Lawyer for Wage-Earners Who Need Debt Relief
If you have fallen behind on paying your debts, creditors have the right to garnish your wages to collect on that unpaid debt. Wage garnishment can only make a bad situation worse for you.
At the Law Offices of Scott R. Schneider, I help Long Island clients stop wage garnishment by filing for bankruptcy protection. Filing for any type of bankruptcy puts an automatic stay on all debt collection efforts, including wage garnishment. To learn more, contact me for a free consultation with an experienced attorney.
Understanding the Wage Garnishment Process
The first step in the wage garnishment process is a creditor getting a judgment against you. If a credit card company, medical provider or car loan lender or any other creditor successfully sues you on an unpaid debt, they will get a judgment that they can submit to your county sheriff in order to get your wages garnished.
Once a creditor has a judgment against you, at least 10 percent of your wages can be taken every pay period in order to repay your debts. For certain types of debt, such as IRS tax debt, the percentage can be much higher.
Many sheriffs in New York notify debtors that their wages are subject to garnishment, and if a debtor agrees to make a payment every pay period, his or her employer may not find out. However, there is no guarantee that this will happen, and your employer may get the garnishment order before you ever know about it.
Stopping Garnishment Before or After it Starts
If you have gotten notice that a creditor has gotten a judgment against you, it is likely only a matter of time before you are targeted for wage garnishment. Filing for bankruptcy stops the wage garnishment process from moving forward.
If your wages are already being garnished, you will get relief as soon as you file for bankruptcy. Money that is deducted from your paycheck is money you can't get back, so the sooner you file for bankruptcy, the sooner you can stop losing your hard-earned pay to wage garnishment.
Contact me to discuss your options under Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy so that, if you decide that one of these options is right for you, we can move ahead with it and stop wage garnishment right away.
We are a debt relief agency. We help people file for bankruptcy relief under the Bankruptcy Code.
