I live in AZ and have just received a default judgement for a credit card that I missed payments on for the past 8 months. I was never served papers, nor did anyone ever come to my house, nor have I received any correspondence in the mail to go to court until the actual default judgement. I know this is a valid judgement because I went to my county's website and put in the case # and sure enough there it was.

This account is 8 months past due, I stopped paying on it because #1 I was unemployed, #2 I take care of someone with a chronic disease and most of my unemployment had to go to his care. When I was 60 days past due on this account I tried to set up a payment arrangement so that it wouldn't go any further, they wouldn't have it. The creditor is Capital one, they wanted a redidulous amount of money more than what the minuimums used to be. This account was established in Colorado and I now live in AZ.

My question is - What happens next? Do I now get served and have to go to court to set up the payment arrangements for garnishment, or does it just automatically start being garnished?

I heard enrolling in a debt consuleing agency at this point can stop any possible garnishment.

Any suggestions?

It varies from place to place, but one scenario would be this:

You receive a notice in the mail that your wages are being garnished and that you will have to ask for a hearing to show that your wages are exempt from garnishment.

Depending on how much you make, your wages may be all exempt.