Garnishment, defined

On Oct 9, 8:38 am, Paul Cassel <pcasselremo...@comremovecast.net> wrote:
> Predatory? You don't owe the money? You mean, you are just sitting there
> debt free and being attacked by mystery folks who claim to be creditors?

I don't think that's what the OP means.  Many creditors who are, in fact, owed money but still engage in what are considered predatory practices, i.e. unfair methods that may or may not specifically violate the federal Unfair Debt Collection Practices Act (UDCPA) or various state statutes.   Even if not violative of UDCPA such acts may also give rise to tort liability if they are outrageous enough and cause the victim severe mental distress.   IMO a creditor who knowingly attaches or garnishes a bank account that they know contains only SSA funds which they know are unattachable, is engaging in a predatory practice.

Sure, there are those who say, "that's not predatory, debtor has only himself to blame if he got into debt over his head", but that doesn't mean it's open season on debtors' lives and sanity as soon as they have a hard time paying their bills.  We don't send foax to debtor's prison anymore, and the law provides various protections for debtors from creditors' importunings precisely because some creditors don't seem to know where to draw the line about what are proper and improper means of collecting their money.   Even in the old days, it was not proper to try to collect a pound of flesh as collateral for a debt.

> Garnishment means intercepting the payment from the SSA to you. Taking
> money from a bank account is not a garnishment, but a slightly different
> procedure.

Actually, some states (MD for instance) do use the term "garnishment" to cover seizure of bank accounts, others call it "attachment" or "levy" or something else.   In MD, "attachment" means you seize property which is in the possession of the debtor, whether or not it belongs to him or to somebody else; and "garnishment" means you seize property in the possession of somebody else that allegedly belongs to the debtor.  In either case the person who is holding the property (the bank, the depositor, the owner, bailee or bailor of other property) can petition the court to remove the attachment and/or garnishment if there are proper grounds, e.g. the property attached actually belongs to someone other than the debtor, or the property garnished is exempt for some reason.

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