Hi,

My brother's collection agency is threantening me that it will garnish againt my tax return for his unpaid stafford loan. (We happened to have the same last and first names.) Is it legally possible in California? If not possible, how can I prevent its constant threatening once and for all?

Tell them to put it in writing so that you can understand the nature of their claim. Then you notify them that all contact must be done in writing any other contact would be harassment.

Any garnishment must be sign by a judge to be valid. They must also obtain a judgment from the court to start the process to garnish anything.

Your parents gave you the same first name?? Did they happen to be fans of Newhart (This is my brother Daryll and this is my other brother Daryll).

As Mr Yet said, before they can garnish your return they have to obtain a judgement against you. This means you have your day in court. If you can convince the court that this is your brother's debt and not yours, then they can't obtain the judgement.

Yes, since you should have a proper photo ID, you should have hopefully a differetn middle name, and of course a different social security number,

All you have to do is prove in court you are not this person, since of course the Staford loan people will have the social security number of the person who owes them money, they and the garnishment would be specific to the social security number.

There are dozens of people with the same name, so proper ID is important.

** Now I wll say this, the wrong person often gets garnished and then has to prove he is not that person, since if they win a judgement against the correct person, and a court order to garnish their pay, then they find the wrong person but believe it is him, it is up to the payroll dept or in your case the IRS to be sure it is the right person.

I had a garnish against my pay last year for someone else with a very similar name, my payroll dept was not on the ball, and it took me 2 months to get it released and my company had to pay me back every penny they took out by error