Best question in court?

Don't feel lonely when you say that you have no real defense because very few people who are sued in local courts have any defense either. Count on their getting a judgment against you no matter what you do. <br/><br/>A better thing to be worried about Instead of getting a judgment against you is how to protect yourself against the aftermath. In your situation that isn't hard to do. You are on a pension. I certainly hope that is SSI or some other type of government pension because that can't be garnished except in special circumstances so let's discuss those<br/><br/>Let's assume that you get your pension check by direct deposit. You say that you also do odd jobs to make extra money and you deposit checks from those odd jobs in the same account as your pension checks are deposited into. That leaves your entire account open to seizure. So if you have been mixing funds like that you can wake up one day and find all your money has been seized and you owe the bank for the garnishment. The bank fees range from zero to as much as $200. Just depends on how much the bank charges to respond to a garnishment order.<br/><br/>Here is how it happens. First they get the judgment, then send you a form demanding to know all your personal information. Bank account records for up to as much as 2 or three years, tax returns for up to 5 years, employment records for up to the 5 preceeding years. titles to any vehicles you own, information about any additional sources of income you might have, names and social security numbers of any and all family members living with you, The list can be very extensive and very invasive. If you ignore that demand for information you will probably be summoned to court once again and forced to either answer the questions or go to jail for contempt of court. Same thing if you just ignore that second summons. Off to jail you go. <br/><br/>So if they get your bank statements they will immediately see that you are or have been mixing money from odd jobs with your pension money. If I were in that position and had been mixing funds I would immediately go to another bank and open a new account and get my SSI transferred to the new account and never make any deposits to that account. Let the government make all deposits to that account. Then I would close my present account and open a new account in yet another bank if I had checks from other sources that I needed to cash or I would take any checks from odd jobs to the issuing bank and cash the checks there or use a check cashing service of some kind. Maybe a grocery store. <br/><br/>Don't try to use a spouse or child's accounts. If you are joint with anybody including children then get your name off of those accounts because they can be grabbed too. Don't try to get your spouse to cash those checks for you either because spouses can be called in to reveal all their banking information as well to see whether they are helping you cash those checks too. If they are then their money can be garnished as well. Even close friends can be summoned into court to see if they are helping you hide funds in some special cases such as if you have some sort of business relationship with them. One person I helped in the past had their wife and a business partner summoned into court and put through the wringer like that. Luckily he had not been mixing funds with his wife's account that they could prove. <br/><br/>Another thing to watch out for is your vehicles. If you have more than one and any are free and clear they can be grabbed as well as other titled vehicles or trailers or boats or anything else that might have enough value to haul off and sell. They can get extremely hard to deal with indeed. <br/><br/>Start taking the above steps today as needed to protect your pension money from seizure. You just might be very sorry later if you don't.