Florida Asset Protection : Asset Protection Law & Planning in Florida - Florida Homestead Exemption

 Some of my out of state clients want claim Florida residency to protect assets, but they really do not want to move to Florida. Some married debtors ask whether they can invest in a Florida property and claim the property as their homestead while their non-debtor spouse remain in their family home in another state. Can a debtor and his non-debtor spouse have separate homesteads?

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Florida statutes provide unlimited protection against wage garnishment when the debtor is head of household. This protection is very broad and effective, but some states have even better wage protection. Four states- North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Pennsylvania- do not allow wage garnishment to enforce a commercial debt regardless of whether the debtor is head of household. I do not know if courts have carved out any exceptions from what appears to be an unqualified prohibition against wage garnishment in these four states. I do know that many Florida debtors, including most unmarried debtors and some business owners, are vulnerable to continuing wage garnishment up to 25% of their take-home pay.

Many of my clients consider moving to Florida because they believe we have the best debtor protection laws. Those people should thoroughly investigate the exemptions of their home states before deciding to flee to Florida. You may be better off to stay where you are. 
 

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Some time ago I wrote a post about Florida residents who purchased an annuity for his own benefit before moving to Florida in a foreign state which did not recognize annuities as exempt from creditor execution. I assumed, for the question, that the annuity company was in the same state and that the annuity contract provided that the law applicable to the annuity is the law of the state where the debtor resided when he purchased the annuity. The post discussed whether the annuity would become an exempt asset when the debtor moved to Florida.

A few of my clients have mentioned the post, and have said they were concerned about their own annuities purchased in another state. The client asked me to do further research. I found bankruptcy cases which held that a debtor’s beneficial interest in an annuity is exempt regardless of where the annuity company or its owner are, or were, located.

The courts interpret the annuity exemption as applying to the debtor’s beneficial interest because the statute (222.14) exempts annuity proceeds. The court rulings imply that a debtor’s beneficial interest follows the debtor to Florida, and that when the debtor becomes a Florida resident his beneficial interest in the annuity is exempt regardless of where the annuity owner or the annuity company is located now or in the past.

An annuity contract may have a provision applying another state’s law to the interpretation of the annuity. I think the most reasonable application of that provision is to apply the other state’s law where there is a dispute regarding the contract’s interpretation and application, but that the same provision does not define the exemption of the beneficiary’s interest.

The distinction is similar to the issue of whether a Florida  debtor can use a single member LLC for asset protection if the debtor forms the LLC in a foreign state whose laws provide that a charging lien is the sole remedy against all LLCs, including single member LLCs. I’ve said that the creditor’s rights to execute upon the Florida debtor’s LLC interest would be determined by Florida law if the debtor lived in Florida regardless of what state law applied to disputes among the parties to the LLC. I think the analysis is the same for the annuity exemption; the law applicable to exemptions and creditor rights depends upon the law of the Debtor’s residence.
 

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Think what you may about the politics of Florida’s legislature and our new governor, but the seem to be pretty good about fixing bad court decisions. I wrote blog posts previously about more than one Florida court decision finding that a debtor’s IRA inherited from another family member, excluding spouses’ rollover, was not exempt from the debtor’s creditors because the IRA represented an inheritance rather than the debtor’s own retirement savings.

Legislature to the rescue. Florida statute section 222.21 will be amended to specifically included inherited IRAs as well as rollover IRAs. You can read it here. The bill is retroactive so it does not matter if the IRA was established or inherited before this bill becomes law. Also, the bill is applicable to IRAs owned by Florida residents even if the deceased owner lived elsewhere.

To be safe, if you inherit an IRA you may want to move the IRA account to a Florida branch of the IRA custodian. If the decedent lived in another state and had his IRA account maintained at an office in his home state a creditor could argue that the exemption laws applicable to your inherited IRA are the laws of the state where the inherited IRA account is maintained.
 

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A self-employed client owns an exempt Florida homestead. He thinks business may be better in Georgia, so he opens a store in Georgia. He rents an apartment in Georgia. If the homestead sells for an amount greater than the mortgage the client intends to buy a Georgia property. He maintains his Florida drivers license and does not get a Georgia license. He used his Florida address on his 2010 federal income tax return. The client asks me if he is still a Florida resident.

