What You Need to Know about Wage Garnishment

Having your wages garnished is an unpleasant experience for anyone. Unfortunately, there are too many people out there who don't know everything they should about wage garnishment, what it is, how it happens, and how to stop wage garnishment in Seattle. If your wages are being garnished, then this article can help you learn more about the process so that you know how to best handle this situation.

What Is It?

Simply put, wage garnishment is a means of forcing an individual to pay off a debt. Typically, the garnishments begin only after a court order is given. This usually happens when the individual has failed to make regular payments on a debt. In order to cover the amount owed, the plaintiff can sue to have a monthly amount deducted from each paycheck the defendant receives. This can be done on both wages and salaries and can either be a percentage of the earnings or a set amount.

Types of Debt

Wage garnishment can occur for any type of debt that you owe, but here are some of the most common examples:

• Child support: If you fail to make monthly child support payments, the child's other parent can sue to have the payments taken directly out of your paycheck. This ensures they receive their monthly payment, but it can have serious effects on your ability to make ends meet for yourself.
• Student loans: Many people end up with debt after graduating from college. If you make regular payments on this, you won't have any problems. However, if you default on your loans, you can be sent to collections, which could lead to wage garnishments that force you to pay back the debt.
• Taxes: If you owe the government taxes, they can begin garnishing your wages to pay off the debt. This can include the initial amount owed as well as late fees and interest.
• Court fees: When you're sued in court and the judge rules against you, you're required to pay whatever amount the judge says you owe. Failure to do so can lead to wage garnishments.

Again, these are only a few of the most common examples of debts that lead to wage garnishment. It is important to remember that any party you owe money to--from credit cards to mortgages and more--could feasibly have your wages garnished to pay off the debt.

Are There Limits?

Thankfully, there are limits to how much of your earnings can be garnished for your debts. This is to help ensure that you are still able to survive on your monthly earnings. The federal limit for wage garnishments (with a few exceptions) is 25% of your post-tax earnings or the total amount of earnings that exceeds 30 times the minimum wage--whichever is less.

Knowing what the limits are can be complicated, especially when it comes to those few areas that are excluded from these limitations. It is strongly recommended that you seek the advice of a financial advisor or attorney to learn more about your rights in your particular situation.

How to Stop It

Under normal circumstances, wage garnishments will continue until the total debt is paid off. However, if your total garnishments are simply more than you can handle, there are other ways that you can stop it from happening. The primary means of doing this is to file bankruptcy. Doing this makes it illegal for companies to try to collect debt from you, which means wage garnishments will cease.

However, there are a few debts that are not affected by a bankruptcy, so it's important that you speak to a bankruptcy lawyer about how to stop wage garnishment in Seattle before you file any bankruptcy paperwork.

Source : articlesbase.com