§ 8.01-516.1.Garnishment dispositions.

Garnishment cases resolve in a handful of predictable ways, and Section 8.01-516.1 lays out two of the most common: the clean admission and the voluntary drop.

When the garnishee does not dispute how much it owes, admitting liability either at the return-date examination or through a written statement filed under § 8.01-515, the court does not need to enter judgment against the garnishee at all. It orders the garnishee to deliver the property or pay the value into court. That is a meaningful distinction — the garnishee is treated as a cooperative stakeholder, not an adjudicated debtor, unless it then misses the thirty-day deadline to comply, at which point judgment can follow.

The other track handles cases the creditor no longer wants to pursue, because the debt was paid, or for any other reason the creditor cites. On the creditor’s, or the creditor’s employee’s or attorney’s, certification, the court or clerk issues a written order telling the garnishee to stop withholding and to treat any funds already withheld as though the garnishment never happened, and the court dismisses the action by the return date. That returns the debtor’s money into circulation without a drawn-out unwind process.