Wage garnishments and collections
in Law ·
rowdyraven112 said:If the IRS has frozen your cash, sure, you can technically do whatever you want with your physical assets and real estate. To quote a lawyer friend of mine: "The government can kiss my ass." A levy on your property is just a matter of time. You could try transferring everything to your wife via a gift deed. The only real hurdle is community property laws, but honestly, I’ve never seen the government actually pursue that kind of route to collect debts. Even better, you could look into a divorce—it's mandatory under certain circumstances, and through the settlement, you can hand everything over to her.
With a divorce, you can work out a maintenance agreement based on specific sections of the Family Law regarding spousal support. Or you could set up an administrative garnishment against your wages. If kids are involved, you could set up an administrative order for child support. You have plenty of options. Of course, this assumes they've only blocked your checking accounts and haven't hit your paycheck yet—which, based on what you said, seems to be the case.
But this is only worth the effort if the debt to the IRS is massive, which I assume it is given the situation.
Just one question: Have you tried applying for a payment plan?
Thanks for the input. Here's the deal: I don't have a steady paycheck right now because I'm unemployed, and the debt isn't even that astronomical—it's about $1,750. It all stemmed from losing a first-time homebuyer tax credit. I tried to set up a payment plan, but since I couldn't even manage that, the seizure was triggered—starting with the IRS...
If I've grasped this correctly, a divorce would shield me if the government decides to get aggressive about marital property, but since the amount is relatively small, they probably won't bother, right? So, can I just save the car by transferring the title to my wife?