Georgia Judgment Collection
Georgia rewrote its garnishment law in 2016 and, in doing so, wrote an identification specification into the enforcement paper itself. Under O.C.G.A. 18-4-7 a summons of garnishment must state on its face, with particularity, not just the debtor’s name but every known nickname, alias, former or maiden name and trade name; not just an address but the service address, the current address and the past addresses; and the social security or federal tax identification number. Serve it on a bank and it must also carry the account numbers you know. Use the wrong form and subsection (d) says the garnishment is not valid and the garnishee is relieved of all liability. Every one of those blanks is a research question before it is a legal one, and filling them is our half of the work. Filling them is records work, undertaken only on a permissible purpose the requester has stated and we have confirmed. Nobody here holds a Georgia private detective licence; this is not a law firm and not a collection agency; and the page below describes Georgia law in general terms rather than advising on your file.
The Summons Is an Identification Specification
Georgia put the research requirement into the enforcement document.
Most states leave it to the creditor to work out how precisely a debtor has to be named. Georgia does not. Code Section 18-4-7(b)(1) requires the summons of garnishment, or an attachment to it, to state on its face with particularity, to the extent reasonably available to the plaintiff, three things – and each of the three is a records problem.
Subparagraph (A) asks for the name of the defendant and all known configurations, nicknames, aliases, former or maiden names, trade names, or variations thereof, to the extent that would reasonably enable the garnishee to respond properly. Subparagraph (B) asks for the service address and the current address and, so far as reasonably available, the past addresses. Subparagraph (C) asks for the social security number or federal tax identification number – redacted in the court filing under Code Section 9-11-7.1 or 15-10-54 as applicable, but made known to the garnishee and to the defendant.
Serve a financial institution and paragraph (b)(2) adds more: the summons must also state with particularity the defendant’s account, identification, or tracking numbers known to the plaintiff that the garnishee uses to identify or administer the funds. The same paragraph forbids using the financial-institution form for a continuing garnishment or a continuing garnishment for support.
There is one piece of mercy and one piece of severity. The mercy is paragraph (b)(3): a misspelling of anything the subsection requires – other than the surname of a natural person defendant – does not invalidate the summons, so long as it is not misleading in a search of the garnishee’s records. The severity is subsection (d): when a plaintiff uses the incorrect form for a summons of garnishment of any type, the garnishment is not valid and the garnishee is relieved of all liability. Subsection (a) adds that the amount shown may not exceed what the defendant owes under the judgment.
Read those together and the practical shape of Georgia collection becomes clear. The statute assumes the creditor already knows who the debtor is in a level of detail most creditors do not have – which names they have used, where they have lived, which institution holds the account and under what number – and it makes the garnishee’s obligation turn on how well the search of their own records can be performed. That is precisely the layer we supply.
Four Garnishment Periods, and They Are Not Close
Counted from the enacted text of Code Section 18-4-4(c), so you can check them.
| Type of garnishment | The period, beginning on the day of service |
|---|---|
| Continuing garnishment | The next 1,095 days. Three years |
| Garnishment served on a financial institution (not continuing, not for support) | The next five days. |
| Continuing garnishment for support | So long as the defendant is employed by the garnishee; does not terminate until the original arrearage is retired. |
| All other garnishments | The next 29 days. |
That is the whole list – four paragraphs, (1) through (4). The spread is the point. A bank garnishment in Georgia is a five-day snapshot; a continuing garnishment against an employer runs for three years. A creditor who treats them as interchangeable is either wasting a filing or missing one, and the choice depends entirely on whether you know where the debtor earns or where the debtor banks. Those are different searches.
Subsection (a) puts real weight behind the snapshot: all obligations owed by the garnishee at the time of service and all obligations accruing throughout the period are subject to the process, and no payment made by the garnishee to the defendant, or any arrangement between them, after service defeats the lien of the garnishment. Subsection (b) reaches money or property in the garnishee’s possession or control at service or coming into it during the period, with one carve-out: collateral securities in a creditor’s hands are not subject to garnishment so long as any amount is owed on the debt they secure, even if not then due.
