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Small Claims Advice


brown4

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Ok so back in December I hired a guy to do my floors. To make a long story short the guy messed my floors up, agreed to pay me back for the materials I bought and the deposit I paid him up front. He then gave a different excuse each time we were supposed to meet up so I ended up taking him to Small Claims Court.

 

So I took him to Small Claims about a month and a half ago, he didn't show, so I won the case totaling around $1,500. Now I thought the battle was finally over and I'd be able to stop worrying about all of this since I had done everything on my own without any legal help. Little did I know that actually collecting the money would be a whole other process in its own.

 

So after winning the case I called the Circuit Clerk and asked how I would go about receiving the payment from the case. They essentially told me I'd have to research it on my own and that they couldn't give me any legal advice. So after googling what to do I found out that there was a 7 or 10 day grace period for an appeal.

 

I gave it about 2 weeks and called the County Sheriff to find out if they'd be able to help me. They gave me the phone number for the Circuit Clerk. I called them knowing that they wouldn't be of any help but figured I would at least try. Again no help from them. I called the Sheriff's office again and they gave me a phone number that may be able to help out. I can't remember who it was, I think maybe a law firm, but they essentially gave me the phone number for the Circuit Clerk and hung up on me before I could even get a word out.

 

So I googled some more and figured out that maybe a Wage Garnishment was my best route. So now I have the Wage Garnishment form and have no idea how I'm supposed to fill it out.

Not sure if I should just try my best on it and hope I can figure it out, or if I should contact a lawyer and hire them to do it.

 

Can anyone guide me in the right direction on what to do?

Edited by brown4
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Small claims is a bit of a farce. Hard to collect and almost not worth the hassle. It ends up being more out of principle. You might be able to place a lien on his home or business as an option, but once again, I'm sure the paperwork is a nightmare.

I'd also be posting this guys name so he does not scam anyone else??

Good luck!

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Is the guy self employed? If so, since he wouldn’t receive a regular paycheck, it will be impossible to garnish his wages.

 

Not to be a downer, but as TAC said, winning a debt case in small claims is the easy part. Actually getting paid is the hard part. You’re likely one of many that’s waiting to get paid by the guy, and if he had the money to satisfy his debts, you wouldn’t have ended up in small claims court to begin with.

Edited by rjs4470
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That's what I'm afraid of. I've spent so much time and effort into this that I really don't want to give up based on the principle of it. If a wage garnishment is not the route to take, is there another way to go?

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Yeah that’s rough. A judgment is just a piece of paper until you take the effort to enforce it.

 

Have you looked into an Non-wage garnishment? If you have any notion of where he might do his banking, you could file a non-wage garnishment and seize assets from his bank account(s). These are relatively inexpensive to serve on banking institutions so even if they come back with a notice that the debtor holds no funds there, you won’t have lost much.

 

Given the size of the judgment, a writ of execution on personal property or a judgment lien may not be worth the trouble.

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Yeah that’s rough. A judgment is just a piece of paper until you take the effort to enforce it.

 

Have you looked into an Non-wage garnishment? If you have any notion of where he might do his banking, you could file a non-wage garnishment and seize assets from his bank account(s). These are relatively inexpensive to serve on banking institutions so even if they come back with a notice that the debtor holds no funds there, you won’t have lost much.

 

Given the size of the judgment, a writ of execution on personal property or a judgment lien may not be worth the trouble.

 

I'll look into this, I'm friends with a former associate of the person I'm dealing with who is also contemplating going through Small Claims against him. Maybe he will know.

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File a lien on any property he has. You may never get funds if he doesn't sell or die, but if when he does you will. Its worth it and its not to bad of a process. You could also file a non wage garnishment (think bank garnishment here). It takes some time to process, but you will either get funds from it or a notice of no funds in account from the asset.

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I'll look into this, I'm friends with a former associate of the person I'm dealing with who is also contemplating going through Small Claims against him. Maybe he will know.

 

Who is the jerk??

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Who is the jerk??

 

Robbie Scott is his name. Had a friend of mine use him for his floors and they turned out great. Have another friend who has his own flooring company and has used Robbie for multiple jobs, most have gone as expected though a few have turned out like mine where they are essentially done wrong.

 

The reasoning for not using my friend with his own company is a whole other story that essentially put me in this mess.

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