Judgments And Family Support

I am not an attorney, I am a Judgment and Collection Agency Broker. This article is my opinion, based on my California experiences, and laws vary in each state. If you need a strategy to use or legal advice, please contact an attorney.

Some debtors owe more people than just you. Some may be paying already on a prior family court judgments, with existing wage garnishments or wage assignments in place.

For this article, Family Court Judgments (FCJs) may be abbreviated as FCJs, which can be either child support, family support, or most other kinds of equalization judgments from family courts.

Wage levies that result from FCJs are stronger, and are often a higher-priority than levies from regular civil judgments.

When one garnishes a judgment debtor's wages, you need to pay a court and a sheriff, and often a registered process server, and sometimes also pay a private investigator to find the debtor's employer.

When there is a previous FCJ or civil levy already attached to the judgment debtor's wages, yours probably won't stick, and the time and money you paid will go down the drain.

To prevent wasted time and money, one can contact the local civil sheriff office for the county that the debtor employer's payroll dept. is based, and ask if the they already have a wage levy file open for the judgment debtor at their office. The problem is, that many FCJ orders are not execution garnishments, so the sheriff is usually not involved.

Funds from FCJ wage levies or assignments are paid though the State Disbursement Unit (SDU). In California at least, the SDU is now under contract, with the Bank of America and the Department of Child support Services (DCSS).

FCJ assignments are sent to the employer within 15 days of the date that the regional family support agency finds the employer. The employer must deduct from the judgment debtor's wages and send it to the SDU.

How do you figure out if a debtor has an upcoming or current FCJ garnishment on their paycheck already? Many times there is not a easy way to know for certain.

Even if the SDU or their contracted bank, had a telephone number that you could call and ask if a debtor was paying off a FCJ, it might be somewhat too close to a GLB (USC 6821) violation to get that information.

One way judgment owners can find out about FCJ garnishments against their debtors, is to pull a credit report for them, and check for an open DCSS case. This could be named a variation of "D.A. Child Support Div". It could show the monthly payment amount being garnished (and sometimes, showing how long it has been going on).

A credit report is sometimes a good indication of, how long the debtor has been working at their employer. Credit reports may also show how many months the FCJ payments were made on time, and for how much. If there is a balance (arrearages), it shows that. When the balance is zero, it means the current payment has been paid.

Another way to find FCJ actions, is to pull the family court docket, and review the court's records and files. When you discover a writ, an income withholding order, or a wage assignment, that means the judgment debtor was or is, paying on a FCJ.

A judgment debtor can sometimes pay both a FCJ assignment order and a civil judgment wage levy at the same time. However, both levies combined usually cannot exceed a total of 25% of the judgment debtor's wages. If the FCJ garnishments 20%, your levy only gets 5%.

If you want to estimate how much a levy might get you, you need to know where the debtor is working, how much the debtor is earning, and how much they are paying on FCJ levies or assignments.

Credit reports show the DCSS status of FCJ levies, and might see joint accounts on the credit report, which usually means a spouse. In some states (in California, see CCP 706.109) the judgment debtor spouse's wages might be garnishible to satisfy a judgment.

With FCJ payments showing on a credit report, or a good guess, and/or knowledge about how much the judgment debtor earns, you can calculate whether a wage levy attempt could be worthwhile.