Michigan Judgment Collection

Michigan splits garnishment into two forms with different statutes, different fees, different lifespans and different targets. Confusing them is the most common Michigan collection mistake, and it is expensive because a defective writ is simply invalid.

A periodic writ – SCAO form MC 12 – reaches what MCL 600.4012(14) defines as periodic payments: wages, salary, commissions and other earnings, land-contract payments, rent, and other recurring debt or contract payments that come due while the writ is in force. It does not reach a bank’s interest postings, its automatic payment debits, or its honoring of a check. And the duration point is the one nearly every third-party summary still gets wrong: under MCL 600.4012(1) a garnishment of periodic payments remains in effect until the balance of the judgment is satisfied. The 182 days that circulates online is MCR 3.101(F)(1)’s deadline for serving the writ after the clerk issues it – miss it and the writ is invalid, but it is not an expiry date on a writ already served.

A non-periodic writ – form MC 13 – is the opposite instrument: a snapshot. It captures property, money, goods, credits and negotiable instruments the garnishee holds at the moment of service, which is why it is the tool for a deposit account and why timing it matters so much. If the garnishee’s disclosure reports property other than money, the creditor has 56 days after that disclosure is filed to move the court for an order applying the property to the judgment.

The fees are a clean tell for which instrument you are holding. A periodic writ costs the plaintiff a $35 fee payable to the garnishee at service under MCL 600.4012(12); a non-periodic writ costs $1 under MCL 600.4011(8); and the fee drops to $6 when the State of Michigan is the garnishee, which is the case for an income tax refund writ.

The Michigan day-count chain

Both writs run on the same calendar, and it is worth having in front of you. The garnishee has 7 days from service to deliver or mail a copy of the writ to the defendant. The garnishee has 14 days to deliver or mail its completed Garnishee Disclosure (form MC 14) to the court, the plaintiff and the defendant – a default may be entered against a garnishee that does not. The defendant likewise has 14 days from the writ being mailed or delivered to file objections. Absent notice that an objection was filed, the garnishee begins forwarding withheld funds 28 days after it was served. While a periodic garnishment is running, the creditor must give the garnishee and the defendant a statement of the remaining balance including interest and costs at least once every 6 months (MCL 600.4012(5)(a)), and must deliver a release of garnishment – form MC 50 – within 21 days of the judgment being paid in full.

Priority is by order received, with two permanent jumpers: an income withholding order under the support and parenting time enforcement act, and a levy by Michigan or one of its governmental units to satisfy a tax liability, both of which outrank a private garnishment no matter when they arrive (MCL 600.4012(2)). That ordering is why identifying the right employer early is worth real money – the second creditor to the payroll department waits behind the first. Where the target is wages specifically, the mechanics and the exempt-earnings math are laid out further in our Michigan wage garnishment rules, and the practical work of pinning down a current payroll is covered in locating an employer for garnishment.

On the ceiling itself: Michigan layers nothing of its own on top of the federal limit, and it has no head-of-household or head-of-family wage exemption of the kind several states use. The operative cap is the federal one under the Consumer Credit Protection Act: the lesser of 25% of disposable earnings or the amount by which disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum hourly wage. What Michigan does instead is route the question through its own exemption statutes. MCL 600.4031(1) applies the execution exemptions to garnishment, and the execution list in MCL 600.6023(1) contains no earnings percentage at all – it exempts categories of property, not a share of a paycheck. The one percentage in the garnishment-exemption statute is MCL 600.4031(2)(a), which limits a garnishee’s liability to 40% where the money it owes the debtor is for milk or cream produced on the debtor’s farm, a provision with no analogue in most states. How the ceiling computes on a particular pay period is a question for your counsel.

Michigan’s judgment lien is a creature of a 2004 statute and behaves differently from the general judgment liens most states use. Under MCL 600.2803 a lien attaches to a judgment debtor’s interest in real property only when a notice of judgment lien is recorded in the land title records of the register of deeds for the county where the property is located – and it attaches at the moment of recording, or, for after-acquired property, when the debtor later acquires the interest. There is no statewide filing. If the debtor owns a duplex in Wayne County and 40 acres in Alcona County, that is two recordings in two offices, and you have to know both.

The notice itself is prepared by the creditor, filed with the court that entered the judgment, and certified by the clerk. MCL 600.2805(1) requires the case caption and docket number, the creditor’s current name and address, the debtor’s name, the last 4 digits of the debtor’s Social Security or tax identification number, the debtor’s last known address, the current balance due, and the entry and expiration dates. Notably, no legal description of the property is required. Service on the debtor is by certified mail at the last known address – unless the judgment is $25,000 or more, in which case MCL 600.2805(4) requires personal service and proof of service filed with the court. Both routes are address-dependent.

