It can be detrimental to the financial wellbeing of your business when a client or tenant doesn’t fulfill their contractual obligations and pay you on time. Whether you sell cars, lease apartments, or provide other services, you need a consistent cash flow to manage expenses. It’s understandable that people are struggling to make good on prior commitments, as they struggle with layoffs caused by the pandemic. However, an agreement is an agreement, and you need your money. If you’ve exhausted all of your options, and your client ignores our requests for payment it’s not the end of the road. Below we’ll explain how a Civil Judgment can help you get paid for your products and services. 

What is a judgment?

A judgment is essentially a court order that allows creditors to utilize stronger tools to recover outstanding debts. Once we’re granted a judgment, the collection agents at Southwest Recovery will have access to expanded collection tools and techniques like wage or bank garnishments to get your money back. We can also seize and sell off a debtor’s personal property including real estate, vehicles, intellectual property, and more.

When should you get a judgment?

If a debtor doesn’t respond to your invoices and ignores our collection attempts we can take them to court and sue them for it. You should do this as soon as it’s clear they aren’t going to pay. There is a statute of limitations on debt collection efforts in Texas. The time period to collect debts is very short. You’ll need to collect the amount in four years or the debtor can no longer be sued.

What is a garnishment?

A garnishment is a court or government order that a creditor can send to a bank or employer to take the debtor’s money and directly forward it to you. This usually comes in the form of a wage garnishment or a bank account garnishment. 

How much can we collect?

Once we obtain a judgment against the debtor we can garnish their bank account. However, wage garnishment is prohibited by the Texas Constitution for most ordinary debts. 

In Texas, we just need a Writ of Garnishment to pull money from a bank account. Generally, we can’t garnish wages, but we can garnish their bank account as soon as the check is deposited. However, there are a few exceptions. If the debtor has outstanding child support, alimony, student loans, or unpaid taxes the money can be taken directly from their check. The most that can be garnished is 50% of their disposable income. “Disposable income” is a loose term in Texas, and is basically any money left over after legally required deductions are made to the initial paycheck. 

What is exempt?

We can’t collect on certain kinds of money. For instance, social security benefits, retirement accounts, unemployment, and certain insurance payouts are typically off-limits. When the debtor’s money is unreachable there are some other options. We can seize other assets and liquidate them to obtain your money. 

Southwest Recovery Services

We have over 15 years of civil recovery experience and use a plethora of tools, techniques, and technology to recover the money you’re owed. We will search nationwide to locate employment information and locate any assets. Once we’re granted a judgment by the courts we can actively seize and sell property including real estate, vehicles, jewelry, technology, and more until all outstanding debts are paid off in full. If someone owes your $5,000 or more contact the recovery agents at SWR today! We have debt collection offices located in Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, and St. Louis so we can easily resolve financial disputes where you are.