An attachment of wages is made at the request of a creditor and can only be implemented following authorisation from a Justice of the Peace.
An attachment of wages may be based only on a judgment given by a court (Justice de Paix) which obliges the employer (the third-party addressee of the order) to retain a portion of the wages of an employee (the debtor subject to attachment) for it to be transferred to another person (the attaching creditor) who has an unpaid claim against the employee.
If an attachment of wages is carried out, notice of it is given to the employer by the Magistrates' Court (tribunal de paix).
The employer is then required, within 8 days, to send an affirmative statement to the court called upon to examine the merits of the attachment. By that statement, he confirms to the judge that the employee in question is indeed employed by him. If that is no longer the case, the employer must draw up a negative statement.
As soon as he receives notice of the attachment, the employer is required to make the legally prescribed deductions from wages, in order to enable the creditor to satisfy his rights.
However, he may only transfer funds to the creditor after the attachment is validated by the court, that is to say when it is definitively established by a judgment that the employee does indeed owe the sums claimed.