Have you been threatened with Wage Garnishment?  Can they actually garnish your wages?

So you have defaulted on a credit account. The debt collector calls and demands immediate payment of the debt. The debt collector then makes the following threat: “If you do not pay this debt by Monday at noon, we will garnish your wages, starting with your next paycheck”.

A collection agency may not garnish your wages without following the bounds of due process.

From what my clients have told me, this threat occurs with great frequency. The typical scenario is that the individual has defaulted on a credit account. The original creditor, be it Citibank or Capital One or whomever, fails in its attempts to get the defaulting individual to pay. The individual’s debt is now referred to as “bad debt”. Many times, the original creditor will simply give up and sell the “bad debt” to an outside company, such as a collection agency, for pennies on the dollar, sometimes even less.