The five-day bank window is the reason timing and account identification matter more in Georgia than the headline percentage does. Locating where money sits, and when, is what our work on finding a judgment debtor’s bank account is about; identifying where they earn is covered in finding a judgment debtor’s employer.
Watch: What Georgia Needs Named
Aliases, addresses, account numbers – and four very different clocks.
Watch Overview
The Garnishee Is Not Required to Do Your Arithmetic
A rule in 18-4-5 that changes what a bank garnishment actually captures.
Georgia’s earnings cap is familiar enough – Code Section 18-4-5(a)(2) limits the maximum part of disposable earnings for a work week to the lesser of twenty-five percent, or fifteen percent where the judgment arose from a private student loan as defined in paragraph (a)(1), or the amount by which disposable earnings exceed a fixed floor stated in the statute as a dollar figure rather than a floating multiple, with paragraph (a)(3) explaining that figure as thirty hours a week at the federal minimum. The percentages and the schedule belong to our Georgia wage garnishment laws reference, and this page does not restate them.
What belongs here is paragraph (a)(4), because it is about reach rather than rate. A garnishee for whom the defendant is not an employee subject to that garnishee’s federal and state income tax withholding is, in the statute’s words, “considered to have no knowledge of, nor any obligation to determine, the disposable earnings for such defendant,” and may answer the summons without regard for any potential exemptions based on disposable earnings – until it is served with, or consents to, a court order or a filed modification form under subsection (d) giving it an alternative basis for the calculation.
The consequence is easy to state and easy to miss. A bank that holds an account is generally not the debtor’s employer, so it is not obliged to work out which dollars in the account are protected earnings. That does not make protected money unprotected – paragraph (d) of Code Section 18-4-6 preserves the defendant’s right to claim an exemption under Code Section 18-4-15 – but it does mean the burden of raising the point sits with the debtor rather than with the institution. Subsection (d) of 18-4-5 also lets the plaintiff and defendant voluntarily reduce a continuing garnishment by executing the statutory form and filing and serving it.
Paragraph (b) adds that the cap applies even where the garnishee receives summonses in more than one case naming the same defendant, unless it has received a summons of continuing garnishment for support. Paragraph (c) forbids an employer discharging an employee because earnings were garnished for any one obligation, even where more than one summons issued on it.
Georgia Publishes What Is Protected, and Posts It in Every Clerk’s Office
Code Section 18-4-6 makes the exemption list somebody’s statutory job.
Most states leave a debtor to discover the exemption schedule for themselves. Georgia assigns the work. Under Code Section 18-4-6(b) the Attorney General shall create and maintain, on the Department of Law’s website, a list of the exemptions a defendant may be allowed by law to claim against a garnishment of earnings or property; shall revise it when exemptions are repealed, revised or created; and shall transmit a copy to each clerk of court in this state who issues summonses of garnishment, along with any revision. Subsection (c) then requires each of those clerks to post and update that list and to provide it to individuals on request. Subsection (e) makes clear that a defendant is not precluded from claiming an exemption merely because the Attorney General has not identified it.
Two rules inside the same section matter to a creditor deciding what is worth pursuing. Paragraph (a)(2): funds or benefits from an individual retirement account or a pension or retirement program are exempt from garnishment until paid or otherwise distributed to a member or beneficiary – and once paid, they are exempt only to the extent of the earnings limits in 18-4-5, unless a greater exemption applies. Paragraph (a)(3) cuts the other way: funds in an unfunded plan maintained by an employer primarily to provide deferred compensation for a select group of management or highly compensated employees are expressly not exempt. Paragraph (a)(4) adds that exempt property is not counted as disposable earnings for the 18-4-5 calculation.
The broader Georgia exemption schedule – the homestead figure in Code Section 44-13-100, the motor-vehicle and household caps, the wildcard built from unused homestead, and Georgia’s opt-out from the federal bankruptcy exemptions – is set out in our Georgia asset exemptions from creditors reference, and this page deliberately does not repeat it.
Two Provisions on Reach Nobody Quotes
One about property that has not arrived yet; one about walking onto land.
