I think I've mentioned it here on this forum, in more than one post, that ever since being caught off guard that fateful day in which Bank of America "Pearl Harbored" me, I've had to take the tedious task and visit the county court website listing active court cases in order to see action on my cases in real time. This is been an ongoing duty of committed vigilance every single week since that Dastardly Deed day.
This morning's visit saw the first activity in almost a year; a writ of garnishment brought forth to the court by Bank of America for wages from Ridge Area Arc. Of course as we know the joke's on them since I no longer work there, there are no wages to garnish.
Of course I knew the risk when I took the job that my creditors, the ones that are actually actively scanning my life, namely Bank of America, would find out about my employment and not hesitate to initiate garnishment. Wage garnishment is one of the most effective tools they have. Well, against normal people that is. I think by now they should have realized to what end I will go to deny them one more red cent.
It looks like from the documents on file that they have to present the court with payment of a fee each time they request the court's intervention in garnishment proceedings. But of course they are one of the richest banks in the world so I'm sure they don't mind. It just gives me a bit of a smile knowing that with every step they take, with every move they made, I'll be watching them. Watching them waste their money.
So of course I take glee that they'll not get one dime out of this action, but then I do worry about one simple thing. One of the tactics that I read about in doing research on all this creditor / debtor game is the creditor's use of personal contacts in order to gain information about their target debtor. To this measure I'm pretty insulated because of my isolation. They can ask every neighbor of mine, every family member of mine, every old friend of mine, if they can even find them, and what are they going to get? A whole lot of nothing. No one knows how much money I have, no one knows where I store it, no one knows anything because there's no one to know anything. #hermitlife.
But if this creditor does just a little bit of social networking now that they know my former employer, I worry that someone like Karen in finance or the new lady director of HR might innocently divulge to which bank my direct deposits were placed. I have a feeling a savvy person skilled in smooth talk would easily dupe these country bumpkin gals into letting this cat out of the bag even though, one would think, it should be none of their business to mention it. If Bank of America finds out about Heartland then it's back to, what, using only Ally Bank again?
The request of garnishment only applies to wages and hasn't yet been ruled on but we know it will be allowed by the court and we know that the creditor will reach out to my former job, they'll be informed I no longer work there, and informed of my bank account or not, they would have to petition the court for yet another garnishment (and pay yet another fee) to access those funds at Heartland Bank. So even in the worst case, that's another month down the road. But I guess I won't be playing chicken. I'll go ahead and move my savings from Ally Bank to Heartland and withdraw everything in cash.
I'll go back to the practice of depositing cash (like I did at South State) into the Heartland Bank bank account at the top of each month in order to spend it immediately on Amex payment, lot rent payment, and Duke Energy payment for minimum exposure.
And the vigilance shall go on. I'll visit the county court site diligently every week. And this will go on and on and on in this non-stop tug of war.
Then one day, as I've been saying for years now, I just may decide to lay down my spyglass and stop scanning the horizon, and go ahead and declare bankruptcy. But till that time, I remain at my sentry post as my price for freedom.