. There are ways in which you can fight for yourself and win.
Before you begin to fight a garnishment, there are a couple of things that you will need:
- a telephone
- the courage to speak to your creditors (without losing your temper).
Remember: your creditors record everything. You don’t want to be in court and have a judge hear you call the debt collection agency a $%^ker (even if they deserve it). Keep your cool.
Once you have these two things, the next thing that you need to do in order to fight a garnishment is to contact the company or individual that has put a garnishment on your bank account or your wages. Don’t bother calling your bank to find out this information (you’ll be sent in circles). If you don’t know who took your money, go to the court (most likely it’s your local county civil court) that processed the garnishment, and ask to take a look at your file.
Once you have contacted the people you owe money to, you are well on the way to settling the problem because most companies trying to claim money back would prefer to receive a small payment each month rather than hold a garnishment on your account because it costs them money each time to process it. Offer to pay a fraction of what you owe (low ball them as much as you can).
The second thing you can do to fight a garnishment is just to move your cash around so they can’t find it. Don’t use that bank account again, because they will dip into it again (when you are least expecting it).
If you are faced with garnishment on a bank account, the easiest thing to do is to arrange a payment plan so that you can slowly pay back the debt, lift the garnishment and begin building up your credit score again. You need to ensure that you stick to any payment plans that you arrange because if you don’t then you will find yourself in exactly the same position again.
If you are subject to garnishment, there are only a couple of legal ways to fight it (bankruptcy is one of them). Don’t do nothing, because if you ignore the garnishment order, you’ll wake up one morning to an empty bank account and a bunch of bounced checks. Don’t let that happen to you!
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