QUestion about Garnishment of Bank Accounts

I think the first thing we need to know is whether or not your question actually deals with an actual creditor or a 3rd party debt collector. Debt collectors often like to palm themselves off as creditors. Junk debt buyers often like to claim they are creditors.

Even true creditors such as banks and credit card companies can become 3rd party debt collectors if the account is in default, having already been charged off at the time a merger takes place.

True original creditors simply assign or sell their bad debts to true 3rd party debt collectors so they never have any reason to hunt for bank accounts but true 3rd party debt collectors can do a SSN check and find out where any bank accounts a debtor might have are located. They can do local searches, state wide searches and even nationwide searches.

No bank account anywhere is totally safe from such searches but there are several different ways to have banking services that are extremely difficult or impossible to find. You just have to hunt on line for possibilities.

There are other ways to keep assets safe from garnishment too. I know of one company that will actually garnish your wages using stipulated judgments which you agree to and have their judgments domesticated into your state. They also give you a release of that judgment at the same time so you can get rid of it if you need to buy a house or a car and need to show that the judgment has been paid off before you can get the loan.

The judgment is configured so that it will last for a year or so after the statute of limitations for your state runs out. For example let us say that you have a job that earns you $52,000 a year. You get paid once a month so your check (theoretically) is $4333.33 a month. You could be garnished for $1083 each month or $13,000 a year. That company would set your judgment for about $130,000 so their garnishments would last for 10 years. Each time your employer sends them the money from your wages they immediately send you a bank certified cashier's check for the amount they got from your employer minus the expense of getting the cashier's check and postage costs as well as a very small administrative fee. The point is that with that size of garnishment against you nobody else can get their garnishment in against your wages.

Is that legal? No, it is obviously a fraud upon your creditors but there isn't much they can do about it. The company that does this is a corporation. Piercing the corporate veil would be far too much trouble the way they have it set up.

P.S. Don't ask me to tell you who that company is or how to contact them because I'm not promoting them or anybody else.

 

Three ways. 1. Assett search - hiring independent agencies to find your bank account. 2. Hauling you into court where you have to reveal where you are banking. 3. Contacting your employer, ask that employer into which bank your direct deposit goes. If uou don't have direct deposit get the information from the back of the cancelled check. However your employer does not really have to comply with those requests unless sued by the creditor/collection goons.

 

Just remember not to put any money other than retirement money in that account. If other money is mingled with the retirement money they can freeze and grab. Make sure your bank knows it is a disability pension account.

 

Unfortunately a bank account is just another bank account. If collectors get a judgment ordering the bank to freeze/garnish the account the bank has to comply. Then it is up to the account holder to prove that the funds in that account were disability, SS, or any other forms of exempt funds. The account holder will eventually get the funds returned.
The bank itself will not flag any account with any notations that the funds in that account are exempt.

 

Sorry to disagree with you. Banks cannot obey a judgment order that orders them to do that which is illegal for them to do in the first place. It is against federal law to garnish any government issued pension. If a bank is faced with a state court order to pay out pension money and is also faced with a federal law that says they can't do that the federal law will trump the state court order every time. On top of that, the debt collector can be sued for illegal garnishment. If I had a government pension of any kind and they garnished it I would sue them for illegal garnishment immediately. Even IRS don't want to get hit with a lawsuit for illegal garnishment or illegally freezing of funds. That can happen if they wrongfully freeze a bank account. That's why it hardly ever happens. IRS knows better than to do that. Some debt collectors don't seem to know any better but most banks will not knowingly freeze pension funds. Only real problem for pensioners is that some banks will charge a hefty fee for responding to a garnishment order and that can throw them for a real financial loop if their check is small.

 

Get an attorney's letter stating that the account holds only exempt funds. Have he/she file the letter with the Court, and also send copies to the bank and the judgment creditor. The letter should state that the bank and creditor will be held liable for any attempted levy of said bank account.

 

We're talking two different issues here, acponesucks. Your asserion is right, benefits such as SS or other disabilty can not be garnished at the source of the paymements, like wages through/from employmement. But once those ungarnished payments hit a bank account then it's just money. Ripe for the taking.

 

There isn't all that much to worry about. Again, banks know better than to allow garnishment of pension funds. They can and do disallow such garnishments. The real problem can arise if a judge orders you to pay in a garnishment hearing. If that happens then it seems to me that if you failed to do so or refused to do so the judge could order you to be jailed for contempt of court.

I have never heard of that being done but it strikes me as a possibility. So the question then becomes one of whether or not a judge can do that and what to do about it in the event that it does happen.

 

Your best bet would be contact the outfit that is paying you those benefits - and get them to write something to the effect that the funds they are paying you are disability payments. Take that letter into your bank's branch so they have it on file in case some thieving creditor/collection agency attempt to rob you. Without a letter like this the bank won't know/care where the funds are actually coming from.

 

I'm helping an elderly lady whose daughter is an acquaintance of mine. Both are on SS and the mother got a judgment against her in a small town court. The lawyer sent her a questionaire demanding her financial information. I met with the two ladies this morning and helped them with the answers. Here are the questions and the answers.

1. Who is your employer? ANS. United States Government, Social Security Administration.

2. What is your employer's address. ANS. Washington, D.C.

3. What is your employer's phone number. ANS. I don't know. I've never called them.

4. How long have you been employed there? Ever since I got on Social Security.

5. How often are you paid. ANS. Same as all other Social Security recipients.

6. Who is your spouse's employer. ANS. Jesus Christ.

7. What is their address? ANS. Heaven I hope.

8. How much does your spouse earn? ANS. I don't know. I haven't asked him lately but I doubt he don't earn no money at all.

9. Where do you bank? ANS. Irrelevant. You can't get any of my social security money anyway.

10. How many people live in your home and what is their source of income? ANS. We don't none of us work. We is all on Social Security.

11. What kind of car do you have. ANS. A 1992 Chevy and you can't take that from me either. I got to get to the doctor and the grocery store somehow.

12. How much do you owe on your automobile? ANS. None of your business.

13. Do you own a home on which you are making monthly payments? ANS. No.

14. How much do you plan on paying towards this debt? ANS. Nothing.

However the real question is how much do they plan on paying for their violations of FDCPA when she gets them to federal court? Of course that remains to be seen. I seriously doubt they will like those answers very much but maybe they will at least get a laugh out of some of them.