What Is A Garnishment?

Ganishment is the legal process that allows a creditor to take money from your wages, your bank account, or your State of Michigan tax refund if you get one.

However, before a creditor can garnish you, it must have sued you in a Michigan Court and received the proper paperwork from the court. At that point the garnishment can take place. Sometimes you may not even know that you have been sued. That can happen when you have moved recently and mail is not being forwarded to you.

If you did get sued and did not get notice, the first time you know about it is when your paycheck is suddenly missing 25% or more of your take home pay, or your bank account is frozen.

If you have been sued on a debt you should contact an attorney immediately. Do NOT ignore papers from the court. Usually you can make some kind of payment agreement with your creditor that will avoid garnishment and allow you to pay much less than the 25%.

Even if you are being garnished an attorney can quite often get your case reopened and have a court order you to pay much less that the garnished amount. I had a recent case in which the debtor was being garnished over $700.00 / month. We were able to negotiate with the creditor’s attorney and get that lowered to $200 / month.