Florida Wage Garnishment Lawyer
Having your wages garnished is one method creditors and bill collectors will use to try and collect a debt from you. It’s not just embarrassing to have your employer know about your financial troubles; it could lead your employer to see you differently when it comes time to consider promotions, assignments, or layoffs. Even worse, having your wages garnished at a time when you are in financial difficulty only makes it harder than ever to make ends meet and afford even the basic necessities of life. Talk to the Florida wage garnishment lawyers at Nowack & Olson, PLLC about how to avoid a wage garnishment, or how to stop one that has already been put in place.
How Florida Wage Garnishments Work
A wage garnishment is a way to collect a debt through a judicial process. The first step is for the creditor or collection agency to sue you and get a judgment against you. With a judgment in hand, the creditor can then get a court order for wage garnishment. Once presented with a court order, your employer will be required by law to withhold the stated amount from your paycheck, which will then be transferred to the creditor until the debt is paid off or the order runs out. Wage garnishment orders typically last for 120 days.
There is a limit to how much of your weekly wages can be garnished. Garnishments are usually limited to no more than 25% of your disposable earnings – your weekly wages that are left over after required withholdings and deductions. However, a garnishment can be as much as 50% of your take-home pay for certain debts, such as tax payments or child support payments.
Not all types of income can be garnished. For instance, social security income and unemployment compensation are not subject to garnishment except in cases where the IRS is attempting to collect a tax debt.
How To Stop Garnishment Of Your Wages
Are your creditors garnishing your wages where you work? It’s not just embarrassing that your employer knows about your debt problems, your creditors are taking money from every paycheck, money you need to pay bills and buy groceries. How are you going to eat? What can you do?
Money can be taken from your paycheck by court order. It can also be taken straight out of your bank accounts by bank levy. You wake up and discover you can’t even buy gas.
Your Solution To Garnishment
This is an area where Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 provide the sweetest solution of all. Within hours of filing your bankruptcy petition, an automatic stay goes into effect. The message goes out to all your named creditors to cease and desist in all efforts to garnish wages or levy your savings accounts.
It is as if their money-taking schemes are frozen in midair. Your bankruptcy filing is under the protection of the United States government now. If your creditors persist, they are breaking the law, and can be cited for contempt.
The bankruptcy lawyers at Nowack & Olson, PLLC, have been freezing creditors in midair for more than 16 years. The automatic stay has brought satisfaction and relief to thousands of our clients.
You know Florida has been struggling for years now with layoffs, foreclosures, underwater houses and worse. The Bankruptcy Code was created for just this purpose: saving decent people like yourself from financial destruction.
Bankruptcy is like a breath of fresh air to a diver with an empty tank. Nearly every client we have ever worked for shouts our praises. We gave them their lives back.
How Bankruptcy Can Help
One of the most immediate and powerful benefits of filing for bankruptcy is the automatic stay which is put in place as soon as you file. This provision will keep a wage garnishment from being imposed on you during your bankruptcy. If a garnishment has already started, the automatic stay will stop it, and you will once more receive your full weekly wages while the stay is in effect. Keep in mind that the automatic stay does not apply to court-ordered child support payments which are being pulled from your paycheck.
While the stay is in place, your Plantation bankruptcy lawyer will work to have the debt itself wiped out in bankruptcy. With the debt gone, there is no basis for a garnishment, and you can continue to receive the full amount of your wages as you start a new phase of your life out from under that mountain of debt.
Call Our Florida Wage Garnishment Lawyers for Immediate Help
If you wages are being garnished or you are being threatened with a garnishment, call Nowack & Olson for a free consultation about your options with an experienced and effective Florida bankruptcy lawyer.
