We Like Accountants, Too

Tax season is here.  If you have friends in the accounting business, chances are you have seen very little of them since January 1.  In fact, there is a good chance that you haven't seen them at all.

In any event, accountants are an overlooked breed.  We've got a stereotype of the accountant that gives the impression that they are un-lively, un-fun and consumed by the numbers that seem to rule their world.  We make jokes about the accountant personality and...well, you get the idea.

But accountants are guardians of our very being.  Say what you want, but our money rules our lives.  It buys our food, pays for our homes and puts gas in our cars.  It is literally the solvent that makes all things go.  Accountants are the caretakers of our money, the soothsayers who can tell us what money will do with time, the keepers of our fortunes (however great or minute they may be).

Accountants know our secrets.  They know how much we make, where we put it and they know what we do with it better than we do, in most instances.

Our relationships with these oracles of our commerce is so important that the law protects our communications with them.  Just like that attorney-client privilege you talk about with me every time you want to tell me about something you've done or that might hurt your case, Florida recognizes a specific accountant-client privilege that attaches to most communications between you and your numbers cruncher.

What do you know about that?  The federal system doesn't even do that (at least not expressly).  Florida understands that there must and should be a free flow of information between an accountant and his client.

And- just like lawyers- it doesn't have to be an accountant you hire and pay lots of money to.  There is no admission fee.  Even if you speak with an accountant once about how to handle the tax implications of your inheritance from Aunt Tilly and do not hire her because you didn't like her take on things, Ms. Accountant is not able to divulge the contents of your communication to anyone.

Now, before all of you tax fraudsters and Ponzi schemers out there get excited, please note that there is a crime-fraud exception to the privilege.  Meaning that an accountant can be compelled to divulge the contents of communications had with a client who, say, asked the accountant where to hide a large pile of cash stolen from investors.

But you would never do such a thing.  No.

With Just A Little Garnish

Happy Friday, all.  Today, I have garnishment on the brain (if for no other reason than I have a lot of cases right now that involve garnishments).  For those of you unfamiliar with what I am talking about, garnishment is a procedure whereby the party who holds a judgment seeks out people and entities that might be holding property or money that belongs to the judgment debtor as part of the effort to collect the judgment.

The most common scenario involves banks.  A gets a judgment against B.  A now has to figure out how to collect that judgment (nope, it doesn't just happen automatically- and we can discuss that on another day).  There are a lot of tools intended to aid the judgment creditor in recovering his or her judgment.  One of them is the garnishment procedure.  A learns that B has a bank account at First National Bank.  A applies to the Court for a writ of garnishment against First National Bank.  First National Bank has five days to identify whether it holds "any debt due to defendant by a third person or any debt not evidenced by a negotiable instrument that will become due absolutely through the passage of time only to the defendant by a third person, and any tangible or intangible personal property of defendant in the possession or control of a third person."  When it discloses it has the account, A will have the funds from the account turned over to him to satisfy the judgment (or part of it, if the funds are insufficient).


Garnishment is not limited to just banks.  A writ of garnishment can be issued to anyone the judgment creditor believes might owe the judgment debtor money or be holding his or her property.  If your cousin, Joe, owes you $1000 from the football pool you just won, it can be garnished.  If the debtor knew that the judgment was coming and decided to take his motorcycle to his parents home and hide it there, it can be garnished through the parents.


You may remember a few months back, I was explaining that there were many reasons not to just walk away from a mortgage you were having trouble with.  This is one of them.  Because the bank can come and find you if you don't pay the mortgage and garnish your account to pay for any part of the mortgage it is unable to recover in a foreclosure sale, you should try to work with your bank to renegotiate the debt.


In any event, have a great weekend.