Your bank account was frozen by a restraining notice.

A CPLR 5222 restraining notice freezes your account with no judge signing anything. The creditor’s attorney issues it as an officer of the court. It binds your bank for up to one year, or until the judgment is satisfied or vacated, and stops reaching other money once the bank holds twice the amount then due.

Who froze my bank account, and did a judge sign anything?

A CPLR 5222 restraining notice is issued by the court clerk, by the judgment creditor’s attorney as an officer of the court, or by a support collection unit. No judge reviews it. No judge signs it. It is served on your bank, the garnishee, and the hold takes effect when the bank processes it.

The notice must specify all parties, the date and court of entry, the amount of the judgment and the amount then due, and the parties in whose favor and against whom it was entered. It must set out subdivision (b) in full, state that disobedience is punishable as a contempt of court, and carry the issuer’s signature.

Service is personal, in the manner of a summons, by registered or certified mail with return receipt requested, or by electronic means under CPLR 5222(g). One target is off limits: it may not be served on a judgment debtor’s employer where the property sought is wages or salary. The freeze is also not always total; subdivisions (h) and (i) can void it on a natural person’s account.

Law: CPLR 5222(a), (g).

How long does the freeze last, and how much money stays frozen?

CPLR 5222(b) forbids the person served to sell, assign, transfer, or interfere with property in which the judgment debtor has an interest, or to pay over such a debt, until one year after service, or until the judgment is satisfied or vacated, whichever first occurs. A court order or the sheriff’s direction ends it sooner.

There is a ceiling. If a garnishee withholds money belonging or owed to the judgment debtor equal to twice the amount due on the judgment, the notice is not effective as to other property or money. The measure is twice the amount then due, interest and costs included, not twice the face of the judgment. Where two hundred thousand is due, the notice supports a hold of four hundred thousand, and a second account holding fifty thousand more sits outside it.

The fix for over-holding is not self-executing. A bank will not release on your arithmetic alone. Release comes from the creditor’s written direction, a court order, or expiration. Put the numbers in writing, then move under CPLR 5240 if the money stays held.

CPLR 5222(c) limits repetition. Leave of court is required to serve more than one restraining notice on the same person for the same judgment, and a creditor may not serve more than two per year on a natural person’s banking institution account.

The damages provision points at the creditor, not the bank. A creditor that specified property or a debt in the notice is liable to the owner, if other than the judgment debtor, for damages sustained by reason of the restraint. That matters when a joint account is swept in.

One year is the outside time. Twice the amount then due is the outside amount. Past either line the notice stops working, but nothing returns on its own: the creditor can seek leave to serve again, or levy.

Law: CPLR 5222(b), (c).

Does CPLR 5222-a protect my company’s operating account?

CPLR 5222-a applies to a restraining notice affecting a natural person’s account at a banking institution. A corporation, a limited liability company, and a partnership are not natural persons. The exemption notice, the two exemption claim forms, and the twenty-day claim procedure do not attach to a business entity’s operating account.

The guaranty usually decides which side of that line you are on. A judgment against the operating company alone leaves the frozen account an entity account, and CPLR 5222-a is unavailable. A guaranty that put the judgment in your own name makes your accounts natural person accounts. Read guaranty and judgment together first.

What must the bank send me, and how fast must I answer?

Under CPLR 5222-a, the issuer serves the banking institution with the restraining notice, a copy of it, an exemption notice, and two exemption claim forms. The bank has two business days after receipt to serve those documents on the judgment debtor at the last known address. One completed form goes back to each listed address.

• Creditor to bank. Restraining notice, copy, exemption notice, two claim forms.
• Bank to you: two business days after receipt, at your last known address.
• You: twenty days from the postmark on the correspondence containing the notice and forms. Sign under penalty of perjury, attach award letters, check stubs and two months of records, and serve one form on the bank and one on the creditor’s attorney.
• Release if nobody objects. The bank releases the funds eight days after the postmark on the envelope containing your executed form, unless the creditor objects.
• Mixed accounts. Where an account holds exempt funds and funds from unknown sources, the creditor applies the lowest intermediate balance principle and, within seven days of that postmark, instructs the bank to release the exempt money. Failing to is bad faith under the statute.
• If the creditor objects. It moves under CPLR 5240 within eight days of the postmark, and the hearing is noticed for seven days after service. Your form is prima facie evidence of exemption, and the court rules within five days of the hearing.
• If you miss the window. With no claim at the bank within twenty-five days of mailing, the funds stay restrained. That waives no exemption; you argue it by motion.

I read the envelope the exemption notice arrived in before I read the claim form, because the postmark starts the twenty days. I ask the bank for its hold record before I ask anyone what the balance was supposed to be.

Law: CPLR 5222-a(a), (b), (c), (d), (g).

Which money is exempt under CPLR 5205?

CPLR 5205 exempts categories of personal property and income from application to a money judgment. The exemption that matters most to an individual debtor is ninety percent of earnings for personal services rendered within sixty days before, and at any time after, an income execution is delivered to the sheriff.

It is not absolute. The CPLR 5205(d) categories are exempt except as to any part a court determines unnecessary for the reasonable requirements of the debtor and dependents. Support enforcement runs on its own track: CPLR 5241 and 5242 reach far more of your income.