What the lien cannot do

Here is the Michigan rule that surprises out-of-state creditors most: MCL 600.2819 states there is no right to foreclose a judgment lien created under the chapter. You cannot force a sale. The lien is paid when the debtor conveys the property, sells under an executory contract, or refinances – and even then, MCL 600.2807(3) limits what the creditor receives to the debtor’s equity at the time of the transaction, after every senior lien, property taxes, and the costs and fees needed to close are paid or extinguished. On a thinly-equitable property that can be nothing at all. A Michigan judgment lien is a patient instrument, not an enforcement one.

Then there is the marital-home question. MCL 600.2807(1) provides that a judgment lien does not attach to an interest in real property owned as tenants by the entirety unless the underlying judgment is entered against both spouses – and MCL 600.6023a separately exempts entireties property from execution on a judgment against only one spouse. Since married Michigan couples routinely hold their home by the entireties, a judgment against one spouse alone frequently cannot touch the residence at all. That single fact reshapes case strategy, and it is why identifying how title is actually held, not merely that the debtor lives somewhere, is part of a serious asset search for judgment collection.

Timing is unforgiving. A judgment lien expires 5 years after recording (MCL 600.2809(1)). It may be rerecorded exactly once, and only by recording a second clerk-certified notice not less than 120 days before the original expiration date (MCL 600.2809(4)) – miss that window and there is no second chance. If the judgment expires first, the lien dies with it (MCL 600.2809(3)) – which is why a stalled Michigan file sometimes has to move to the remedies that do not depend on a recorded lien at all, such as attachment and receivership in judgment collection. A bankruptcy filing does not toll or suspend the lien period. And when the debt is paid, MCL 600.2811 obliges the creditor to record a discharge within 28 days. Priority runs from recording, subject to a list of carve-outs in MCL 600.2807(2) that includes purchase-money mortgages, refinancings of purchase-money debt, future-advance mortgages, construction liens, condominium and homeowners association assessments, and state or federal tax liens.

Michigan does not have one judgment interest rate. It has a rate that depends on the instrument behind the judgment, and knowing which track a file sits on changes what the payoff figure should say.

If the judgment was rendered on a written instrument evidencing indebtedness with a specified interest rate, MCL 600.6013(7) applies for complaints filed on or after July 1, 2002: interest runs from the date the complaint was filed to satisfaction at the rate stated in the instrument, provided that rate was legal when the instrument was executed. A variable rate is fixed at whatever it was when the complaint was filed. The whole thing is capped at 13% per year, compounded annually. That is the track a promissory note, a credit agreement or a written contract with a stated rate usually rides.

Everything else – tort judgments, oral contracts, written instruments with no specified rate – falls to MCL 600.6013(8), and that is a floating rate. Interest is calculated at 6-month intervals from the date the complaint was filed, at 1% plus the average interest rate paid at auctions of 5-year United States Treasury notes during the 6 months immediately preceding July 1 and January 1, as certified by the state treasurer, compounded annually. Two details matter for the payoff: the rate is recalculated every 6 months, so a long-running file has a stack of different rates layered through it, and the interest is computed on the entire money judgment, including attorney fees and other costs.

Because the periodic garnishment statute requires a running balance statement every 6 months anyway, and because a judgment lien notice must state the current balance due, an interest figure that has not been recalculated on the correct track is a recurring source of objections.

We do not garnish, levy, record liens, seize property, appear at examinations, or advise on Michigan procedure or exemptions. Those are legal acts for you and your attorney. What we do is develop, lawfully and under a permissible purpose, the specific facts each Michigan instrument requires before it can issue: identity confirmed against the judgment, a corroborated address that will survive service, current employment and other periodic-payment sources, recorded real property and the county holding it, how title is held, business entities, and the identifiers a clerk or Treasury will ask for. That work is ordinary skip tracing and public-records research applied to a judgment file, and where the matter is rooted in the state we pair it with broader Michigan skip tracing services.

The boundaries are firm. We are not licensed private investigators, not a law firm, and not a collection agency. We never contact the debtor, never demand payment, never disclose the debt to a third party, and never pretext, impersonate, or reach into private financial account contents. What comes back is records research on a debtor, compiled for enforcement and nothing else. It is not a consumer report, this is not a credit bureau, and the Fair Credit Reporting Act puts hiring, tenancy, lending and underwriting decisions out of its reach. We do not guarantee that a debtor will be found, that assets exist, or that a judgment will be collected, and when a trail goes cold we say so.

There is also work this team turns down. Michigan circuit and district courts issue personal protection orders under MCL 600.2950, and the state runs an Address Confidentiality Program under MCL 780.851 and following for people whose safety depends on an address staying out of reach. Where a request looks aimed at somebody in either position – a personal protection order sitting in the file, an address of record that is evidently a substitute, an asserted interest in the debtor that will not reconcile with the judgment – the answer is no, and the reason for it is stated. Holding a Michigan judgment does not change that answer.