Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Texas
My question is this:
We have a credit collector that said they had mailed us a settlement for a credit card. We never received this letter. We had moved since we had the card issued. They tried to serve my husband with process papers at his work place. (he wasn't there) I called to speak to this company as we didn't know what this was all about. The person that I spoke to said that the laws had changed with the bail out of the banks. They can now garnish 35% of our wages, put liens on our bank accounts and put attach a judgement to the vehicle that we are still making payments on.
Can this be done?
Thank you
2 Answers from Attorneys
too bad u did not get the name, address and company which told u the big lie..but generally no..
In Texas, wages cannot be garnished. However, this doesn't mean that an employer will not garnish wages anyway. Why? Because many employers don't want to get into a contest with a creditor and so will not defend you against having your wages garnished. As for liens on your bank accounts, also called "levies" and "garnishments," yes, your accounts can be garnished for up the the total amount owed. This typically means that the creditor has to go to court (in reality, this can turn out to be a paper shuffling exercise) to get an order of garnishment, which is then "served" on your bank. Then, the bank "freezes" your money and you cannot get access to it until the amount due is paid. Unless, of course, you challenge the garnishment - but, good luck with that because you'll be lucky to even get notice of the garnishment action so that you CAN challenge it in time. In short, you really need to work with someone who KNOWS the ACTUAL processes.