Every time you use a credit card, you take out a short-term loan for the amount you are charging. If you do not pay your credit card bill, you are considered to have defaulted on that loan, and your creditor is entitled to take action to collect it from you. In many states, including Pennsylvania, suing you for the amount of the loan is one option for collection. Pennsylvania law prohibits creditors from garnishing a debtor's wages after winning a judgment against him in a lawsuit.
No Wage Garnishment
In most cases, creditors in Pennsylvania may not seek wage garnishment from debtors via a lawsuit. Creditors may garnish a debtor's wages only if the debtor owes back child support, taxes, student loans or financial restitution for criminal activities. In all other cases, the creditor must find some other way to collect debts from a debtor than the lawsuit and garnishment method. However, this prohibition does not apply to garnishing your bank account; creditors may sue you and garnish your accounts of existing funds.
Fair Debt Collection
It is illegal for debt collectors to manipulate debtors into paying debts by making threats that they do not intend or cannot legally carry out. Thus, debt collectors in Pennsylvania cannot threaten to sue debtors unless they intend to follow through and cannot threaten to garnish the debtor's wages, as this activity is illegal in Pennsylvania. If a debt collector makes these kinds of threats, contact an attorney.
Bank Accounts
Pennsylvania law offers little protection against garnishment of your bank account. Your creditor must get a court order allowing him to garnish your account; he can do this by filing a lawsuit against you. Once the creditor obtains a garnishment order, he may take any money that is deposited in the account except for Social Security payments. If you deposit your wages in your bank account, your creditor may take them as well even though he cannot directly garnish your wages under Pennsylvania law.
Statute of Limitations
The statute of limitations for lawsuits against debtors in Pennsylvania is four years as of 2011. This time period is counted against the date you first went into default, not the date you made the charges or the date your creditor first contacted you about them. Thus, if you went into default in March 2011, your creditor has until March 2015 to file a lawsuit against you. After the statute of limitations expires, your creditor may not sue you to recover the debt, but may continue to contact you regarding the debt as long as she does not violate anti-harassment or other fair debt collection practice laws.
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