Florida residency depends upon the person’s intent as indicated by the facts of is case. The client wants to move from Florida to Georgia. However, his plan depends upon the new store in Georgia being profitable, and to some extent, upon the sale of his Florida house. I think the client could argue that unless and until these same conditions are met he does not intend to permanently leave Florida and that his venture into Georgia is temporary and conditional. His retention of his Florida driver’s license and ownership of the Florida property support Florida residence.

 

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Not all annuities owned by Florida residents are protected from their creditors. Protection does not depend upon the type of annuity or the issuer of the annuity, but asset protection does depend upon the state where the annuity was issued to the debtor. People who purchased annuities in another state before moving to Florida may not be eligible for Florida’s annuity exemption.

Start with the general principal that Florida residents cannot export Florida’s exemptions to another state so that your assets located or sited in a foreign state may not be protected by Florida laws. Annuities are contracts between you and an insurance company providing for financial benefits. Most annuity contracts state that the contract is to be interpreted under the laws of the state where the annuity was issued or where the owner signed the contract. If you resided in Florida when you bought an annuity your annuity was issued in Florida and governed under Florida asset protection law regardless of whether the insurance company has offices in Florida. But, if you lived in another state when you bought your annuity the annuity contract is probably located in the other state and not Florida.

 

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Last month a Florida appellate court issued a homestead decision which held that a spouse’s signature on a standard warranty deed conveying title to the couple’s homestead effectively waives the spouse’s post-death homestead rights. The case is important as it touches on a controversial issue of what constitutes a valid waiver of homestead rights in general.

The facts simplified were that a couple jointly owned a house. The spouses both signed a deed conveying title of the homestead to the wife. The wife’s will left a life estate in the house to the husband and a remainder interest (after the husband’s death) to the wife’s sister. The wife died first. After both spouses died the husband’s estate challenged the remainder interest to the wife’s sister on the grounds that absent a waiver of homestead rights by the husband a devise of less than fee simple interest to the sister would be invalid, and that since the wife had no descendants, the homestead should pass outright to Mitchell upon the wife’s death The wife’s estate argued that the husband waived homestead rights when he deeded the property to the wife during their lifetimes.

The court held that the transfer to the wife validly waived the husband’s homestead rights because of technical legal terminology in a standard warranty deed. Specifically, the warranty deed which referred to “all hereditaments” effected a transfer of all interests in the property capable of being inherited. Therefore, the conveyance of all hereditaments to the wife was a waiver of post-death homestead rights.

 

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A continuing writ of wage  garnishment is a powerful collection tool because a creditor can serve a single writ of garnishment on the employer which garnishes all future wages whenever payable into the future. The continuing writ has been used to garnish debtor employees who  receive the same paycheck on a periodic basis. It is unclear whether a continuing writ of garnishment is applicable to a debtor paid only by commissions. That debtor may or may not be entitled to any commission at any given time. Commissions may not be the type of “wages” subject to a continuing writ in which case the creditor would have to serve a separate writ of garnishment any time the creditor believes the debtor is entitled to a sales commission. It is difficult for a creditor to know when a commission may be payable and to serve a writ of garnishment in time to intercept the commission.

I read a post in the Florida Collection Law Blog about an appeals court case which addressed the applicability of continuing writ of garnishments to commission compensation. The court held that commissions are 'wages,' for purposes of Section 77.0305, Florida Statutes, and are therefore subject to a continuing writ of garnishment. The court found that commissions paid for labor or services are within the definition of “wages” and therefore are subject to a continuing writ of garnishment. Baker v. Storfer 2011 WL 222324. Of course, if the debtor is head of household his commissions are exempt from any garnishment pursuant to Florida’s wage exemption.
 

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An attorney sent me a question regarding the exemption of money his client received from the sale of his Florida homestead. The client deposited the homestead proceeds in a separate and segregated bank account. The client began searching for a new home in Florida. Florida courts have protected homestead sale proceeds for a “reasonable time” while debtors seek a new home to live in. In this case, the debtor’s employer notified him that his job was being transferred to another state. The debtor will have to move out of Florida. As a result, the debtor has stopped looking for a new home in Florida, and the debtor no longer intends to reside in the state. The issue is whether the debtor loses protection of his “homestead account” once he changes his future plans. There are no court decisions on this point.

