Question about employer and garnishments (long)
Last year I was promoted to a salaried position with the company I work for. I was paying child support through a court order every week since I began my employment there for several years. When I went to salary my pay changed bi-weekly rather than weekly. My first check as a salaried employee I noticed they did not double up on my child support. They had only paid the weekly amount.
The first check I blew it off as the system not catching it. The next check came and it was the same. So I e-mailed a friend I know who worked in the corporate office where they handle all pay, benefits etc.. I told her what was happening and to see if she was able to direct me to the person I need to get it corrected.
The 3rd and 4th check came and the issue was still the same. Almost 2 weeks later my HR manager had called me to the office. He started telling me about the problem with the system for the court ordered child support. He then told me that they were going to double up on the child support so that it would get caught up. On top of the $400 /bi-wkly support order they were going to add $400 more on top of that til it was caught up. I was $800 behind at the time.
I was not happy with them takiing that much more out of my check. I had contacted the Payroll Manager and tried explaining to him that this was abit harsh and $400 on top of my court ordered $400 bi-wkly would put me in a financial bind. He told me that the whole court ordered was something they could not change and how they were required by law to follow the court order. After that I dropped it and took the extra deduction on top of my court ordered support.
This year I got my W-2's and filed my taxes. Two weeks later I got a letter from the IRS stating that my refund was going to be sent to Delaware Health & Social Services. I immediately got on the phone with DHSS and asked for a print out on the payments that were made over the last 2 years. When I received the statements I had noticed that the extra payments on top of my ordered support did not show up. I e-mailed the pay roll manager and informed him of this. He sent me a print out showing all payments made for my court order.
The statement was in a monthly order, other than the extra monies taken from me. It looked like they were thrown in there. All this happenned in June and July '07 and the extra deductions were in between March and April. He told me he will look into why it was not showing up on my DHSS statement.
2 days later I get an e-mail from him showing that they took the extra money and sent it directly to my ex-wife. He said he would send a copy of the payment made to her from my employer to DHSS and they should reimburse me the difference. I called DHSS and they told me without a court order there is nothing they could do as far as showing that $800 was paid to her. I was told I will need to goto Family Court to get this resolved.
I sent a reply to the payroll manager and told him what DHSS told me. I also asked him out of curiosity how did they make a mistake and send my ex-wife the money rather than sending it to DHSS like they been doing. Waited 2 days and di not get a reply. So today I sent him another one asking the same thing. He informed me that my ex-wife had called during that time my payments were not correct and talked to the CEO of operations. The CEO of operations told them to send her the money to make it right.
Now here I am again with another $800 lost. Is it legal for an employer to do this? They took money from me out of my pay and sent it directly to her bypassing the court order. Now, as it looks in order to get my money back I have to go through the Family Court system to get this fixed. I did not think it was legal for an employer to garnish money without a court order. If anyone here can help me with this it would be greatly appreciated. I do not know what to do next.
Was thinking about taking all the e-mails I have over this and forwarding them to the owner of the company and ask him if he thinks it is ok to take money from someones wages if there ex-spouse calls. Please tell me what I should do next. Thanks in advance. Sorry for the long post as well.
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