Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Georgia

The legal mistake was yours. Why would you put money into a joint account with someone who owes judgments (especially when you found out in a past incident what happens)? Money in a joint account can be seized by his creditors.

Unfortunately, this was your mistake and you need to learn from it and cease sharing accounts with your father. (Obviously creditors don't warn you in advance of garnishments and give you a chance to hide money from them).

Attorney Ashman is right. You should never have a joint bank account with some who has a judgment against him. Your father had notice of the lawsuit and unfortunately took no steps to resolve it. The creditor obviously obtained a judgment against your father. The judgment allows the creditor to go after any funds held by the debtor in a joint account. The creditor does not have to give the debtor any notice of the judgment nor do they have to give notice that they are executing on it by seizing the funds in your bank. Some banks give notice of the freeze, but by then it is too late.

Those funds are not coming back unless you can show somehow that the funds were derived from exempt income (like disability or Social Security) but even those protections are lost whenever the exempt funds aer commingled with non-exempt funds from another person.

It is doubtful that there was any mistake by the bank. You need to tell your father to resolve his debts and take your name off of any joint accounts with him. Do not put any more money into this account as these funds will be seized as well.

If your father is interested, I can assist in resolving debts in a non-bankruptcy, not-litigation context for a reasonable fee. Have him contact me at [email protected] if interested. Otherwise, he needs to figure out some other way to resolve the debts so that funds will not be garnished in the future.