Information subpoena with restraining notice in New York: how to freeze a judgment debtor's bank account

An information subpoena under CPLR 5224 finds the judgment debtor's assets. A restraining notice under CPLR 5222 freezes them. In New York both can be issued by the judgment creditor's own attorney, as an officer of the court, without any application to a judge. That combination is why a New York money judgment is worth more than the same judgment in most other states, and it is why the two are almost always served together as a single mailing.

The instruments do different jobs. The information subpoena is discovery: written questions the recipient must answer in writing, under oath, within seven days of receipt. The restraining notice is a freeze: it carries the force of an injunction, and disobeying it is punishable as contempt of court. Neither one moves money into your hands by itself. They set up the execution that does.

What is an information subpoena?

An information subpoena is a set of written questions served on the judgment debtor, or on a third party who is likely to know something useful about the debtor's assets, asking where the money is. It is authorized by CPLR 5224 and it is served by registered or certified mail, return receipt requested. No court order is required.

Three requirements matter in practice. You must enclose a copy of the questions and a prepaid return envelope. The answers must be made in writing under oath, and where the recipient is a corporation, partnership or sole proprietorship, by an officer, director, agent or employee who actually has the information. And when the subpoena goes to a third party rather than to the debtor, it must carry a certification signed by the judgment creditor or the attorney stating that the subpoena complies with rule 5224 and that there is a reasonable belief the recipient has information that will assist in collecting the judgment.

Each question has to be answered separately and fully, and each answer has to refer back to the question it responds to. A recipient cannot lump everything into one paragraph and call it done.

What is a restraining notice?

A restraining notice is a document that forbids its recipient from moving property in which the judgment debtor has an interest. Under CPLR 5222(a) it may be issued by the clerk of the court, by the support collection unit, or by the attorney for the judgment creditor as an officer of the court. In ordinary commercial practice it is the third of those, which means there is no application, no appearance, and no judge reviewing anything before the freeze lands.

Served on a garnishee, typically a bank, the notice forbids any sale, assignment, transfer or interference with the debtor's property, and forbids paying over the debt to anyone other than the sheriff. A bank that receives one on a business account will normally restrain the balance immediately.

There is a ceiling. If a garnishee withholds money belonging to the debtor in an amount equal to twice the amount due on the judgment, the restraining notice stops being effective as to other property or money. So a $40,000 judgment does not entitle you to tie up an entire treasury account indefinitely; it entitles you to roughly $80,000 of exposure across what that garnishee holds.

How long does a restraining notice last?

It depends on who was served, and the difference is the single most practical thing to know about the instrument.

• Served on someone other than the judgment debtor, such as a bank, it is effective until one year after service, or until the judgment is satisfied or vacated, whichever comes first.
• Served on the judgment debtor itself, it remains in effect until the judgment is satisfied or vacated. There is no one year clock.

That asymmetry is why serving the debtor as well as the bank is worth the extra postage. The bank restraint expires and has to be renewed; the debtor restraint does not.

How to freeze a debtor's bank account in New York, step by step

1. Docket the judgment. You need an enforceable money judgment. Docketing it with the county clerk in a county where the debtor holds real property also creates a lien on that property for ten years.
2. Identify likely garnishees before you serve. A restraining notice is only as good as the bank it reaches. Look at the checks the debtor paid you with historically, the routing details on any ACH they sent, the bank named on their credit application, and any lien filings that name a secured lender.
3. Serve the information subpoena and the restraining notice together. This is standard New York practice: the same certified mailing carries the questions and the freeze, so the account is restrained while the answers are still being prepared rather than after the debtor has had a week's warning.
4. Serve the judgment debtor separately. Different duration, and it also puts the debtor personally on notice that moving money is contempt.
5. Wait out the seven days, then read the answers. A bank's response will normally confirm whether it holds an account, and what was restrained.
6. Convert the freeze into money. A restraining notice does not pay you. You need an execution under CPLR 5230 delivered to the sheriff or, in New York City, to a city marshal, who levies and turns the funds over. Where the property is held by a third party, a turnover proceeding under CPLR 5225 or 5227 does the same job by court order.

Do I have to answer an information subpoena?

