How long after bankruptcy is filed will wage garnishments stop?

The automatic stay of bankruptcy goes into affect the minute you file your case. Did you notify the creditor and also the payroll department at your job? Those funds should be credited back to you immediately.

Sorry to hear this. This is a problem that comes up sometimes, especially when the case filing happens to be real close to the next pay date. Anything taken after the filing of the case should be reimbursed to you. Let your attorney know how much was taken and on what date. Attorney may contact the garnishing creditor(s) to confirm that the creditor(s) and/or their counsel received notice of the bankruptcy and has promptly prepared and sent over paperwork to the Sheriff's office to stop the garnishment. Because there is a middleman here, the Sheriff's office, delays could lie with either the creditor, the creditor's counsel, or the Sheriff's office. My worst experience was dealing with the Sheriff's Office in Los Angeles, which took 2 months to stop the garnishment, but this was an extreme case, perhaps caused by temporary problems at the Sheriff's Office and hopefully will not be your experience. My clients did, eventually, receive all the of the money back and luckily they were still able to make their Plan payments while garnishments continued. If they could not afford to pay the Plan of course I would have sent over copies of the pay checks to the Trustee with an explanation asking for leeway here until the garnishments are reimbursed. Trustees in our district, no reason to think yours are different, are reasonable people and in these beyond "our" control circumstances I'm almost positive they would let my clients slide on the payments until the garnishment stopped and reimbursements came back. I wouldn't have taken this route though unless absolutely necessary. In getting a reimbursement, whatever funds were held by the Sheriff are likely to be returned back to the employer who then either cuts you a separate check or includes the money in the next paycheck, however their Payroll does it. Whatever funds were received by the creditor since the filing of the case are likely to be returned by the creditor or their counsel, usually by a check payable to the debtor (or maybe their counsel, had it happen either way) and mailed either directly to the debtor or their counsel.

Did you tell your lawyer you have a garnishment in place? Both the payroll department and the creditor need to be notified of your filing before the garnishment will stop. Call your lawyer and make sure he/she knows that the garnishment came out again.

Your attorney should have handled this for you. You need to contact your payroll department and advise them of the bankruptcy, contact the law enforcement agency that is handling the writ of garnishment and contact the attorney for the creditor to advise them that the bankruptcy was filed, to return any money taken after the filing date and to stop any further legal proceedings to try to collect.

Take the notice of filing to the payroll department and attempt to intercept the garnished funds - the taxes will continue to be withheld.