Hi, I live in Virginia. Capital One credit cards obtained a judgement against me on 10/25/06. On 11/3/06, I went to the ATM to withdraw some money and was informed that I had insufficient funds. Funny, that morning I had 700.00. I asked the bank and they said some one had withdrawn 1201.82 from my account earlier that day. First I was baffled by the fact that they with drew the money in the middle of the day as I thought all transactions happened at midnight. As it was after 6 pm on Friday, the bank was unable to tell me any thing except that it was a garnishment. I remembered receiving a summons to go to court from Capital One back in September. The case was heard in Richmond VA and I live in Roanoke, VA. The court is a good 4 hours from where I live so I was unable to appear. I looked online at Virginia Court Case information for Richmond and found that Capital One had filed for a garnishment. The case is listed as "pending". They have taken the entire judgement from my bank account although the law states they can only take 25% of my disposable earnings. The bank put it through because it is a legal document. So, not only can I not get any money from my account, I am negative almost 500.00. I have a 15 year old son and I am a single mother. Can any one tell me how to get the freeze off my account immediately?

Hello Faith:

I don't think you're going to get the freeze off until the judgment is satisfied. If there is a max, it's on how much they can garnish from your paycheck. There is no max on how much they can take out of your bank account.

excon

First, you received a summons and did nothing about it. What did you expect was going to happen? Second, despite what the website said about the status, if they were able to garnish your account they obtained the judgement. They got it because YOU did nothing. Third, the 25% limit iapplies to salary garnishments not seizure of a bank account.

Bottomline here is you incurred the debt. You didn't pay it, so they exercised their legal right to recover the debt.

I don't understand about the negative. They can't take out more than was in the account. What's also not clear is how much your owe or whether the withdrawal covered it.

You could try to go back to the court and try to get the judgement vacated. But I doubt if that is going to happen.

Why wouldn't you appear to the summons? The money is not free- you will have to pay it back somehow. You did not take responsibility and they proved it in court- so they satisfied the debt by taking it out of your account. I doubt it will work if you try to fight this.