Legal Question in Bankruptcy in Wisconsin

Unfortunately, merely hiring a lawyer has no legal effect upon much of anything in life. This is particularly true in the case of active wage garnishments. Rather, actual pleadings need to filed with the court before one's intent in hiring a lawyer will begin to bear fruit and the garnishment stopped. Due to the complexity of today's bankruptcy code, court filings these days in order to begin bankruptcy cases might involve a hundred pages or more of documentation, even in fairly routine consumer cases and preparing all of this takes time. It is therefore critical that you hire (and pay) your bankruptcy lawyer many months before a debt actually goes to court for a garnishment. Regrettably, once the garnishment hits one's paycheck (usually costing 25% of net income for at least 13 pay periods), families can literally become too poor to even file bankruptcy, since they can no longer afford to pay an attorney. All you can do at that point is therefore to make sure that your attorney has all the information and funding which he or she needs in order to complete your bankruptcy filing. Impoverished debtors are sometimes also able to fight the garnishment in state court (usually small claims court) by filing a poverty objection. You should definitely do this if your bankruptcy filing will be delayed for very long. However, my guess is that the creditor may have ruled out the poverty issue before they made the decision to garnishee you, even if filing the objection might still be worth the attempt. Obviously, you need to immediately schedule an office appointment with your attorney in order to discuss these issues in depth. My comments in this public web forum are intended only for public educational purposes and are not legal advice specifically tailored to you and your case. Instead, you should retain a lawyer in order to meet your legal needs, since I will be taking no action on your case. Disclosure of confidential information in a public web forum is not recommended and is always subject to being used against you in court. You are welcome to contact my Racine, WI office at 262-633-3090 or email me at [email protected] for further information.