Wage Garnishment

Wage Garnishment is a way of getting a judgment that has financial benefits and base against a defendant by ordering a third party (the garnishee) to pay money, which otherwise would have gone to the defendant, directly to the plaintiff. In plain terms if you were not able to pay the bill, the person or organization whom you owe it to would file a suit against you and try to get it directly out of your salary and in extreme cases if the court of Justice allows can also sell your property to get it.

Up to around twenty five percent of your disposable income can be taken away, not more than that, according to the Federal Law. It can be due to any kind of debt that you must have taken commonly it is unpaid taxes, unpaid court fines or any other debts taken for as a part of child support

What do Wage Garnishment Laws Include?

• The law is applicable as stated earlier to debts taken from banks; student loans and unpaid money owed to the government but does not illustrate a way to stop wage garnishment. Yet, I think, the most effective way to save yourself from wage garnishment is to be pro-active when dealing with creditors and debt collectors so that they know that you are willing to pay.
• An employer cannot terminate the employee on the basis of the fact that his wage is being is being garnished. In fact if an organization doe this and it is proved, they can be fined, though not more than $1000 or can also be imprisoned for not more than a year.
• The Social Security check, Public Benefits check and Retirement Benefits check cannot be subjected to garnishment according to the Federal and State court.
• There are some Federal and state garnishment laws that can be used to stop, start or avoid wage garnishment actions by consumers, creditors and collectors. Wage garnishment except those done as a result of student loans is only possible when creditors and collectors manage to receive a court ordered judgment for such an action. The garnishment action, otherwise known as "administrative wage garnishment" can be only be up to 25 percent of the disposable income, as stated earlier. This is one of the important points that one should remember because more than that is illegal.
• When deducting money from the payroll, at times there is not enough money in the employee's pay to satisfy all of the garnishments if in case there is more than one garnishment on the person, in such cases the correct order to take a garnishment must be followed. Like if the debts to be taken care of are in some such order, one with federal tax, the other with local tax, and the other are credit card garnishments, the first garnishment that would be taken would be the federal tax garnishments, then the local tax garnishments, and ultimately garnishments for the credit card.

What can you do stop Wage Garnishment?

There are several ways to stop Wage Garnishment like making a deal with the creditor, filing for a consumer proposal and filing for bankruptcy. So prior to your employer receiving a garnishee summon you should make an effort to strike a deal with your creditor. This comes as the simplest way of stopping wage garnishment since otherwise stopping the wage garnishment might as well going to the extent of getting a consumer proposal. Filing for personal bankruptcy also can stop garnishment of your wages of course depending on who the creditors are. The longer you take to deal with wage garnishment, the more you have a chance to lose more and more from your pay check so it is better to deal with it as soon as you have determined what you want to do about it.