Stop Wage Garnishment
5 ways to stop a wage garnishment
Getting your wages garnished can be the worst. It comes out of nowhere and boom. 25% of your paycheck is gone. How are you going to pay your bills and make rent. Are you going to suffer through it or do you fight back. If you want to avoid it what can you do. Well, there are only a few choices and none of them are easy. Your creditor or collector has gone through a lot of effort to get to this point and they’ve got you over a gun barrel. They definitely aren’t in the mood to negotiate or except payment arrangements, thy’re already getting their money. Here’s how you can get it back.
1. Move jobs
This may sound like a pain, but let’s put it this way, if your job is easily replaceable it may be easier to move down the road and avoid paying that $5k. It takes a lot of energy for creditors to find out where you work and once they’ve had a garnishment go belly up odds are they’re done pursuing it. For some people this makes a lot of sense, for others that can’t or won’t leave there are options.
2. Take a vacation
This won’t make wage garnishments go away but they may think because your wages stopped being garnished you left your job. Most states only keep garnishments active for 60 days once payments stop. If you can take an extended leave you’ll come back with a garnishment free paycheck until your creditor gets wise.
3. Bankruptcy
The B word, may be ugly but it works like a sledgehammer on debts. As soon as you file your attorney should send a copy to the Sheriff’s office and the garnishment will stop immediately. The plus side is you get all your other debts wiped out and your credit score may go up. The downside is you’re bankrupt and your credit score will probably go down.
4. Pay it off
You obviously don’t have the money but if you weren’t losing 25% of your paycheck you could make a payment on a loan to friends, family, employers etc. Avoid high interest loans but remember that it’s OK to ask for help.
5. Get the judge to set aside the judgment
If you really want to fight it you can file a “motion to set aside judgment” you will have a hearing in front of a judge and you’ll have an opportunity to convince him to rehear the case which means judgment will be set aside until the case can be retried. You need a good reason. If you say you were never served, than you were denied due process and didn’t have the opportunity to defend yourself. In these cases judges are often open to setting aside the judgment and rehearing the matter in a month or two. Some procedural technicality could really save you here.
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