Garnishment bill gains traction in Georgia Senate
Staff writer Arielle Kass contributed to this article.
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A key state Senate committee passed legislation to fix a state garnishment system that a federal judge last year said was broken.
Senate Bill 255, passed on Tuesday, would require creditors to inform debtors that money originating from Social Security benefits, welfare and workers' compensation is off-limits. The bill would also provide more notice about how people can reclaim money that is taken improperly, as well as to speed up the process.
When U.S. District Court Senior Judge Marvin H. Shoob ruled against the garnishment law in September, it stopped all garnishments in Gwinnett County. Other counties stopped processing garnishments to avoid running afoul of the ruling.
State Sen. Jesse Stone, R-Waynesboro, who filed SB 255, said "the sooner we get it in the law, the sooner everybody will be back in the business of collections."
Stone, who called it “a good bill for businesses and consumers,” said he hoped it would move quickly through the Senate and would pass the House. If it passes and is signed by the governor, it would become law after 30 days.
“This law would essentially make garnishments on financial institutions useless,” attorney James Carroll said. He said the 24-hour window the bill proposes to remove money from a debtor’s account is not long enough to capture the funds in a bank account.
At a committee hearing last week, attorney Bryan Kaplan said the proposed amendments would allow people to tell the court about other debts that may take precedence over the garnishment at hand. He said this would allow debtors to circumvent the typical bankruptcy process.
Stone said he did not want to lengthen the period to create any additional delays in the process. As far as the bankruptcy concerns, he said, “one lien doesn’t jump in front of another.”
About the Author
Arielle Kass covers Gwinnett County for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She started at the paper in 2010, and has covered business and local government beats around metro Atlanta. Arielle is a graduate of Emory University.
