Your bank account is frozen. What a restraining notice is, and what to do first.

A restraining notice is a document that a judgment creditor’s attorney serves directly on your bank. No judge signs it. It freezes your account up to twice the amount owed on the judgment. Your first three moves are to identify the judgment, test whether it can be vacated, and file the exemption claim form.

What is a restraining notice, and why did no judge sign it?

A restraining notice is the enforcement device in CPLR 5222. It is issued by the clerk of the court, by the judgment creditor’s attorney as an officer of the court, or by a support collection unit. No further court order is required. Once served on your bank, the restraining notice forbids the bank from releasing your money.

The notice must name every party, the date of the judgment, the court where it was entered, and the amount then due, and must warn that disobedience is contempt. The bank may not release your money to anyone but the sheriff or a support collection unit, and then only on the sheriff’s direction or court order.

The duration is not symmetrical. As to you, the restraint runs until the judgment is satisfied or vacated. As to the bank, it expires one year after service, or on satisfaction or vacatur.

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

How much money can the bank freeze on a restraining notice?

A restraining notice reaches your property up to twice the amount due on the judgment. CPLR 5222(b) provides that once a garnishee withholds an amount equal to twice the amount due, the restraining notice is not effective as to other property or money. A ten thousand dollar judgment can freeze twenty thousand dollars.

That multiplier is a cushion for accruing interest and costs. The reach also runs forward. CPLR 5222(b) subjects to the notice property the bank holds at service and property arriving afterward, for the year the notice binds the bank. Next week’s deposit is caught too.

Repetition is limited. Leave of court is required to serve more than one restraining notice for the same judgment, and no more than two per year may go to a natural person’s bank account. A notice served on a bank’s New York branch does not freeze assets in its foreign branches. That is the separate entity rule.

Law: CPLR 5222(b), (c); Motorola Credit Corp. v. Standard Chartered Bank, 24 N.Y.3d 149 (2014).

Is the money gone, or only frozen?

Frozen, not gone. A restraining notice under CPLR 5222 stops movement. It does not transfer a single dollar to the judgment creditor. To collect, the creditor must levy by execution through a sheriff under CPLR 5232, or bring a turnover proceeding under CPLR 5225(b). Neither has happened yet.

A levy has a clock, but do not count on it. Under CPLR 5232(a) the levy goes void ninety days after service, except as to property already paid to the sheriff, property for which the creditor has commenced a proceeding under CPLR 5225 or 5227, and where the court extends the time.

The restraining notice freezes. It does not take. Between those two acts there is a window, and everything useful you can do about this happens inside it.

Law: CPLR 5222; CPLR 5225(b); CPLR 5232(a).

How did the judgment creditor find my bank account?

Most often through an information subpoena under CPLR 5224. An information subpoena is a set of written questions served on someone who may know where your assets are, including a bank. The judgment creditor’s attorney serves it, by registered or certified mail, return receipt requested. Answers are required in writing, under oath, within seven days after receipt.

The underlying power is CPLR 5223. Before the judgment is satisfied or vacated, the creditor may subpoena any person for matter relevant to satisfying it. Nothing requires anyone to tell you. For most people the first notice is a declined transaction.

Law: CPLR 5223; CPLR 5224(a)(3); CPLR 2308(b).

What money is exempt from a restraining notice in New York?

New York protects a floor in every bank account, plus specific categories of income. Under CPLR 5222(i) and CPLR 5232(e), a restraining notice does not apply to an amount equal to the greater of 240 times the federal or 240 times the state minimum hourly wage. Benefits and earnings are separately exempt.

The floors are computed differently, so do not assume the bank applied the right one. Where the balance is low enough the notice fails entirely: it is void under CPLR 5222(h) if the account holds no more than the adjusted amount and received qualifying deposits, and under CPLR 5222(i) if it holds no more than ninety percent of the 240 times figure.

One carve-out matters. Subdivisions (h), (i), and (j) do not apply where the creditor is the State of New York or a municipal corporation, or where the judgment enforces support, maintenance, or alimony.

Law: CPLR 5222(e), (h), (i), (k); CPLR 5232(e); CPLR 5205(c), (d)(2), (l); 31 CFR Part 212.

How do I claim an exemption on a frozen bank account?

You claim an exemption on the exemption claim form the bank is required to supply. CPLR 5222-a obligates the judgment creditor to serve the bank with the restraining notice, a copy of the restraining notice, an exemption notice, and two exemption claim forms. If the creditor failed to serve all four, the restraining notice is void.

