Judgement Question

[sirflapjack]

Once a judgment has been made against you from a credit card debt, can they take your vehicle and sell it to repay the debt or can they only garnish your wages?

[AngelinaCat]

No, I don't think so, unless you have the car loan through the same institution as the CC debt. And even then, if you have a car loan, it is secured and takes precedence over the unsecured CC debt.

[PoorGrammyinBK7]

It depends on the laws of your state as to what they can do.

It also depends on how much equity you have in your vehicle. If you own it free and clear and it is worth more than your state's exemption (can't be protected by statutory exemption), it might be possible for them to do it. BUt even then, there are more legalities they would have to go through.

Are you filing BK?

[Lajazz947]

Once a judgment has been made against you from a credit card debt, can they take your vehicle and sell it to repay the debt or can they only garnish your wages?

Do you mean if the car is paid for?

In my case my wife has a judgement against her for a debt that her ex husband ran up and failed to pay.

We have two paid for cars and our attorney says that it is unlikely that any of our paid for cars will be repo'd to satisfy that debt since they are in my name and they probably do not want to seize property that might be separate without a debtors exam on my wife.

Just the same we keep our cars in the back until we file.

That is by the way, the reason that we agreed to file earlier than what I wanted (October) . I wanted to wait until November, she wanted to file in July.

My wife and I compromised and she waited a little longer and I sped it up a little.

As many of you all know here this BK process is taxing at best and it takes teamwork with both husband and wife to make it through the ups and downs without going crazy.

[sirflapjack]

I will probably be filing BK later on down the road. For now I'm just going to let the courts issue their judgement from the credit card debt and let them garnish my wages and such. I just want to make sure they can't touch my vehicle which I own free and clear. I know that if I file BK they will seize the car as it has more value than the exemption. Hopefully the collection agency cannot touch it upon judgement since this is really the only equity I have and its my mode of transportation. If anyone else has suggestions I need all the help I can get with at least hanging on to my car.

[ivehadit]

I'm in a similar situation, I'm thinking about puting my truck in my sons name then put some time between then and BK. Just not sure yet how much time we're talking. I wish i would have gotten a loan on it now.

[WoodSprite]

I'm in a similar situation, I'm thinking about puting my truck in my sons name then put some time between then and BK. Just not sure yet how much time we're talking. I wish i would have gotten a loan on it now.

Sorry to hijack the thread, but please be careful there, ivehadit. If you can't show that your son paid you fair market value for the truck, that's bankruptcy fraud, and the ramifications of that are waaay worse than losing the truck. It about killed me to sell my paid-for car and assume a payment on a car I didn't even LIKE, but it had to be done.

[treehugger1]

If the vehicle is financed by a company different than the judgment creditor/CA, then it seems unlikely that this third party would act to gain interest in the auto. They would have to satisfy your exemption, and pay off the loan. What would they gain?

I think it is possible that another company could get a second lien on the vehicle, but I can't see what they would gain.

If you own the vehicle, then a judgment creditor/CA could get a lien against the vehicle and attempt to force sale. I don't think this happens that often.

[AngelinaCat]

Our 2004 VW Jetta was fully paid for, but we took out a loan from our CU, with whom we has used when we originally purchased the car, for two reasons. #1 was, we really did need the money. #2 was because of the lawsuit filed against us by our enemy (spoken of in another thread) and we wanted that car shielded as much as possible so this A$$ would be unlikely to try to seize it, should the suit go in his favor.

[GoingDown]

Exactly what the above posters said.

Unless you own a very expensive car AND they KNOW you own it AND they KNOW how much it is worth, then they won't bother with it.

How do they find this information? Usually by talking to you on the telephone. The other method is looking at your credit report. If you recently paid off a car loan to Mercedes Auto Financing, for example, then they might get interested.

But chances are, they don't even know what kind of car you drive.

I had a collection agent threaten to take my car, my boat, and my house. I don't own a boat or a house. They were bluffing trying to scare me into paying them.

With an average car, it would cost them more money to take your car and auction it than they would ever get from it. So they don't bother with this method very often.

Most of the time they want wages to garnish, checking accounts to seize, and a house to slap a lien on.

[AngelinaCatHub]

I'm in a similar situation, I'm thinking about putting my truck in my sons name then put some time between then and BK. Just not sure yet how much time we're talking. I wish i would have gotten a loan on it now.

Don't do that. That can be gone back on for some time. I forget the term but you are hiding the fact you have this item. I see no reason though, not to take a loan on it for more than it is worth, and make sure the Title reflects this. Your son will......err....loan you big bucks, right? I am not condoning fraud, so just be careful. 'Hub