Wage garnishment is an action that frequently leads people to consider bankruptcy. It’s the moment where suddenly you’re forced to deal with the problems in front of you or you risk losing your income. No more procrastinating. Time to take action.

Here are 4 things to know about the wage garnishment process:

1. The first 60-90 days, your creditor will likely call you repeatedly in an attempt to collect the debt. No wage garnishment yet. Just a lot of difficult phone calls that may cause a great deal of stress for you.
2. Eventually, the creditor will sell the debt to a third-party debt collection agency. That collection agency will likely spend the next 90 days calling you repeatedly. One upside is that, if they act abusively or say anything untrue or threatening, you can take action to prevent them from calling. Additionally, you can write them a letter asking them to stop calling you and they are legally obligated to stop. At this point, still no wage garnishment is happening.
3. If the collection agency is unsuccessful collecting money from you, they will turn matters over to an attorney who specializes in collections and wage garnishment. The attorney will sue you and then get the right from the court to garnish your wages if you have not made any payments on your debt.
4. At this point, the only option you have for stopping wage garnishment would be to file for bankruptcy. Though ideally you would have dealt with these issues at an earlier point.

A good way to deal with these problems at an earlier stage is simply to get in touch with an experienced Freedom Law Firm bankruptcy attorney for a free initial consultation where you can ask your questions and start figuring out how to address your problems so that you stay in control of the situation.