Two floors sit inside CPLR 5222 and work without any claim form. Under subdivision (h), where direct deposits or electronic payments reasonably identifiable as statutorily exempt payments, as defined in CPLR 5205(l)(2), reached the account in the forty-five day period preceding service, the bank may not restrain the protected amount, and an account holding no more than that is not restrained at all. That subdivision does not limit a bank’s duty to restrain where 42 U.S.C. 659, 38 U.S.C. 5301, or a court order requires it.

Under subdivision (i), the floor is ninety percent of two hundred forty times the greater of the federal or the state minimum hourly wage. An account holding that or less is not restrained and the notice is deemed void, except as to funds a court finds unnecessary for the debtor’s reasonable requirements. Both figures move. Confirm the current numbers before you argue them.

Trust property is separate: CPLR 5205(c) covers trust principal, CPLR 5205(d)(1) payments from a trust whose principal is exempt.

Every one of these exemptions is built around a human being with living expenses, and each has a court-review valve inside it.

Law: CPLR 5205(c), (d)(1), (d)(2); CPLR 5222(h), (i); CPLR 5241, 5242.

Does the restraining notice give the creditor priority over my own bank?

A restraining notice is a type of injunction on the person served. It does not hand the money to the creditor, and it does not put the creditor ahead of the bank holding the account. Where the depositor owes that bank on a preexisting obligation, Debtor and Creditor Law section 151 gives the bank a superior right of setoff.

The rule comes from a case where a bank, already served with a restraining notice, applied the balance against a matured note the depositor owed it. The Court of Appeals held that section 151 covers the field on a garnishee’s right of setoff as against the article 52 devices, and that the setoff may be exercised after enforcement has begun. There is a boundary: it reaches preexisting obligations, not later advances.

Apply that. If your credit line is at the bank holding the frozen account and the note has matured or been accelerated, the bank may take the balance for itself. Check maturity and default terms first.

Case: Aspen Indus. v Marine Midland Bank, 52 N.Y.2d 575 (1981). Law: Debtor and Creditor Law 151.

Can a New York restraining notice reach my account at a foreign branch?

Service of a restraining notice on a garnishee bank’s New York branch is ineffective to freeze assets held in the bank’s foreign branches. Answering a certified question in 2014, the Court of Appeals confirmed that the separate entity rule remains in force for post-judgment enforcement under article 52. Each foreign branch is treated as its own entity.

The consequence is narrow. A restraint served in Manhattan does not lock a deposit in a foreign branch of the same bank. The decision addresses foreign branches, so do not assume it covers another domestic branch. It also limits one device only: a court with jurisdiction over the debtor can still order turnover of property held abroad.

Case: Motorola Credit Corp. v Standard Chartered Bank, 24 N.Y.3d 149 (2014). Law: CPLR 5225(a).

What relief can a court actually give, and when is it too late?

CPLR 5240 lets a court, at any time, on its own initiative or on the motion of any interested person, make an order denying, limiting, conditioning, regulating, extending, or modifying the use of any enforcement procedure. That is the motion that can free an entity account where the hold is excessive or aimed at the wrong funds.

The power is broad and discretionary, so no result is promised. Timing is harder. The Court of Appeals held that while CPLR 5240 vests broad discretion to prevent abuse of the article 52 procedures, it furnishes no grounds for relief once those procedures have been carried out in accordance with law. There the debtors moved after the execution sale of their home was complete. Too late.

One more provision belongs in front of you tonight. Refusal or willful neglect to obey a restraining notice issued under article 52 is punishable as a contempt of court under CPLR 5251. Sweeping receipts into a fresh account, or running payments around the hold, converts a collection problem into a contempt problem.

Case: Guardian Loan Co. v Early, 47 N.Y.2d 515 (1979). Law: CPLR 5240; CPLR 5251.

What should you do in the next seventy-two hours?

The first moves on a frozen account are documentary, and can be made before anyone files anything. Identify who the judgment runs against, what the amount then due is, how much the bank is actually holding, and whether the account is titled to a natural person or an entity. Those four facts drive everything else.

• Get the restraining notice itself, not a summary, and test it against CPLR 5222(a).
• Compute twice the amount then due and compare it to what the bank holds across all accounts.
• Calendar the one-year date from service. A second notice needs leave of court.
• If the account is in your own name, calendar twenty days from the postmark, complete both forms, attach the proof, and serve one on the bank, one on the creditor’s attorney.
• Pull the guaranty and confirm whether the judgment runs against you personally or only the company. That drives whether CPLR 5222-a applies.
• Pull the note or credit line with the same bank and check for a matured obligation that could trigger a setoff ahead of the creditor.
• Check how the judgment was entered. A default, or entry on defective service, can support a motion to vacate, which attacks the restraint at the root.
• Move nothing. Payroll, vendor payments, affiliate transfers. CPLR 5251 makes disobedience contempt.

A restraining notice is fast and cheap for the creditor, not unanswerable. It has a time limit, an amount limit, a repetition limit, a territorial limit, and a priority problem against the bank’s own claims. File on the limit your facts fall inside.