The first is Code Section 9-13-56, which is a single sentence and does something unusual: “A future interest in personalty may not be seized and sold but the lien of judgments shall attach thereto so as to prevent alienation before the right to present possession accrues.” So a Georgia judgment cannot force a sale of an interest the debtor does not yet possess – but it fastens onto it and stops the debtor disposing of it in the meantime. A debtor whose interest in a family trust, an annuity or a remainder has not yet fallen in is not an empty debtor in Georgia; they are a debtor whose asset is frozen where it stands. That is a reason to identify the interest early rather than after it vests, and it is a records question about instruments and filings.
The second is Code Section 9-11-69. Process to enforce a money judgment is a writ of execution unless the court directs otherwise, and in aid of the judgment or execution the creditor may do any or all of three things: (1) examine any person, including the debtor, by deposition or interrogatories; (2) compel production of documents or things; and (3) upon a showing of reasonable necessity, obtain permission from a court of competent jurisdiction to enter upon that part of real property belonging to or lawfully occupied by the debtor which is not used as a residence and which is not bona fide in the lawful possession of another.
Paragraph (3) is a genuinely unusual power and its limits are as instructive as its grant. It is not self-executing – it takes a court’s permission on a showing of reasonable necessity. It stops at the residence. And it stops at property somebody else lawfully possesses. It is, in other words, a tool for looking at a yard, a lot or a business premises where equipment or inventory is thought to sit, which is exactly the kind of holding our asset search for judgment collection work is built to identify first, so that a motion is aimed at something real. Where the debtor’s holdings sit behind an entity, the starting point is collecting a judgment against a business.
The Clock Belongs to the Other Georgia Page
Stated once here, with the event each period runs from, then routed.
Georgia does not put a judgment on a fixed fuse. It puts it on a rolling one. Under O.C.G.A. 9-12-60 a judgment becomes dormant when seven years pass from the rendition of the judgment without an execution being issued and entered on the general execution docket of the county where it was rendered – and subsection (b) provides that each qualifying record or entry institutes a new seven-year period. A judgment that has gone dormant may be renewed or revived by action or by scire facias, at the holder’s option, within three years from the time it became dormant, under O.C.G.A. 9-12-61. Seven and three, not the five and ten that some other states run – carrying another state’s calendar into Georgia overstates the remaining time badly.
Note what each of those runs from, because it differs within the same statute: dormancy runs from rendition; the restarted seven years runs from the record or entry on the docket; the three-year revival window runs from the date of dormancy; and the lien against third parties acting in good faith without notice dates, under O.C.G.A. 9-12-81(b), from entry on the execution docket. Every garnishment period on this page, by contrast, runs from the day of service on the garnishee.
The dormancy architecture, the conjunctive resetting act, the rerecording requirements and the general-execution-docket lien are worked through in full in our Georgia judgment collection guide, which is the companion to this page: the guide owns the clock and the docket, and this page owns what the judgment reaches and what the paper has to say. Neither repeats the other. Across states, the comparison sits in the judgment lien guide by state and the timing in how long a judgment is good for by state.
Six Georgia Blanks a Record Fills
Each one is a line on a form, not an argument.
Which Names Has the Debtor Used?
18-4-7(b)(1)(A) wants aliases, former and maiden names, trade names.
Where Have They Lived Before?
Subparagraph (B) asks for past addresses, not just the current one.
Employer or Bank?
The answer decides 1,095 days against five.
Which Institution, Which Number?
18-4-7(b)(2) wants the account or tracking numbers you know.
Is There a Future Interest?
Code Section 9-13-56 freezes it even though no sale is possible.
Is There Non-Residential Land?
9-11-69(3) reaches it on a showing of reasonable necessity.
Not one of those six is a legal question. Each is a documented fact about a person, a filing, an account or a parcel, and each one changes which Georgia instrument to file and against whom. That is why identification is not the step after a garnishment fails; it is the step that decides which garnishment to serve. Where the debtor has left the state entirely, the records follow them – see finding a judgment debtor who moved out of state – and the deliverable is described in our judgment debtor asset profile report.
Our Half of It, and Where It Stops
Documented identification. The filing and the judgment calls stay with counsel.