There are bankruptcy court decisions which make clear that a debtor may spend money from a homestead account on things other than the purchase of a homestead while the homestead search in ongoing. Therefore, it would seem that debtor could transfer or convert part of his homestead proceeds to an alternative protected asset or to another person during the time the debtor is, or was, searching for a new Florida homestead. It will be difficult for either the creditor or debtor to prove if and when this debtor abandoned plans to live in Florida. It is possible the debtor may have anticipated the employer’s decision to move him out of the state long before he received written notification.

 

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After the Florida Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision the Florida limited liability has lost its utility as an asset protection tool. Is the LLC is done forever, or could it someday re-emerge as an asset protection entity. The Court’s adverse ruling was based largely on its interpretation of the Florida LLC statute. The court noted that unlike Florida’s limited partnership statute, the LLC statute provides that a creditor may get a charging lien against the debtor’s LLC interest, but that the statute does not say the charging lien is the "exclusive remedy" leaving available more effective collection tools such as levy and sale.

I’ve been monitoring some attorney discussion groups which are discussing asset protection planning in light of the Florida Supreme Court decision. For example, there is a very high level academic discussion through Leimburg Information Services including well-known estate planning and asset protection attorneys such as Alan Gassman, Chris Riser, and Mark Merric.. This discussion group, and some other experienced attorneys I’ve spoken with, seem confident that the Florida legislature will act to fix the LLC statute so that the charging lien remedy is made exclusive as is currently for limited partnership interests. Speculation is that the legislative revision could come in 2011, or if not, soon thereafter.

In the meantime, people with LLC businesses must deal with decreased asset protection against their individual creditors. Speculating on laws being passed by the Florida legislature is not sound asset protection strategy. While it seems logical, if not likely, that the legislature may make LLC’s charging lien provisions consistent with that of the limited partnership attorneys must help asset protection oriented business clients bolster LLC protection either by amending the LLC operating agreements or migrating to other business structures.

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Using a Florida limited liability company as an asset protection tool used to be relatively easy. Attorneys understood that a creditor’s sole remedy against a debtor’s interest in a Florida LLC, especially multi-member LLCs, was a charging lien. The charging lien gave the creditor restrictive and impractical tools to capture money from the debtor’s LLC interest. No more. The Florida Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision last month seems to give creditors the right to use any and all collection tools, not just the charging lien, to go after a debtor’s membership interests.

The next line of asset protection defense is the LLC operating agreement. Contractual provisions in the LLC operating agreement can minimize a creditor’s power to compel LLC distributions or liquidate LLC assets. Effective asset protection language is not in "off the shelf" or standard LLC operating agreements.

Prior to the Olmstead ruling a small business owner might get by with a "do it yourself" LLC. The owner could create an LLC online and buy a standard operating agreement online from any of the many sites that market legal forms. Once you realized the LLC was the preferred asset protection business structure a competent business owner could achieve good asset protection with the "do it yourself" Florida LLC. Not any longer. Do it yourself may work at Home Depot, but it won’t protect your Florida LLC from judgment creditors.

LLC owners concerned about asset protection are going to have to do something. There are many asset protection alternatives to the basic LLC structure. The simplest and cheapest next step - not necessarily the best or the most effective step- is to have an attorney customize your LLC operating agreement with provisions that will weaken and deter your prospective creditors. Yes, it may cost money. But, these things can happen whenever the Florida Supreme Court is in session.

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Can a debtor protect a future legal interest in his primary residence under Florida homestead laws? In this bankruptcy case a debtor’s mother owned a property where the mother and the debtor resided with the debtor’s spouse and children. The mother executed a deed transferring title to the debtor reserving a life estate to the mother. (A "life estate" means the mother owns and controls the property and as long as she is alive). The debtor’s mother was old with a short life expectancy.

The debtor filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy and claimed his future legal interest in his mother’s house as an exempt homestead asset. The trustee objected to the debtor’s exemption because the debtor’s interest in the property was only a future "remainder interest" (meaning the debtor has no vested ownership until the mother dies). The trustee wanted to take and sell the debtor’s interest in the house which would vest upon his mother’s death in the reasonably near future.

The court said that the debtor’s future ownership rights was protected under Florida’s homestead laws. The court pointed out that the debtor occupied the home with his family as a family residence, and that the debtor contributed financially to the repairs and upgrades to the house. The court held that the debtor’s present right of possession is sufficient to qualify the house as an exempt homestead. In re: Williams Case No. 3:09-586.

