Court attachment orders

All court attachment requests are sent directly to the Central Processing Unit for processing. Court attachments are administered via the CORBI screen in SWIFTT.

The Ministry of Justice has the authority to make attachment orders on benefits to meet outstanding court fines. The attachment order may include:

• court fines
  these are fines payable to the District Court
• civil attachments
  these are generally paid to a private individual or organisation that is owed money. Occasionally the District Court will act as a collection agent for civil debts.

Attachment Orders issued by the Ministry of Justice can be made under either the Summary Proceedings Act 1957 or the District Court Act 2016.

No attachment order can, whether on its own or when combined with any other attachment order, Child Support deduction, or Ministry of Social Development debt repayment, take a client's total income below the protected earnings rate. For more information see:

• Protected earnings rate

Court attachment orders do not take priority over any Child Support deductions, Ministry of Social Development deductions, Inland Revenue deductions or any attachment order made under the Family Proceedings Act. For more information see:

• Priority for deductions

The information that will be received from the Court, Ministry of Justice will have:

• the client's name
• the amount to be deducted from the benefit
• the fine's reference number

If a client is suffering undue hardship because of the amount of the attachment order then they should be directed to a Registrar of the District Court for a reassessment of the rate.

For more information see:

• Court request for information