What appears above describes how Georgia’s garnishment and execution statutes are written. Deciding how they apply to a particular file is a separate exercise and one this firm stays out of. Nobody here selects a form of garnishment, prepares or serves a summons, levies, records a fi. fa. on a general execution docket, or forms a view on whether an exemption will hold. Nobody approaches a judgment debtor about money. Those belong to your attorney and to the court – and Code Section 18-4-7(d), which voids a garnishment served on the wrong form, is a fair reminder of the stakes in getting the paper right.
The contribution here is the factual layer the statute simply assumes a creditor already has. We match the person in the records to the person the judgment names; develop the nicknames, aliases, former and maiden names and trade names subparagraph (A) calls for; build a corroborated address history rather than a single current hit, because subparagraph (B) asks for past addresses as well; and establish the recorded real property, business affiliations and the employment and banking signals that settle whether a continuing garnishment or a five-day financial-institution garnishment is the right instrument. A reason the law permits has to be given and confirmed before any of it begins; enforcing a money judgment is such a reason. Method matters as much as authority here. Superior court clerks, employers and banks are approached under our own name, saying plainly what is wanted and why – pretexting, assumed identities and misdescribing the enquirer are all out, and the contents of a private financial account are never obtained by any route. This firm carries no investigative licence and asserts none: not licensed private investigators, and not lawyers. The same method outside Georgia is described under skip tracing services.
One kind of enquiry is refused, on this page’s own terms. By the design of 18-4-7(b), a Georgia summons of garnishment is a document that carries a person’s current address, their past addresses and their identifying number into a third party’s hands. That is precisely the document somebody who moved for their own safety must not be found by. Where an enquiry looks aimed at reaching a person who has taken steps to be unreachable – a protective order in the file, an address of record that is obviously a substitute, a stated interest that does not line up with the judgment – the answer is no and the reason is given. Neither a judgment nor the fact that a statute asks for the information changes it.
This firm is not a consumer reporting agency and its work product is not a consumer report. Georgia has already assigned the job of publishing what a debtor may protect: to the Attorney General under 18-4-6(b), and to every clerk who issues a summons under 18-4-6(c). We are not that, and nothing delivered here may properly be used to decide whether a person gets credit, employment, insurance or housing. Results carry their sources and a candid note on how current and how complete each is, including where a trail stops. General information about Georgia law; not legal advice.
The Short Version
A Georgia judgment reaches property through a fi. fa. and through garnishment, and the garnishment paper itself is where Georgia is unusual. O.C.G.A. 18-4-7 requires the summons to state with particularity the debtor’s known aliases, former and maiden names and trade names, the service address, the current address and the past addresses, and the social security or federal tax identification number – plus, for a bank, the account or tracking numbers you know. Using the wrong form voids the garnishment and relieves the garnishee of all liability. The periods in Code Section 18-4-4(c) differ enormously: 1,095 days for a continuing garnishment, five days on a financial institution, 29 days for everything else, and open-ended for support until the arrearage is retired – all measured from the day of service. A garnishee who is not the debtor’s employer has no obligation to determine disposable earnings under 18-4-5(a)(4). Code Section 9-13-56 attaches the judgment lien to a future interest in personalty to prevent alienation even though it cannot be sold, and 9-11-69(3) allows entry onto non-residential land on a showing of reasonable necessity. Which names, which addresses, which institution: those are records questions, and answering them with sources is our part. Your attorney chooses and files the instrument. General information about Georgia law, not legal advice.
Our Commitment
A garnishment here is worth exactly as much as the identification printed on its face, and O.C.G.A. 18-4-7 sets that bar well above what most creditors arrive with. Meeting it is the work: the debtor matched to the judgment rather than to a name, the aliases and former names developed, an address history corroborated instead of a single current hit, and the employment and banking signals that settle whether the right instrument runs 1,095 days or five. Everything is dated, sourced, and paired with a frank note on what is still open. Which form to file, whether an exemption survives, and what a court should be asked to permit are decisions for your attorney. Two decades of lawful records work, kept inside the limits described above.
Georgia Judgment Questions
What does a Georgia garnishment summons have to say about the debtor?
