Protections from common collection tools

The most common ways creditors try to collect on judges are garnishing wages, garnishing bank accounts, and placing a lien on property.

Wage protections

The law automatically protects $675 each week from your wages.  

This means:

• If you make $675 or less a week, the law will protect the full amount.  
• If you make more than $675 a week, the law protects at least 85% of your wages from collections.  

Bank account protections

When a creditor sends as Citation to Discover Assets to your bank, the bank will freeze the money in your account over $1,000. This means that you'll still have access to $1,000 to pay for necessities like rent, food, and medicine.  

Some money from your bank account may be automatically protected from collections, like:

• Public benefits, such as Social Security, unemployment, public assistance, veterans benefits, and disability benefits.
• Support payments needed to cover the basics, like alimony and child support.
• Certain insurance and compensation payments, including many life insurance/annuity benefits for a spouse or dependent, and personal injury payments up to $22,500.
• Money in Illinois 529 college savings and ABLE accounts. 

You can protect up to $4,000 of money in your bank account. You need to go to the hearing for the Citation to Discover Assets and ask the judge to use your wild card exemption to protect the money. 

Liens

Creditors may place a lien on your house. This does not mean that you lose your house. With a lien, you will have to repay the debt before you sell or refinance.  It is extremely rare for a creditor to force you to sell your home.  

👉 Learn more about what it means to have a lien.

Protections from rarely used collection tools

Forcing the sale of your car

This is extremely rare for unsecured debt. Even if they do, the law protects $3,600 of equity that you have in one car, plus however much of your $4,000 wildcard you want to apply to your car equity. 

To find the equity of your car:

• Look up your car’s value, and
• Subtract the amount you still owe on your car

Forcing the sale of your home

It is extremely rare for a creditor to force the sale of your home. Even if they do, the law protects some of the equity in your home:

• $50,000 if you own your house by yourself, and
• $100,000 if you own your house with someone else who also lives there. 

Forcing the sale of other items in your home

This very rarely happens, unless you have something worth over $5,000, like jewelry, art, antiques, or electronic equipment.

Forcing the sale of things you use for work

This very rarely happens, unless you own valuable tools or equipment. Even so, the law protects up $2,250 of your work equipment.