Wage Garnishment Pending

[simple_simon]

Hi. I had a judgment against me several months ago for unpaid medical bills. Once the judgment was placed, I called the atty to work out payment arrangement. I wanted to send a check every pay check; she pushed for monthly (obviously at a higher amount than I normally could afford without saving up from the prior pay).

I kept up timely payments for 3 months ($600 total). Well my car died & I had a $900 repair bill & missed a payment to my "friend". I received exactly 1 letter in the mail & no call demanding payment. About a month past due I received the notice of intent to garnish. I called & told her my situation. Obviously no sympathy. I told her I could come up with the total amount short ($400) before the date my response to the court was due. She said no-I would have to come up with the entire remaining amount ($1800) or she would not remove the request. I told her I was going to send a response to the court noting my situation, my offer to make up the payments to date & would include a copy of my car bill.

What are my options? I have about 3 weeks before my response is due. I do not want to file BK as my entire debt is medical & taxes (not really high) & my gross income is high. But I cannot afford what I'm thinking is about $400/pay check in garnishments. Thanks

[keepinitreal]

Not many options since bankruptcy is not for you and they won't change their mind about garnisheeing your paycheck.

You could change your withholdings so that when the garnishment starts, it won't have as much of an impact on your net pay. If you increase your dependents on your W-4, the state and federal taxes will be reduced.

[catleg]

Well, you kind of blew it by missing the payment and not communicating.

I try to do role reversal thinking in these situations.

If you were in their shoes how much thinking do you want to do in this case, when a simple garnishment will recover the money in a few months?

I would ask them to garnish only $200 a month from your pay. That gives you a little win, them a little win.

If that fails, I would consider filing a chapter 13, and make it known to this counterparty that you are considering it. Even if you don't go through with it, it would hopefully improve your negotiating position. (You would need to pay an attorney for his time to write a letter to your judgment creditor explaining your situation).

A ch13 can buy you breathing room in this situation, even if over median you have considerably more freedom to propose a livable plan if you're paying back 100% over 60 months.

[simple_simon]

Thanks for the advice. I had not thought of the W4 route & would consider timing the higher deductions, then lowering right after my job calcs. I could not afford to do this long-term. This only reduced about 25% of what would be garnished. But I certainly think I may go that route.

As far as the threat of BK, I actually did mention that I may have to file to the atty & even said what was paid to-date was within the 6 month lookback period. She basically so go ahead.

So should I send a response & attend hoping the court will allow my garnishment reduced beyond the legal max? Do they even have that discretion & has anyone experienced this? I have a feeling the Federal BK judges are much more compassionate than the county ones.

OK, so assuming I'm stuck with this at the unmanageable rate & get thru a welfare Christmas. Now that the shark will have a taste for my blood. I think I need to prepare now for future judgments & garnishments. I read several posts back about someone thinking about sending $10/week to their creditors to keep them at bay. Most suggested against that since the payment terms were still not being met. But are there really payment terms on dr. bills? Why is medical expenses the only we willingly go into:
Not knowing what if anything we owe we services are rendered and insurance applied?
Never get a detailed explanation (maybe can if requested) of how the costs were calculated?

I know one thing, I will lie bleeding to death in the street before I ever step foot in that hospital. And I told my wife to go anywhere else in the future.

[ryan]

I have seen people get their garnishment amount reduced by appearing in court, not just filing an answer.

Its not easy, and I've seen people fail more than succeed. The key, it seems to me, would be to show the judge that you will literally starve or be without shelter if X amount is garnished, as opposed to a lessor amount.

I've also seen judges be a little more receptive when its medical bills, which one assumes are unexpected, vs. just running up CC's for perceived luxuries. I would DEFINITELY go in person and plead my case like my life depended on it.

[simple_simon]

I've got a little bit of good news to share. No, I haven't heard back from my best friend atty that she is willing to work with me & the garnishment hearing is still a few weeks away.

What I did is removed the shroud of unknown unpaid bills that I have worried about that are not already included in the above voluntary payments/pending garnishment. To this particular hospital-they are about $1100; much less than I had anticipated. Maybe $3000 for all medical bills outstanding. If you have Aetna, they have an on-line tool that allows you to download your claim history into Excel. Much easier than locating all those paper bills.

So I am going to start paying the hospital regularly a small amount to keep them off my back. I realize that BK is the answer for many, but not for me at this point again. I have been there 2X in the past 10 years (36k paid in voluntary payments ending in late 2009; never late but always poor). Let me get thru the next few months & I will be ok.