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Exempting wages from garnishment under Florida’s head of household exemption is difficult for self-employed debtors. Business owners of sub-S corporations typically compensate themselves as employees and as owners. The owner pays himself salary as well as profit distributions. Self-employed business owners limit salary in order to minimize employment taxation, and instead, pay themselves mostly through profit distributions. This compensation arrangement raises issues when the self-employed owner tries to exempt his salary under Florida Statute 222.11 which exempts earnings paid to debtors who are head of household.

Many years ago, in the mid-90s, some bankruptcy courts denied the earnings exemption to self-employed business owners on the grounds that they did not pay themselves in a manner consistent with an employer-employee relationship. The issue just recently was addressed by a bankruptcy court in Florida’s middled district. (In re McDermott, 425 R.R. 848). At issue was an exemption of the debtor’s money in a self-described wage account funded with money received from the debtor’s wholly owned business.

The bankruptcy court denied this debtor an exemption for money in a bank account which the debtor had claimed as exempt wages. The court said the debtor’s compensation history and practice was inconsistent with that of an arms-length employee and employer relationship. The record showed significant variation in the timing and amount of the debtor’s claimed wages. The debtor substantially increased his wages in the months leading up to his bankruptcy in an apparent effort to exempt the money in a wage account. The pre-bankruptcy wages were almost twice the amount he received total in the prior two years. The debtor had complete control over distributions from his business and had no written employment agreement with his corporation.

The court held that, "A debtor who owns and runs his own business, without an arms-lenght employment agreement, and who has almost complete control and discretion over the timing and amount of his own compensation cannot rely on Section 222 (wage exemption statute) to exempt the funds."

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A client asks: " doesn’t the creditor have to find out if I’m head of household before they garnish my wages." In other words, is your creditor obligated to check out your exemptions before taking action to collect a judgment? The general answer is: "no."

Florida law does not require a judgment creditor to investigate and negate possible exemptions prior to making attempts to execute upon their judgment. In this clients case the creditor legally can serve a wage garnishment on the employer. The debtor has the burden of asserting head of household exemption and dissolving the garnishment in court. The same rule applies to garnishment of an exempt entireties account. The creditors writ of garnishment will freeze the account until the debtor takes action to dissolve the garnishment. In most cases, the debtor will need to pay an attorney if he wants the garnishment of an exempt asset removed quickly.

Florida law provides valuable exemptions; the law does not guarantee that the exemptions are self-executing or free.

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I often receive phone calls from out of state resigned that they cannot achieve any of Florida's asset protection benefits because they do not reside in Florida- not exactly. While it is true that Florida's statutory creditor protections are specifically limited to Florida residents and Florida homestead presume permanent Florida residence in the house, Florida law does include asset protection available to non-residents, and even to people who have never set foot in Florida.

I’m referring to tenants by entireties protection available to a single debtor of a married couple.. Tenants by entireties protection from individual creditors is based on Florida common law defining Florida property. The concept applies to Florida property regardless of the owners’ residence. I wrote a post on this topic last year, but its worth repeating for current readers because most callers from outside Florida still think they have to move into their Florida house as a homestead in order to protect the house from judgments.

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Creditors cannot garnish wages of Florida resident who is head of household. Wages earned by the spouse who is not head of household is subject to garnishment. Sometimes clients ask me what compensation is included in the definition of "wages" which are either exempt or are subject to garnishment.

This week I met with a married joint debtors. The husband debtor had a job and his income supported the family. The wife debtor has lost her job and was receiving unemployment compensation from the government. The couple understood that the husband’s wages were exempt, but he wanted to know if the joint creditor could garnish unemployment benefits paid the wife debtor. If unemployment income is a form of wages then it logically could be garnished.

Unemployment benefits may be income for tax purposes but the payments are not wages subject to garnishment. Florida Statute 443.051 states that any unemployment compensation payable under state law may not be assigned and are exempt from all creditor claims.

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A judgment creditor cannot garnish wages of a Florida domiciled debtor who is head of household. Assume, that a creditor sues the Florida resident in Georgia and gets a money judgment against a Florida resident based on a transaction in Georgia. . During the proceeding, the debtor was a full time resident of Florida and worked in Florida. The employer had an office in Georgia, but it paid the debtor his salary in Florida. Do you think that the Georgia creditor can garnish the wages in Georgia at the employer’s Georgia address, or can the debtor assert his Florida wage exemption because he is a Florida citizen?

