FIACCT 05-04_02 Payments – Outstanding Court Arrest Warrants

Effective: January 10, 2000
Revised: January 1, 2015
Reviewed: January 1, 2015

Purpose

This policy provides the policies and procedures for processing outstanding court arrest warrants in the Finder System. Finder is a system that allows for the collection of debts owed to the State through administrative offsets.

---

Background

Public Safety creates a subset of the information in the Statewide Warrant System, which is loaded into the Finder System to match tax refunds against outstanding arrest warrants.

Policy

A. The Finder System will load the information from the Statewide Warrant System. The Finder System will use the court and judge code on the Statewide Warrant System to send offsets to the appropriate court.

B. If a match is made on a court warrant, the court will not be notified in advance of the garnishment. The refund will automatically be garnished for the amount of the outstanding arrest warrant. If the refund is greater than the warrant amount, the difference will be sent to the taxpayer. The court will receive a check that is payable to the taxpayer. Utah Code Annotated 59-10-529 (4) (a) authorizes the court clerk to endorse the check on behalf of the payee and deposit the monies in the court treasury. The taxpayer will receive a letter explaining the action taken and requesting him to contact the court if he has any questions. The court will receive a copy of this letter.

C. If the taxpayer no longer has an outstanding warrant with the court, the court may release the check to the taxpayer. The court should notify the Division of Finance Disbursements section in writing if the arrest warrant was cleared prior to the date on the letter and Disbursements will refund the offset fee to the taxpayer. Disbursements will not accept notification from the taxpayer that the warrant was cleared.

---

Procedures