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tenants owe half of Sept Ren- What's my next step? - Landlord Forum thread 348470

tenants owe half of Sept Ren- What's my next step? by Elaine (NY) on September 20, 2016 @09:56

                              
I am now a member of your Landlord association and hope you will answer a question for me about garnishment of wages on an evicted tenant.

Recently my tenant has fallen in arrears due to being forced to retire early. Prior to that she was on disability for a month. She told me she applied for her retirement pay a month ago. It took 2 weeks to have her taken out as a current status of working to retired. Once that was done, she was given a vague time as to when her retirement pay will come, she told me she believes it will be on October first that her check will come.

But she currently owes me for half of September's rent and then come October 1st, she will owe me again for the rent of October. Here is my concern. I can work with her and hope she can get current as I have a mortgage on the house she rents from me. However, if I don't get a definitive answer soon as to when and how much her retirement check will be and when it will I get my back rent and October's rent, I may have to start the 3 day eviction process. But my other concern is can I garnish her retirement pay for the back rent?

We have not had much success at this going back a few years in upstate NY. Our tenants here in upstate NY would get 2 notifications, one was delivered to the tenant to informed them of the judgment and that their pay will be garnished. This was always delivered by the Constable. The 2nd notice the Constable served went straight to the ex tenant's HR department. So in that 2 week span, they knew of their pay being garnished and would quit their job. So since those tenants are given a warning first, they all seem to quit their job and we never see the money. I often feel the laws should have been changed as they knew of the judgment when we went to court so why should they be notified of a garnishment coming due. Also once they moved out of our place, we had no way of contacting them to find out where they live and where they worked. If we went to court, the judge would tell us we have to find out where they lived so that they can send notice to them to disclose where they are now employed. So we never saw a dime sad to say and this caused us a financial hardship.

However, since this tenant resides in NJ I am unsure really how it will work. I live in upstate NY so going down there to start the process may be best handled by an attorney. But the question I have is, since she is no longer employed by the state and now retired, how do I go about the garnishment of wages? We never had to deal with retired people. In the past, most were on Section 8 and we never saw any monies for our judgment even after we informed Section 8 of the judgment. Or as I mentioned, they would quit their jobs and we were back to square one. But since this is a NJ tenant and now as I mentioned retired, I feel this may end up difficult for me and costing me a lot in back rent that I will lose. I am at a loss on how to handle this. I would of course like to work it out with her but I need to know how much she is getting and when for sure she will get her pay. She has yet to respond to my voice mail and email. Can you offer any advise when it comes to this type of situation with garnishing her pay as a retired person? I hope to hear from you as I am in a quandary about this.

Thank you for your time. Advice appreciated.
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Re: tenants owe half of Sept Ren- What's my next step? by Garry on September 20, 2016 @11:04 [ Reply ]
You cannot garnish a SS check. But you can garnish the checking or savings account that it goes into. However,if you try that, the T will just close that acct. and open another one. You could be chasing bank accounts for years. You should issue the 3 day P or Q papers now, and go from there. As you have found out, winning a judgement is 1 thing, COLLECTING on it is another. Some LLs THRIVE on hunting a former T down, and making them pay. I don't. That's why, years ago, I gave up trying to hunt down people, employers, paychecks, checking accounts, etc. Too much time and headaches involved.Now I just take my losses and move on. Also remember, her new "retirement" pay may be less (even a LOT less) than when she was working, so I doubt it would be worth it for you to try to collect from her. Besides, you are getting the "cart before the horse" here. You have not even begun eviction procedures yet, let alone been to court and won a judgement. Remember, once she is retired, she can move anywhere in the country, because she has no job to keep her in the area any longer. My personal opinion is, get her out asap, re-rent the place, accept your losses, and move on.
Re: tenants owe half of Sept Ren- What's my next step? by Anonymous on September 24, 2016 @17:11 [ Reply ]
I agree... send your notices out right away to protect yourself. Her story sounds like "I'm waiting for my tax refund...I'm waiting for my alimony payment...,etc." I have had very little luck "working with people." 95% or more of all people who file bankruptcy, fail in their repayment efforts and, from experience, I believe this to be true with tenants who are having trouble paying the rent. I'm sorry I'm not more compassionate but I've been taken advantage of enough times to straighten me out and make my rentals into a real business.

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