Why This Fight Is Not Just About Us
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Our names are on the account and the pleadings, but the issues at stake belong to every small business owner.
Most states—including Texas—have laws that say foreign judgments must be domesticated before local enforcement tools like garnishment or levy are used. Many have detailed exemption and notice rules designed to keep owners from being wiped out without a chance to be heard. New York has passed reforms aimed at curbing abusive use of confessions of judgment and protecting out‑of‑state businesses from being dragged into its courts and drained without a fair shot.
But laws on paper do nothing if:
Banks choose to honor out‑of‑state orders without checking domestication or local protections.
Collectors know they can get a default judgment in a distant court and count on national banks to enforce it mechanically.
Owners don’t know what questions to ask, what documents to demand, or where to turn when their accounts are emptied overnight.
Amy and I are convinced that what happened to us is not unique. It is simply one of the first times all of the pieces—bank letters, court documents, emails with bank counsel, regulator complaints—are being dragged into the light in one place.
A Cry for Help—from and for Small Businesses
This post is a cry for help, but not just for our family.
It is for the owner who wakes up to a frozen payroll account the week before Christmas.
It is for the contractor who never saw the lawsuit papers, but suddenly can’t buy materials.
It is for the independent shop whose local branch manager shrugs and says, “We had a court order, there’s nothing we can do,” even when the judgment was never domesticated and the law says otherwise.
We need:
Owners to share their stories—letters, screenshots, timelines—so patterns can’t be dismissed as “one‑offs.”
Lawyers to look harder at domestication, jurisdiction, and bank‑policy angles in these cases, not just the underlying debt.
Regulators and state officials to treat out‑of‑state judgment enforcement and bank garnishment practices as a systemic issue, not a paperwork glitch.
Amy and I are doing everything we can: litigating in Texas, challenging the New York judgment, documenting every step, and pushing information to the CFPB, OCC, FDIC, and state leaders. But we cannot turn this tide alone.
How You Can Stand With Us
If this resonates with you—as an owner, a lawyer, a policymaker, or just someone who believes in basic fairness—here’s what you can do:
Share this post with other small business owners and trade groups.
Tell your own story through our contact form so we can connect dots across states.
Support our case and documentation work if you’re able, so we can keep fighting and keep publishing what we learn.
Ask your own bank and your own representatives hard questions about how out‑of‑state judgments and “legal order debits” are being handled.
This fight started with our family, but it cannot end there. Every time a small business account is wiped out by a judgment the owner never saw, confidence in the system erodes a little more. Together, we can insist on something better: laws that are enforced, banks that respect those laws, and owners who are no longer blindsided in the dark.
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