Collectors & Your Rights

They can, and most lawsuits are won by default because nobody answers. The timeline, the deadline that decides everything, and what answering does.

Once it expires they cannot win a lawsuit, but only if you say so. The three things that restart the clock, and why it is a defense, not a shield.

File an answer before the deadline — that one act is what separates a negotiation from a garnishment. The full sequence, plus the four real defenses.

Claim of exemption, hardship motion, vacating the judgment, settling, or filing. Which one works depends on why they can garnish you in the first place.

They need a court judgment first — and four states largely forbid it anyway. The federal cap, the protected floor, and what a bank levy can reach instead.