Similarly, suppose the Florida debtor had lived previously in Georgia many years ago, and that when he Georgia he opened an annuity investment account at the Georgia office of a national finance company. Surely, Florida statutes exempting IRA from creditor levy would protect the debtor’s IRA account.

The Florida statutory exemptions will not protect the debtor in Georgia. The Georgia creditor can garnish his wages paid in Florida and his annuity to the extent either are not otherwise exempted under Georgia laws. There is a general rule of law that exemptions cannot be exported, so that most courts in other states will not recognize exemptions afforded to Florida residents. In other words, exemption laws have no extraterritorial effect.

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Asset protection planning deals mostly with civil money judgments. When it comes to family law, there are fewer asset protection options available to avoid awards of alimony and support of a former spouse. For example, judges in divorce cases can order an allocation of retirement accounts which are exempt from regular judgment creditors. The homestead exemption is the strongest asset protection tool, but does it work equally well in a family law context. A caller asked me whether a court can force the sale of a former spouse’s homestead property to pay court awarded child support or alimony.

There is at least one case which held that a spouse could force the sale of a homestead to enforce a support order. In that case, the court reasoned that the purpose of the homestead protection is to protect the debtor’s family, and that the debtor cannot hide behind the homestead shield to the detriment of those family members it was designed to protect.

More recent decisions have held that there is no alimony or support exemption to homestead protection. If the creditor spouse can demonstrate that the spouse who owns the homestead property acted fraudulently, reprehensibly, or egregiously to acquire or use the homestead exemption to avoid paying an alimony or support order then the court could impose an equitable lien on the homestead property. However, I think most courts will agree that a former spouse cannot force the sale of homestead to fund an alimony or support obligation.

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An annuity is broadly defined as a contractual right to a payment stream. A bankruptcy debtor sold his business in consideration for a cash down payment and a promissory note providing for the buyer's  minimum payments of $2,000 per month. The sales contract provided that the buyer's  monthly payments could increase if the buyer’s business revenue exceeded a certain amount. The seller subsequently filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy and claimed the buyer’s payment obligation as an exempt annuity pursuent to Sections 222.14 of the Florida Statutes.

The bankruptcy judge said the parties' promissory note is not an exempt annuity because it is a "promissory note." For the debtor to have exempted the buyer’s payments under the annuity exemption, the court stated, the buyer and seller must have intended to create an annuity contract. The court pointed out that the parties agreement is entitled "Promissory Note", that there is no reference to an annuity contract, that the buyer’s payment to debtor does not terminate upon the debtor’s death, and that the debtor is not identified in the sales agreement as a beneficiary of an annuity contract.

The court’s holding in this case is clearly correct; a debtor cannot take a self-described promissory note and call it an exempt annuity in bankruptcy court. But, the holding suggests asset protection planning opportunities for others. Sellers of businesses or real property could gain creditor protection of deferred sales income  by including in the  deferred payment provisions typical annuity features such as contingent death beneficiaries and payment termination after a certain number of years. The sales agreement could state that the buyer would pay the purchase price in the form of a cash down payment and a "private annuity contract" with typical annuity features. If the parties can demonstrate their intent to create an annuity contract rather than a promissory note for a fixed principal amount with interest this case suggests asset protection benefits. In re Holt, Case No. 08-bk-4288

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The state of Massachusetts is serious about collecting corporate income taxes. An owner of a bankrupt Massachusetts corporation learned about Massachusetts corporate tax collection when he tried to renew his Florida drivers’s license. At attorney wrote me an email about one of his clients who was a principal owner of a Massachusetts corporation doing business in that state. The business owed corporate taxes to the state. The client owner owed no personal taxes. The attorney’s client resides permanently in Florida.

Massachusetts law enables the state to suspend your driver’s license if you don’t pay state taxes. The law makes principal owners of a corporation liable for the corporation’s income tax. After this client’s corporation filed bankruptcy owing state corporate income tax the state of Massachusetts listed the individual principal on a national registry of corporate tax deadbeats. It turns out that Florida checks the national registry, and our state respects suspensions imposed by other states for tax liability. This unsuspecting owner of a failed Massachusetts business finds himself unable to drive in Florida or Massachusetts until he pays his bankrupt corporation’s state income tax.

