Today, I want to talk to you about collecting on judgments when it comes to a West Virginia divorce. Now, we had talked before about the civil contempt process. Let’s say that somebody has not complied with a court order and you want to enforce the court order, so what we’re talking about here is a little bit different. What the court’s going to be doing there is they’re going to be looking at the person and they’re going to be asking, for example with a contempt, whether the person has a good reason for violating the order? If they do, the court is not going to hold them in contempt. However, what the court can do and oftentimes you get this, is you can get a judgment against somebody in the context of a divorce case in West Virginia. Let’s say, that for ex- and it happens quite frequently in the context of attorney fees, but you can also get judgements for other things as well.
Let’s say that after it’s all said and done, the person has an obligation to pay the other person 20 thousand dollars and let’s say that they just don’t. They’re not paying it and you file contempt and the court makes the determination that they have an inability to pay. Let’s say you’re awarded your attorney fees and you don’t want to go because all the court’s going to do is their way of collecting on it is somewhat limited. What they can do is they can do is threaten to throw that person in jail. or they can. That’s the main remedy and or you can be awarded your attorney fees, but that’s not going to give you the money that they owe to you.
What you can do is you can go through the collections process. That’s an alternative way to go about getting your money, and we’ve done that from time to time, especially in the context of attorney fees, when you’re, when one person is awarded the attorney fees. I’ve collected on attorney fees before. There is a process you can go through to collect on the judgment. Let’s say that it’s a judgment of, whether it’s like, for example for property of 20 thousand dollars, or let’s say you’re awarded your attorney fees of three or four thousand dollars.
One thing you can do is you can go through a process to actually collect and garnish their wages and it’s really interesting because for the most part there are certain things that are exempt from the bankruptcy laws so that you can still overall eventually collect on the judgment if it’s related to domestic relations. Now, that’s a whole other matter about going into whether you can or cannot override the bankruptcy laws. That’s an entirely different subject, but I’m assuming nobody’s filed for bankruptcy. You can either garnish wages or there’s a process if you know where their banks are you can levy their bank accounts and those are two ways that you can do it.
Also, potentially you can file a judgment lien on their property if they have it. Now, the problem with that though is it’s going to be a while before you actually get to collect on it because it’s generally not going to be dealt with until they actually sell the property. Those are just a few ways that you can actually collect on a judgment and it’s something that you might want to consider going forward in the event that they’re not paying. It’s an alternative way to go about getting somebody to pay other than contempt. That’s a little on collecting judgements in a West Virginia divorce. Most of the time, 90% of the time probably, or more, you just file a civil contempt, but there are other alternatives, like for example garnishing wages, going after bank accounts or filing liens on property.