1. The bank forwards the packet. Within two business days of receiving the notice and forms, the bank mails them to your last known address.
2. You have twenty days. Count from the postmark, not from the day you opened the envelope. Complete both forms and sign under penalty of perjury.
3. You serve two copies. One on the bank. One on the creditor’s attorney, or on the creditor if there is no attorney.
4. Attach the proof. Benefit award letters, pension statements, pay records.
5. The creditor has eight days to object. Measured from the postmark on your form. Absent objection, the bank releases the funds.
6. If the creditor objects. The bank holds the funds claimed exempt for twenty-one days unless the court orders otherwise, and a judge decides it.

Silence is a decision. If no exemption claim form reaches the bank, the funds remain restrained. Where the court finds the creditor disputed the claim in bad faith, the judgment debtor is awarded costs, reasonable attorney fees, actual damages, and up to one thousand dollars.

Law: CPLR 5222-a.

Does the exemption process protect my company’s operating account?

No. CPLR 5222-a is written for a natural person’s account. The exemption notice, the two exemption claim forms, the two business day forwarding rule, and the twenty day claim window all run to an account held by a natural person. A corporate or limited liability company operating account does not get that machinery.

The reason is structural. The exemptions in CPLR 5205 are personal, and a limited liability company does not draw a paycheck. Where the judgment names your company and the account is the company’s, the claim form is not your tool, though the CPLR 5239 and 5240 proceedings below stay open. If the judgment names you individually and the account is yours, the full process is available.

Check which name is on the judgment and which name is on the account. They are not always the same, and the difference decides which statute helps you.

Can the judgment behind the restraining notice be vacated?

Often yes, where the judgment was entered on default. New York gives a defaulting defendant two distinct routes, CPLR 5015(a)(1) and CPLR 317, with different burdens and different deadlines. A judgment entered by a court that lacked jurisdiction over you is attackable under CPLR 5015(a)(4), which carries no deadline in the statute.

Consider a common fact pattern. Service on a corporation or a limited liability company is regularly made by delivery to the Secretary of State. If the company moved and never updated the address on file, the papers went to an abandoned address and nobody saw the summons. The Court of Appeals has held that such service is not personal delivery under CPLR 317, so a defendant proceeding under that section need not show a reasonable excuse.

Two qualifications. Relief under CPLR 317 is discretionary, and courts deny it where the failure to receive the summons was a deliberate attempt to avoid notice. The CPLR 5015(a)(4) route can be forfeited, because a defendant who appears and litigates the merits waives the jurisdictional objection.

Vacate the judgment and the restraining notice dies with it, because CPLR 5222(b) restrains only until the judgment is satisfied or vacated.

Law: CPLR 5015(a); CPLR 317; Eugene Di Lorenzo, Inc. v. A.C. Dutton Lbr. Co., 67 N.Y.2d 138 (1986).

What if the bank froze money it was not allowed to freeze?

Your remedy runs through Article 52 of the CPLR, not through a separate lawsuit against the bank. In Cruz v. TD Bank, N.A., the Court of Appeals held that a private right to bring a plenary action for damages and injunctive relief cannot be implied from the Exempt Income Protection Act. Relief comes in an Article 52 special proceeding.

CPLR 5239 is the proceeding to determine adverse claims to restrained property. Any interested person may commence it before the property is applied to the judgment. The court may vacate the execution, void the levy, direct the disposition of the property, and award damages.

CPLR 5240 is shorter and broader. The court may at any time, on the motion of any interested person, make an order denying, limiting, conditioning, regulating, extending, or modifying any enforcement procedure. Use it when a restraint is regular but oppressive. CPLR 5222(j) separately bars a bank from charging you a fee where it could not lawfully restrain the account.

Law: CPLR 5239; CPLR 5240; CPLR 5222(j); Cruz v. TD Bank, N.A., 22 N.Y.3d 61 (2013).

What should you do first?

Two clocks matter, and only one is certainly running. The twenty day exemption window under CPLR 5222-a runs from the postmark on the bank’s envelope. The one year window under CPLR 5015(a)(1) does not start until the judgment with written notice of entry is served on you, which in a default case often never happened.

• Get the restraining notice and identify the judgment. Ask the bank for the notice, the exemption notice, and the two claim forms. It names the court, the parties, the judgment date, and the amount. Then get the judgment from that clerk.
• Calculate your dates. The postmark on the bank’s envelope, plus twenty days. Then find out whether anyone ever served you with the judgment and written notice of its entry.
• Answer one question first: were you ever actually served? If the summons went through the Secretary of State to an address your company left years ago, CPLR 317 is your likely route.
• Check whose name is on the account. A judgment against your company alone does not reach an account in your own name. A guaranty changes that.
• Stop depositing into the restrained account. Money arriving after service is caught by the same notice.
• Do not move the restrained money. The notice forbids you to transfer or interfere with the property, and disobedience is contempt.
• File the exemption claim form even if you also intend to move to vacate. The tracks are independent. The form protects the money now. The motion attacks the judgment behind it.

The freeze feels final. It is not. The restraint, the exemption, and the judgment behind them are each reviewable by a court.