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Home >> Accounts >> Checking Accounts
Funds Garnished from Account with No Notice
My daughter has two bank accounts in her name, a savings and a checking. Yesterday, over two thousand dollars was taken out due to a prior judgment about which she is trying to get information. Is this legal, and shouldn't she have received some warning or notice? How can she protect herself from something like this happening? If her husband's name was on the account, would they have been able to do so? She is distressed, due to the fact she had no warning, and believes the debt came from her former spouse from whom she is legally divorced.
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 It is unusual for a garnishment order to be served on a bank before the depositor learns of the court claim that resulted in the judgment and garnishment, but it can't be said that it never happens. It's possible that the depositor (your daughter in this case) had no knowledge of the original obligation.
The bank had no choice in the matter when it received the court order. It had to take the funds from her account if she was named on the garnishment order. She should be able to obtain a copy of the order from the bank.
Two possibilities comes to mind. If your daughter's account was jointly owned with her ex-husband, it may still be on the bank's books with that ownership unless she closed the old account and reopened one in her own name. If your daughter was jointly liable with her ex-husband on a debt, her liability would not simply go away with the divorce; she would have had to obtain a release from the creditor. Divorce dissolves a marriage and may direct that one spouse or the other retain accounts or property or obligations, but the divorce decree doesn't simply take care of those things. The former spouses have to make those changes for them to be implemented.
Published on BankingQuestions.com 8/04/10
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