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.
