Can a creditor garnish a bank account I hold jointly with my spouse in Ontario?

A judgment creditor can generally attempt to garnish a bank account held jointly by a debtor and their spouse, but doing so is more complicated than garnishing an account in the debtor's name alone. Garnishment targets money the bank owes to the judgment debtor, and in a joint account, the bank can't easily say how much of the balance actually belongs to the debtor versus the non-debtor spouse. Banks faced with a garnishment notice against a joint account often respond cautiously, and the non-debtor spouse can generally come forward to assert their own ownership interest in some or all of the funds, which can lead to a dispute over how much, if any, of the account is fairly available to satisfy the judgment.

In practice, this often means a creditor pursuing a joint account has to be prepared for the non-debtor spouse to contest the garnishment, which can slow down or reduce what's actually collected. Courts generally try to protect a non-debtor's genuine share of jointly held funds from being swept up to pay someone else's debt. If most of the money in the account can be shown to come from the non-debtor spouse's own income or assets, that strengthens their position considerably.