More than most creditors expect. O.C.G.A. 18-4-7(b)(1) requires the summons, or an attachment to it, to state with particularity and to the extent reasonably available: the defendant’s name plus all known configurations, nicknames, aliases, former or maiden names, trade names or variations; the service address, the current address and, so far as reasonably available, the past addresses; and the social security or federal tax identification number. A financial-institution summons must also state the account, identification or tracking numbers known to the plaintiff.
What happens if the wrong garnishment form is used in Georgia?
Code Section 18-4-7(d) is blunt: when a plaintiff uses the incorrect form for a summons of garnishment of any type, the garnishment is not valid and the garnishee is relieved of all liability. Paragraph (b)(2) separately forbids using the financial-institution form for a continuing garnishment or a continuing garnishment for support. A misspelling of required information other than the surname of a natural person does not invalidate the summons under (b)(3), provided it is not misleading in a search of the garnishee’s records.
How long does a Georgia garnishment last?
It depends which of four kinds it is, and all four are measured from the day of service on the garnishee. Under Code Section 18-4-4(c) a continuing garnishment covers the next 1,095 days; a garnishment served on a financial institution that is not continuing and not for support covers the next five days; a continuing garnishment for support lasts while the defendant is employed by the garnishee and does not terminate until the original arrearage is retired; and all other garnishments cover the next 29 days.
Does a bank have to work out which money in the account is protected?
Generally not. Under Code Section 18-4-5(a)(4) a garnishee for whom the defendant is not an employee subject to that garnishee’s federal and state income tax withholding is considered to have no knowledge of, and no obligation to determine, the defendant’s disposable earnings, and may answer without regard to earnings-based exemptions until served with or consenting to a court order or a filed modification form. That does not remove the debtor’s right to claim an exemption, which 18-4-6(d) preserves through Code Section 18-4-15; it moves the burden of raising it.
Where can a Georgia debtor find out what is exempt?
Georgia makes that somebody’s statutory job. Code Section 18-4-6(b) requires the Attorney General to create and maintain a list of claimable exemptions on the Department of Law’s website, revise it as exemptions change, and transmit it to each clerk of court in the state who issues summonses of garnishment; subsection (c) requires each of those clerks to post and update it and to provide it on request. Subsection (e) confirms that an exemption not on the list can still be claimed.
Can a Georgia judgment reach property the debtor does not have yet?
In one specific way. Code Section 9-13-56 provides that a future interest in personalty may not be seized and sold, but that the lien of judgments attaches to it so as to prevent alienation before the right to present possession accrues. So the interest cannot be forced to sale, and the debtor cannot dispose of it either. Identifying that kind of interest early is a records question about instruments and filings rather than a levy.
Can a creditor go onto the debtor’s land to look for assets?
Only on a court’s permission and only in a limited place. Code Section 9-11-69(3) allows a judgment creditor, upon a showing of reasonable necessity, to obtain permission from a court of competent jurisdiction to enter upon that part of real property belonging to or lawfully occupied by the debtor which is not used as a residence and which is not bona fide in the lawful possession of another. The same section also allows examination of any person by deposition or interrogatories and compelled production of documents or things.
How is this page different from your Georgia judgment collection guide?
This page owns what a Georgia judgment reaches and what the enforcement paper must name: the identification particulars in 18-4-7, the four garnishment periods in 18-4-4(c), the non-employer garnishee rule in 18-4-5(a)(4), the Attorney General’s exemption list in 18-4-6, Code Section 9-13-56 on future interests, and Code Section 9-11-69’s discovery powers. The Georgia judgment collection guide owns the clock and the docket – the rolling seven-year dormancy in O.C.G.A. 9-12-60, the three-year revival window in 9-12-61, and the general execution docket lien. They cite different statutes and neither repeats the other.
Name the Debtor Precisely Enough to Collect
O.C.G.A. 18-4-7 spells out what the summons has to carry: every known name variant, the current and past addresses, the identifying number, and for a bank the account numbers you hold. Send us what you have on the debtor along with the lawful reason for the enquiry and we will build and document that identification out of Georgia public records and lawfully licensed sources, as a rule within 24 hours. Contact us and we will be straight about what can and cannot be established.
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