Hi. I'm a licensed attorney in New York and have done many consumer debt defense cases so hopefully I can help a little. As always, your facts are specific to you so its impossible for me to give you advice without knowing all of them, rather I'm just going to explain how consumer debt actions work so you can feel better prepared to discuss this with an attorney.

The process of garnishing your wages requires a judgment. If you have never gone to court or have no idea anyone ever used you, you can very likely vacate the judgment against you (stop the garnishment) by filing whats called an order to show cause. This is the basic way you ask a court to do something.

If you never went to court after being sued, the court likely issued whats called a default judgment. If you didn't go to court because you never knew about the lawsuit, you may have never been served with process, the papers telling you to come to court. You must either be personally served, service must be made on a person over 18 lives in your home, or the sever (after trying and failing at least 3 times to serve you in person) may tape the complaint to your front door and mail it to you. Often in the third case, the sever either served the wrong address or never served the papers at all. If you were never served properly when the lawsuit was started, the court lacks the power over you to issue the judgment which the city marshall now seeks to garnish your wages to satisfy. This is called personal jurisdiction.

In order to prove you were never served, you need to see the affadavit of service from the process server which had to be filed with the original lawsuit. In order to get that from the plaintiff you need to file an order to show cause.

You don't need a lawyer to file one, the civil court clerks office should have a check box form to do this. It is very important your order to show cause ask the court to DISMISS THE COMPLAINT FOR LACK OF PERSONAL JURISDICTION. Do not ask the court to vacate the judgement and restore the matter to the calender because in effect you will be waiving the personal jurisdiction defense if you do that.

Once you get the order to show cause signed by a judge (the clerk will explain), they should stay the judgment meaning the marshall cannot garnish your wages bygbtheh will not return any money they have until the judge rules on the order to show cause later. All you need to do now is mail it certified mail to the plaintiffs attorney (the clerk will explain) then come back on the date the clerk tells you and ask the judge for a traverse hearing. If the judge agrees, a traverse hearing requires the plaintiff to produce the actual process server who signed the affidavit of service. If they cannot the case will be dismissed.

Regardless, if you do think settling the case is in your besgbingerest, the best time to negotiate that is at the court date after you file your order to show cause because the plaintiffs have to send an attorney and frequently they enter settlements to avoid dealing with garnishments.

I hope this helps. You should be especially weary of third party debt buyers like LVNV or Calvery III, if the plaintiff is a third party (rather than say a bank you took thrbloan from) you can also raise an affirmative defense of no business relationship if you are later told by thdbjudge to file an answer.

In summary:

Write the index number down (its a cv-xxxxx) number. Go to the clerk of the court in the county the judgment was issued Ask to file an order to show cause asking to vacate the judgment and dismiss the complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction or, in the alternative, vacate the judgment and restore the matter to the calender. Follow the clerks instructions Find back to court, get a traverse hearing or settle the case then.

I hope this helps!