Yes, if you are properly served. The answers are due within seven days of receipt, in writing and under oath. Ignoring one is not a passive act: CPLR 5251 makes refusal or wilful neglect to obey a subpoena or a restraining notice issued under article 52 punishable as a contempt of court.

From the creditor's side, that penalty is the leverage. A bank will not risk contempt over a customer's balance, which is why restraining notices work so reliably against institutional garnishees. A closely held debtor company sometimes gambles on silence, and the answer to that is a motion to compel and contempt, which tends to concentrate attention quickly.

Objections have to be timely. New York courts have held that failing to object promptly to the form of an information subpoena waives the objection, so a recipient who intends to fight the questions cannot sit on them and raise the point months later.

What happens after an information subpoena?

One of three things.

The answers identify an account and the restraint already caught it. You proceed to execution and the sheriff or marshal levies. This is the good outcome, and it is common when the debtor is an operating business that still needs its bank.

The answers identify assets that are not cash. Receivables owed to the debtor, equipment, an interest in another entity. Each has its own route: a restraining notice served on the debtor's own customer reaches the receivable, and a turnover proceeding reaches property a third party holds.

The answers come back empty. A debtor with no bank balance and no receivables is the hard case, and it is worth remembering how long New York gives you. Under CPLR 211(b) a money judgment is presumed paid only after twenty years from when you were first entitled to enforce it, and a commercial judgment accrues statutory interest at nine percent a year under CPLR 5004. A judgment that is uncollectible this quarter is not a judgment you should close the file on. Re serving an information subpoena annually costs very little and catches the debtor's next banking relationship.

What a business judgment debtor does not get

Most published material on New York restraining notices is written about individuals, and it describes the Exempt Income Protection Act procedure in CPLR 5222-a: the exemption notice, the claim form, the protected minimum balance, the special rules where wages or benefits were directly deposited.

None of that applies to a corporate or LLC judgment debtor. CPLR 5222-a is written throughout in terms of a natural person's account at a banking institution. A restrained business account gets no automatic exemption notice, no protected floor, and no claim procedure. The practical effect is that a restraining notice served on a company's operating account is a blunter and more effective instrument than the consumer guidance suggests.

If your judgment is against a natural person, including someone who signed a personal guarantee, the exemption machinery does apply and the analysis changes. Guarantor enforcement is worth handling separately from entity enforcement for exactly this reason.

What does this cost, and when is it worth it?

Information subpoenas and restraining notices are among the cheapest enforcement steps available anywhere in the United States. The hard costs are certified mail and the statutory fee per subpoena; the real cost is attorney time, and because no motion practice is involved it is usually measured in a fraction of an hour per garnishee rather than in hours.

The step that costs real money is the execution and levy, because the sheriff or marshal takes a poundage fee out of what is collected. That is a fee on success, which is the right shape.

Against that, weigh what the judgment is actually worth. Nine percent statutory interest on a commercial judgment is far above what the money would earn anywhere else, and twenty years is a long runway. The calculus that makes a $6,000 judgment not worth chasing in a weak enforcement state often flips in New York.

The cheaper version of all of this

Every step above exists because an invoice went unpaid long enough to become a lawsuit. The economics of that are unkind: by the time you hold a judgment you have spent filing fees, attorney time and eighteen months, and recovery rates on receivables past 180 days routinely fall below fifteen percent. Accounts worked consistently before 90 days recover at roughly seventy percent or better.

Two things prevent most of these files. The first is contract hygiene, covered in our guide to New York commercial debt collection laws: a stated late charge, an attorney fee clause, a defined due date. The second is credit work you do before you ship rather than after you are unpaid. Check that the entity you are invoicing is in good standing, ask for a credit application with the bank named on it, and where the job requires it, make sure you can confirm the insurance certificates you were promised are current rather than filed and forgotten. Both of those are the same discipline: know who you are extending credit to.

Then work the account on a schedule. A documented sequence of contacts at day 3, day 15, day 30 and day 60, sent in your own name so you stay the creditor of record, resolves the large majority of commercial delinquencies before anyone needs to think about a garnishee. Our walkthrough of collecting a judgment against a business covers the national enforcement picture, and small claims court for unpaid invoices covers the decision of whether to file in the first place.

This is information, not legal advice. Every rule cited above is identified by section so you can check it or hand it to your attorney.