Garnished without judgement??

[ejny65]

I guess I asked before about when and how long after you are past due, a creditor can garnish your wage.
I assumed they should sue me first, in court, and get a judgement, before they can garnish any wage, right?
But i have read some posts here from memebers who seem to be garnished without all the prior steps...collection company, court....gudjement... (What am I missing?)
Shouldn't be a letter, or some kind of notification???

[cool33097]

I asked my lawyer that same question today and he said they have to sue you first.

[PaKettle]

I guess I asked before about when and how long after you are past due, a creditor can garnish your wage.
I assumed they should sue me first, in court, and get a judgement, before they can garnish any wage, right?
But i have read some posts here from memebers who seem to be garnished without all the prior steps...collection company, court....gudjement... (What am I missing?)
Shouldn't be a letter, or some kind of notification???

I think it should take at least 90 days, if not 4-6 months before they get a judgement, but that's just based on what I've heard, I'm not sure. I can tell you that I stopped paying bills in July and filed in November and none of mine went to garnishment. In fact, they only started to go to outside collection agents at that time, so I would assume I'd have had at least a month or two more before any judgements....

[jp2861]

It could be you're hearing stories from folks that failed to take the proper actions to follow through. Or could be that a summons was served at a prior address and the person being sued didn't know they needed to be in court. Who knows what each individual did or didn't do. But, before a garnishment or a levy on an account there will be a summons to court. Some folks choose to bury their head in the sand and avoid all contact or disregard correspondence, and the end result is a default judgement. There may a few legit excuses but I think most know when this is coming down the pike. I've always been an advocate of talking to creditors so we at least have some idea of what they're planning next. This is just one good reason why.

[tay666]

You may be thinking about credit union cross-collateralization.

If you have a checking/savings account at a credit union.
And also have a loan at that same credit union and don't pay your bill.
They can take the money out of your checking/savings without going to court.