How to Terminate a Garnishment

Wage garnishments can be placed on your paychecks for multiple reasons. If you owe child support, taxes, large debts or student loans and have made no attempts or plans for payment, your wages can be garnished. Terminating a garnishment can involve payment, court hearings or bankruptcy. Whether you can end a garnishment depends on the source of the garnishment. It also depends on the amount of financial strain the garnishment places on you and your household.

Instructions

1

Prevent the garnishment. The best way to avoid a garnishment on your wages is to avoid it altogether by paying the full amount owed. If this is not possible, communication will likely improve the circumstances greatly. Communication with the loan agency, Internal Revenue Service or court could result in payment arrangements that benefit both parties. As long as you make timely payments as agreed to in the arrangement, garnishment should be prevented altogether.

2

Seek debt consolidation. In many cases, debt consolidation can remove a garnishment. It will not work for child support, but other forms of garnishment can be removed by consolidating your debts. A debt consolidation company will work with your creditors to create a mutually beneficial payment arrangement.

3

Claim exemption. If you can prove that the garnishment is causing you undue hardship, you can lessen the amount or percentage of the garnishment. An undue hardship will only be valid if the hardship is real. If you cannot pay your rent, mortgage payment, or utilities, it will probably be considered. If you are merely inconvenienced by the garnishment, the court will side with the company executing the garnishment.

4

File bankruptcy in extreme cases. In a bankruptcy ruling, the court orders creditors to stop any attempt to collect debts from you. After the judge has ordered the debts to be discharged, they are no longer considered owed. For the majority of student loans, a bankruptcy will not affect collections of these garnishments. However, if the debtor can prove that further garnishments to a student loan company will cause undue hardship, the judge can choose to include the loans in his decision. In the case of child support, bankruptcy does not stop garnishment or collection activity.