Tens of thousands of Californians carry judgments from lawsuits they never knew existed — garnishments arriving as the first notice of a case “served” years earlier. The law’s answer is a set of vacatur statutes, and they work more often than people expect.
The main tool: CCP §473.5. When service of a summons did not result in actual notice in time to defend, the defendant may move to set aside the default and default judgment. The deadline is the earlier of two years after entry of judgment or 180 days after service of written notice that the judgment has been entered — so the clock demands speed once a levy or garnishment surfaces the case. The motion requires a declaration that the lack of notice wasn’t caused by your own avoidance of service, plus a proposed answer showing you have defenses.
The nuclear option: void judgments. A judgment entered without valid service at all is void, attackable under CCP §473(d) — and where the invalidity appears from the court’s own file, without the two-year limit. “Sewer service” — the process server’s proof claiming personal delivery at an address you’d left years earlier, or describing a person who doesn’t exist — is a documented industry pathology, and proofs of service can be contested with leases, utility records, and DMV history showing you lived elsewhere.
The discretionary route: CCP §473(b) relieves defaults taken through mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect, on a six-month clock — the tool when you were served but life intervened.
Why plaintiffs fold when these motions file: vacating the default resurrects the case — and with it, every defense that default suppressed: the §337 statute of limitations, chain-of-title failures under Civil Code §1788.60, identity errors. A debt buyer holding a 2019 default on a 2015 debt does not want a 2026 trial. Vacated cases settle or die.
The sequence when a mystery garnishment lands: get the case file from the court same-week; obtain the proof of service; gather your address history for the service date; move fast — the 180-day clock is running. The courts’ vacate-judgment self-help pages include the forms. A default is a verdict on your absence, not the facts. California lets you correct the absence.
Every letter, form, and deadline referenced above is packaged in the free kits at JusticePrompt.com. No credit card, no upsell — the documents and the law, ready to use.
The Hedge 