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Effective asset protection planning requires anticipation of what creditors’ attorneys may and will do to collect their judgments. The best way to learn creditor attorney strategy is to ask them. My social relationships with creditor attorneys are very valuable to me professionally, as well as personally, because they give me the opportunity to learn about their methods.

I recently had a lunch with one of Orlando’s preeminent collection lawyers. We discussed collection practices and asset protection strategy, and I found some of his comments to be interesting. I asked him what was the most effective debt collection tool. His answer was, without hesitation: bank account garnishments. Bank garnishments, he explained, was the only way to capture a significant amount of a debtor’s cash quickly and without lengthy legal proceedings. Bank accounts are where the money is. Bank garnishments strike a surprise blow to debtors which freeze their funds and usually force them to settle the remaining debt.

I next asked him whether wage garnishments were effective assuming the debtor is not head of household. He said that garnishments were not a good collection tool. First, the creditor collects small amounts of money each month toward the judgment, and his clients are not interested in long-term payback. Next, he explained, that wage garnishments usually force debtors to file bankruptcy because debtors will not work for an indeterminate future for the benefit of creditors. Wage garnishment, he felt, usually backfire against his clients' debt collection.

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The Florida statutes exempt retirement pensions from creditor claims. Courts have protected pension distributions after they were deposited in financial accounts. This week a Florida resident with an English accent called me with asset protection questions. On of his assets is a pension from an English company which he earned while working for many years in England. He assumed that his English pension is safe from creditors. I told him I disagreed, and that I think his creditors could garnish the pension ( they may have to go to England to do so), or his creditors could levy upon pension payments after they were deposited in a U.S. checking account. Why is an English pension not a protected pension?

The Florida statutes do not include a blanket exemption of all pension and retirement accounts as they do for all annuities. The applicable statute exempts only those statutes authorized by a list of specific Internal Revenue Code sections. The list of Code sections applies to certain retirement plans which are tax deferred under the Code. The U.S. revenue law has no tax deferral provisions for retirement plans established in other countries under their own tax laws. Pension plans set up pursuant to England’s tax law are not referred to in Florida’s laws, and therefore, this caller’s English pension and the payments therefrom are not exempt in Florida.

posted by Jonathan Alper, asset protection and bankruptcy attorney, Orlando, Florida

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An attorney asked me for my opinion about his debtor client who was put on the legal title to his parents’ house. His mother and father added the client, their only son, to their homestead deed as a joint tenant with rights of survivorship for estate planning purposes. When both parents die the title automatically passes to the surviving son. (Title would vest in the son anyway under Florida’s homestead laws without the son being on title.). The parents paid off the mortgage. The son never paid any money toward the purchase or maintenance of the parent’s house. The son does not live in the house with his parents. One of the son’s creditors got a civil judgment against him. The attorney wants to know if the son’s creditors can levy upon the son’s interest in the house and force a sale of the home.

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A client asked me two homestead questions which questions I have previously heard from other clients or email inquiries. This client owned a homestead with significant equity within a municipality. Homestead properties within a city up to ½ acre in lot size are protected under the Florida Constitution. The client said he intended to buy a ½ acre lot adjoining this existing homestead as an investment, and he wanted to know if the lot would be protected from creditors. My opinion is that the lot purchase would jeopardize the homestead protection of his existing house. Homestead includes the property upon which your residence is located as well as all contiguous land. If the client purchased the adjoining lot and took title in his own name the adjoining lot would be incorporated into his homestead and the size of his entire homestead would increase from ½ acre to a full acre. Thereafter, only 50% of the total homestead would be protected within the city limits. The client could not apportion protection to the original lot on which the house is situated. The purchase of the contiguous lot in his own name would forfeit protection of 50% of his house value. A better strategy would be to form a limited liability company and have the LLC purchase the adjoining lot. Because the client does not personally own the new lot it would not add to the size of his homestead. Land owned by entities, as opposed to natural persons, cannot be homestead property. The LLC would give some, although imperfect, asset protection.

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I dealt with an interesting question today about alimony and support questions. Sometimes people ask me if there are asset protection tools to guard against awards for payment of alimony or support (generally, the answer is "no") or what types of assets are vulnerable to enforce family court judgments. Today's issue was different. A divorced woman was facing a large civil judgment. The divorce court awarded the woman alimony, and her ex-husband sent her monthly alimony checks. The woman depended upon the alimony to pay her basic costs of living. She wanted to know if a judgment creditor could garnish the alimony payments from the ex-husband.

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