How to Garnish a Debtor's Account at a Financial Institution

The Garnishment Summons and Disclosure Form

First, you serve a Garnishment Summons and Disclosure Form upon the financial institution, along with a Notice, Instructions, and two copies of an Exemption Form. These documents work together: the summons commands the bank to freeze the debtor’s funds and disclose what it holds, and the notice and exemption forms tell the debtor how to claim any funds that are exempt from garnishment.

When the garnishment summons is used to attach funds a debtor who is a natural person holds on deposit at a financial institution, the creditor “shall serve with the garnishee summons a notice, instructions, and two copies of an exemption notice,” substantially in the forms prescribed by statute. Do not skip the exemption notice: failure to serve it “renders the garnishment void,” and the financial institution will take no action. Minn. Stat. § 571.911 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/571.911).

The requirements for the Garnishment Summons are set out in Minn. Stat. § 571.74. The statute provides that the garnishment summons and notice to debtor “must be substantially in the following form” and then sets out a model form you may copy and adapt. Minn. Stat. § 571.74 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/571.74).

The Disclosure Form is governed by Minn. Stat. § 571.75. Under subdivision 2, the garnishment disclosure forms and earnings disclosure worksheet “must be the same or substantially similar to the following forms,” which the statute then reproduces. The statute directs which form to use: if the garnishment affects the debtor’s earnings, the creditor uses the earnings garnishment disclosure form; if it affects any other indebtedness, money, or property, the creditor uses the nonearnings garnishment disclosure form. Minn. Stat. § 571.75, subd. 2 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/571.75).

The Important Notice, the Instructions, and the Exemption Form are governed by Minn. Stat. § 571.912, each of which must be “substantially in the following form.” You may copy these statutory templates. Minn. Stat. § 571.912 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/571.912).

One important update before you copy any of these forms: the Minnesota Legislature rewrote the statutory garnishment forms in 2025. The act modernized the garnishment summons and notice-to-debtor form (§ 571.74), the garnishee disclosure forms (§ 571.75, subd. 2), and the exemption-notice forms (§ 571.912) into plain-language versions implementing the Minnesota Debt Fairness Act, replacing the older legalistic language. 2025 Minn. Laws ch. 18, §§ 14-16 (approved May 8, 2025). Pull the current codified text directly from the revisor before reproducing any form: older form language found in secondary sources is superseded.

The Bank’s Retention

A garnishee served with a garnishment summons must retain the debtor’s funds, but may not hold “in excess of 110 percent of the amount claimed by the creditor in the garnishment summons.” Minn. Stat. § 571.73, subd. 1 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/571.73). Applied to a bank account, the financial institution retains as much of the amount owed to you as it has on deposit for the debtor, but not more than 110 percent of your claim. Minn. Stat. § 571.911 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/571.911).

Fair Debt Collection Warning

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act prohibits abusive, deceptive, and unfair tactics used to collect consumer debts. One point governs whether the Act applies to you at all: it regulates “debt collectors,” generally third parties who collect debts owed to another, such as collection agencies and debt-collection law firms. It does not, as a rule, apply to a creditor collecting its own debt in its own name. The statute expressly excludes from the term “debt collector” any officer or employee of a creditor collecting debts for that creditor in the creditor’s name. 15 U.S.C. § 1692a(6) (available at https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1692a).

If you are a debt collector, the Act requires the familiar disclosure (“This is an attempt to collect a debt. Any information obtained will be used for that purpose.”). That requirement is federal: a debt collector must disclose, in its initial written communication with the consumer (and in any initial oral communication), that it is attempting to collect a debt and that any information obtained will be used for that purpose, with a shorter “this communication is from a debt collector” notice in subsequent communications. 15 U.S.C. § 1692e(11) (available at https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1692e).

That disclosure language does not come from Minnesota’s collection-practices statute. Minn. Stat. § 332.37(12) contains no disclosure text of its own; it simply makes it a prohibited practice for a “collection agency, debt buyer, or collector” to “violate any of the provisions of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act of 1977, Public Law 95-109, while attempting to collect on any account, bill or other indebtedness.” Minn. Stat. § 332.37(12) (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/332.37). In other words, Minnesota incorporates the federal requirement by reference for collection agencies and debt buyers, rather than stating the mini-Miranda language itself.

Notice to the Debtor

You must mail to the debtor, at the debtor’s last known mailing address, a copy of the Garnishment Summons and copies of all other papers you served on the debtor’s bank, not later than five days after service is made on the bank. Service on the debtor is effective upon mailing. Minn. Stat. § 571.72, subd. 4 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/571.72).

You must also serve the debtor with a Notice to Debtor. The required font for the Notice to Debtor is at least 14-point: the statute directs that the notice to debtor “must be in no smaller than 14-point type.” Minn. Stat. § 571.74 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/571.74). That statute also contains the example notice-to-debtor language you may copy.

The debtor has 14 days to claim any exemption. A debtor who wants to claim exempt funds must complete and sign the exemption notice and deliver one copy to the financial institution and one copy to the creditor’s attorney (or to you directly if you are unrepresented) within 14 days of the postmark date on the mailed exemption notices. If no claim of exemption is received by the financial institution within that 14-day period, “the funds remain subject to the garnishment summons.” Minn. Stat. § 571.913 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/571.913).

To obtain the funds the bank is holding, you execute on the judgment by levy. The general route is a Writ of Execution and sheriff’s levy under chapter 550, which reaches funds a third party owes or holds for the judgment debtor, including funds a garnishee is retaining. Minn. Stat. § 550.135 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/550.135). For funds specifically being held by a garnishee under your garnishment summons, there is a more streamlined alternative: your attorney may execute directly on those funds under the attorney’s summary-execution procedure, after the debtor’s exemption period expires and capped at $10,000 per execution levy. Minn. Stat. § 551.041 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/551.041). Section 550.135, subd. 1, expressly cross-references this chapter 551 path, so consider it as the focused tool for collecting funds you have already frozen by garnishment.