[This transcript is a result of automated audio transcription from the video posted below. For help from Brian Russ Law, Inc. with a debt collection defense or wage garnishment problem, visit www.BrianRussLaw.com or call 888-632-6623. Grammatical errors may be present in the transcript below. This transcript is for informational purposes only and may not be relied on as legal advice. This transcript is an advertisement and any mention of past successes do not guarantee future success.]

Hey everyone is attorney Brian Russ, a debt collection defense lawyer in California. I want to talk to you today about how to stop a wage garnishment or bank levy. Now this video, you know just reminder I’m a California Attorney, serving California clients with California issues, you know, sorry about my cat up there, she’s just joining us for the video today. But anyways, this video is about how to stop a wage garnishment or bank levy. So a lot of times I get calls from clients who say, I’ve just been notified by my HR department that they got a request to garnish my wages from the sheriff or I get a call saying “hey, I got this notice of a bank levy What do I do, I didn’t know anything about that.” So this video is meant to address those topics.

Now before I get going further, I have to give you a few disclaimers first. This video is not legal advice for your particular situation or your particular cases is for informational purposes only for educational purposes only. I don’t know your case I don’t know your situation. So again this is for general informational purposes only. By your viewing this video no attorney client relationship forms. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, I’m just an attorney who happens to have a YouTube channel and is sharing some information. To the extent this video can be considered an advertisement it should be considered advertisement. I’m an attorney and I sell my services, my website’s up above. My phone number’s up above, you can give my office a call and we’ll see if we can help you with your situation. Finally, you know, I want to make it clear that even though I’ve had past successes in this area to get wage garnishment stopped, and to stop these actions, it does not guarantee success in your case, so again my past successes do not guarantee success in your case, rather they’re given as an example of what I’ve been able to do.

So how to stop a wage garnishment or bank levy. Now first you need to understand why your wages are being garnished or why the bank count is being levied right this is very important to understand because it totally impacts how we proceed with your case. You know, usually the reason wages are garnished or bank accounts being levied is because a creditor or somebody has gone to a court and they’ve gotten the judgment in their favor saying that you owe them money, and then what they do is they take that judgment, and they go to the sheriff. They get an order from the sheriff or levy from the sheriff to go take your wages or levy your bank account, and so that I mean this is all very much part of the judicial process this is part of the judicial process, in that it’s probably been in the works for nine to 12 months, and you may have had no idea about it.

And so generally what this is called and are defualt judgments generally, you know how this happens. I see a lot, and usually the reason I get a lot of these calls is because somebody had a default judgment against them and they have no idea what a default is now I want to be clear, there’s, there’s other judgments that aren’t default judgments if you actually contest the case and you still lose. I mean it goes through the same process whether they’re going to garnish the wages, there’s gonna be a bank levy because you haven’t paid the judgment yet. And so once you know if you haven’t paid a judgment that’s where these steps, start happening, where they garnish your wages or they, you know, go after your bank account.

Again, so a lot of times when I get a call from somebody saying why is this happening, it’s because there’s a default judgment, the person did not contest the case, maybe they did not even know about the case, and they need help. And so, you know, a lot of times I get calls from clients who are being sued or have been sued by another law firm. So I see a lot from the Mandarich Law Group I see a lot for Patenaude & Felix. I see a lot from from these other guys.
I can’t think of their names right now but there’s, there’s a lot of common ones. And so it’s these debt collection firms, you know, they say that they’ve served you properly they file documents with the court saying that you’ve been served properly. When in reality, maybe you weren’t served at all so I’ve had I’ve had two cases where we it has gone to a default judgment where the creditor is trying to go to the bank or trying to go get your wages garnished. And we’ve actually been able to get those judgments set aside, and you know essentially start the case over from the beginning, because my clients weren’t properly served. You know, I’ve seen it happen where, you know process server says that they, they serve the person the person’s like, Look I’m home every day I work from home I’ve never nobody’s ever come to the door, I’m the only one who works here, somebody said, you know I’ve had seen cases where they say, oh you know we gave it to their employer, while he’s a past employer and the person didn’t work there anymore and so there’s, you know, it’s very fact based on how these happen again like I’m saying like if you, if you know this video is mostly focused on those default judgments and we can attack it on a proof of service basis and saying that the process of service was insufficient. It was not reasonably calculated to give you notice of the lawsuit. You know I’ve had seen success there before.

And, you know, kind of the theory behind it is that default judgments like in the in the world of the judicial system of the justice system default judgments are the least preferred type of judgment because we want to see finality of the case based on the merits, we do not want to see finality of the case based on some procedural defects or procedural issue. And so even though default judgments are valid, there’s a, there’s a very long period of time where you can contest the default judgment. It says like motion. Now when I say a long period. I’m talking like a few months. You know it’s not not, you know 90 minutes not 30 days or 12 days I mean so so again it’s, it’s just because you got Default Judgment happened five years ago, you know, if you have dealt with it you’re, you might be screwed. Honestly, but if it, you know, something happened 90 days ago, or they start, you know, you’re contesting this stuff, You know or they start garnishing your wages, you know we have a good chance, as long as you take action now this is the key I tell people all the time. If you get sued if you get served. If you know of a lawsuit if there’s a garnishment something. Don’t sit on it. You have to take action. And so, and the reason why is a default are easier to appeal or easy I would say, easier to fight than an appeal, so we can make a motion to satisfy a default judgment get heard by the court, you know, with a 90 120 days and you know, deal with it from there. If, if you’ve actually contested it. If you have, if we have to go. And, I mean appeal is just much more difficult much more expensive. So anyways, you know it’s a common way to stop a wage garnishment or bank levy by, you know, especially if it’s a default judgment we can go get a motion to set aside the default judgment or put it in front of the court, give them a proposed order to set aside, and I seen them to work in the past I’ve worked on a number of them, where, you know, we’ve, like I said we’ve been able to get the Default Judgment set aside, we’ve been able to stop the levy stop the garnishment. And then, you know, work with the other firm to work out settlement agreement for much less talking pennies on the dollar, than what would have happened if there was a wage garnishment so like I said before, give my office a call 888-632-6623 BrianRussLaw.com we’re happy to discuss your situation to see if we can help you. If you’re having a debt collection issue. If you need help finding a bank levy or wage garnishment give us a call. We’ll see what we can do. All right. Have a good one.