Legal Question in Criminal Law in Michigan

While the defendant is on probation, the court has a responsibility to enforce the part of the probation order that requires payment of restitution (the same as it is supposed to monitor and enforce other terms of probation). At least twice per year, the probation officer is required by law to review the file and determine if the defendant is not paying restitution ... and if so, must immediately report this in writing to the judge and prosecutor. The judge may (but is not required) to then schedule a court hearing. Non-payment of restitution can be a probation violation is it is a willful non-payment -- meaning the defendant had the ability to pay and wasn't. If there have been at least two failures to pay restitution per the court's payment order (e.g., $50/month) then the court MUST issue an order garnishing an employed defendant's paycheck. Any money coming in from the defendant is split 50/50 between "victim payments" (meaning the mandatory crime victim rights fee and your restitution) and non-victim payments (fines, costs and other assessments). The CVR fee is usually paid off first by most court clerk offices but that's not written in the law, so victim restitution could be your court's payment priority. Courts must apply 50% of each payment to the victim side of the ledger, but could apply it all to restitution if the defendant earmarks that. If the defendant has multiple files with restitution owed, it's up to your court to decide how to divvy up the money, or if your file has multiple victims how to divvy it up between the victims. There's no specific statutory plan, each court has to make its own one (example: pay off oldest file first, or pay off file with smallest restitution owed first, or pay off victims in alphabetical order; etc.). So your defendant might be paying in but the money might be assigned to other files or victims per your local court's plan. Each court must have a standard plan. You have "self-help collection" options but you have to do this through the criminal file and that case's judge (who might not approve your self-help process while the defendant is on probation). My office's web site has info on that process (go to www.prosecutingattorney.info and then go to Downloads and then the Victim section on the downloads page. There's a Restitution subsection. Our brochure explains the process in simple terms. Basically, you'd submit to the court a request for a subpoena to issue against your defendant to have him testify at a judgment debtor's examination (an informal Q&A about assets) where you or someone else could ask pertinent questions about income, assets, etc. From that testimony, you could then file with the court requests for various garnishment orders to issue to garnish paychecks, bank accounts, Michigan income tax refund, or to have the sheriff seize and auction off personal property like cars.