By: Jeena Cho

I met with a client recently who had been living with a wage garnishment for 6 months. She falsely believed that it was too late to file for bankruptcy once the sheriff served her employer with the garnishment order. So, she had been living with 25% less income for the past 6 months. When I asked her why she believed she could not file for bankruptcy, she said the creditor told her so. This is really disheartening when creditors will tell such a bold lie. She only came in to get help because she was served with another law suit.

Let me set the record straight. It is not too late to stop wage garnishment by filing bankruptcy at any time. Obviously, it makes sense to file sooner rather than later to stop the garnishment but just because there is a wage garnishment does not mean you can’t file for bankruptcy. Like any ongoing collection efforts, once you file for bankruptcy, the Automatic Stay goes into effect. This means wage garnishment will stop immediately. In fact, oftentimes, we are able to recover some of the garnished wages in bankruptcy.

If you have been living with wage garnishment and have been told similar lies, please seek help right away. Even without bankruptcy, there may be other remedies available to you to either stop or reduce the garnishment.

If you have been sued by Mann Bracken or any other law firm representing creditors, it is important that you not ignore it. One thing you may not realize is that often times, the creditor that is bringing the law suit are third party collection companies (not the original creditor) and they may not be able to prove the debt. Remember, the burden of proof is on them. They must prove that you did in fact incur the debt they are suing you for.

Assuming you do nothing and ignore the law suit, they will get a default judgement. This means that they can garnish your wages, or put a a lien on your property. They will not only get the amount they sued for, but generally costs, such as cost to bring the law suit, as well as attorney fees.

Law suits are always an expensive proposition for all parties involved. Even at the end of the day, the plaintiff is unable to prove the debt, you’ll have to front the expense of hiring an attorney. Depending on your financial circumstances, and other debt you have, bankruptcy may be an option. By filing for bankruptcy, you are getting rid of the underlying debt that the lawsuit is based on – hence the law suit is killed in its track.

If you did ignore the law suit, and your wage is garnished, it’s still not too late to file for bankruptcy and stop the garnishment. In fact, you may be able to recover up to 90 days of garnished wages by bringing an Adversarial Procedure in bankruptcy court.

If you are facing a law suit by Mann Bracken or another creditor, call a lawyer right away. We represent clients in the San Francisco Bay Area.