Reviewed 12 August 2026 · Sourced from the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Code and Code of Federal Regulations, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
For an ordinary consumer debt, a creditor with a court judgment can take the lesser of 25% of your disposable earnings or the amount those earnings exceed $217.50 in a week — and nothing at all if you take home $217.50 or less after legally required deductions. That ceiling comes from 15 U.S.C. § 1673 and is the same in every state.
The catch is that “disposable earnings” is a defined term, not the number at the bottom of your pay stub. Your 401(k) contribution, your health insurance premium and your union dues do not come out first, so the legal ceiling is higher than most people calculate. Child support, federal student loans and the IRS each run on different rules entirely.
- The cap is a lesser-of test, not a flat 25%. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1673(a) a creditor gets the smaller of 25% of disposable earnings or everything above thirty times the federal minimum hourly wage — $217.50 a week at the $7.25 minimum the Labor Department still publishes.
- Disposable earnings is not take-home pay. It is gross pay minus legally required deductions only. Voluntary retirement contributions, insurance premiums and union dues do not reduce it, which is the single most misstated fact on this topic.
- Below $217.50 a week, nothing can be garnished for a consumer debt. The Labor Department’s Fact Sheet #30 prints the floor for every pay period: $435.00 biweekly, $471.25 semimonthly, $942.50 monthly.
- Support orders break the 25% ceiling. Section 1673(b)(2) allows 50% if you support another spouse or child and 60% if you do not, each rising five points for arrears older than twelve weeks — so 55% or 65%.
- Your employer cannot fire you over one garnishment. 15 U.S.C. § 1674 bans discharge “for any one indebtedness,” and a willful violation carries a fine of up to $1,000, up to a year in prison, or both. A second garnishment is outside that federal shield.
- State law wins when it protects more. Section 1677 preserves state rules that garnish less, and Texas exempts current wages from consumer garnishment outright under Tex. Prop. Code § 42.001(b)(1).
What a wage garnishment actually is
Most people meet a wage garnishment after it has already started. The direct deposit is short by $187, there is a line on the stub nobody explained, and payroll says to call the court.
A wage garnishment is a legal order that makes your employer hand part of your earnings to somebody you owe, before the money reaches you. You are not asked to agree, and your employer is not doing the creditor a favor by complying — an employer that ignores a valid order can be made to pay the debt itself.
The ceiling on how much can be taken comes from Title III of the Consumer Credit Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1671–1677, enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. Title III reaches anyone who receives personal earnings — wages, salary, commissions, bonuses, and in most cases pension and retirement payments — in all fifty states, whether or not your state has written a garnishment law of its own.
For an ordinary consumer debt, a creditor holding a court judgment can take the lesser of 25% of your disposable earnings or the amount those earnings exceed $217.50 in a week — and if your disposable earnings are $217.50 or less, they can take nothing.
Two words in that sentence carry the weight: lesser and disposable. Get either one wrong and your estimate of what a garnishment costs will be off by hundreds of dollars a year. Both get a section below. And worth saying now: even at the maximum, three quarters of your disposable earnings still reaches your account.
What has to happen before your employer gets the order
For a credit card, a medical bill, an old auto deficiency or a debt sold to a collection agency, garnishment is the end of a court process, not the beginning of one. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau puts it plainly: “Most creditors can only garnish wages or benefits after a court issues a judgment saying that you owe the debt.”
Three steps. The creditor sues you. The court enters a judgment. The creditor then asks for a writ of garnishment — the names vary by state: garnishment summons, earnings withholding order, income execution — and it is served on your employer.
Step two is where most garnishments are actually decided, and it is usually decided by nobody showing up. A defendant who does not answer a collection suit gets a default judgment, which has the same force as one entered after a trial. The papers arrive at an old address, or during a month when opening mail feels impossible, and the case is over before it is read.
On the pay stub, usually as a line reading GARN, GARNISH, LEVY or CHILD SUP. On a bank statement, as a hold or a debit labeled levy or attachment. In a court file, as a writ naming your employer as the “garnishee.”
Then there are the debts that skip the courtroom entirely. Federal student loans, federal tax debts and child support enforcement all use administrative garnishment: the agency issues the order itself, under a different statute with its own notice requirements. For a defaulted federal student loan, 34 CFR 682.410(b)(9) requires at least thirty days’ written notice, a chance to inspect the records, an offer of a repayment agreement, and a hearing. The difference is the calendar: a lawsuit gives you a docket and a judge, an administrative notice gives you a letter and a deadline.
Disposable earnings is not your take-home pay
This is the part other explanations get wrong, and getting it wrong costs real money.
The Labor Department’s Fact Sheet #30 defines disposable earnings as “the amount of earnings left after legally required deductions are made.” Legally required means the deductions the law forces on the paycheck: federal, state and local income tax withholding, Social Security, Medicare, and retirement contributions that are mandatory rather than chosen.
Everything you signed up for stays in. Your 401(k) deferral, your health, dental and vision premiums, union dues, life insurance, the savings bond, the charitable payroll deduction, the repayment of an employer advance — all voluntary. None of them reduce disposable earnings, so none of them shrink the base the 25% is calculated against.
Take the net pay printed at the bottom of your stub, multiply it by 25%, and you will get a number smaller than the law allows. In the worked example below the gap is $35.25 a week — $1,833.00 a year.
There is a second trap under the first: “disposable” does not mean the same thing in every program. Under 34 CFR 682.410(b)(9), the federal student loan rule defines disposable pay as what remains “after the deduction of health insurance premiums and any amounts required by law to be withheld.” Health insurance does come out first there. It does not under Title III.
So the same paycheck has two different disposable numbers depending on who is collecting. Almost nothing written about garnishment mentions this. It is in the regulation.
The paycheck calculator breaks gross pay into the required deductions and the chosen ones — which is exactly the line the statute draws.
The two caps, and a full dollar example
Section 1673(a) of Title 15 sets one rule with two halves. The garnishment for a week may not exceed either 25% of disposable earnings for that week, or “the amount by which his disposable earnings for that week exceed thirty times the Federal minimum hourly wage” — whichever is less.
garnishment = the lesser of (25% of disposable earnings) and (disposable earnings above $217.50 a week)Thirty times the federal minimum hourly wage is where $217.50 comes from: 30 × $7.25. That minimum has not moved, and as of August 2026 Fact Sheet #30 still prints $217.50 along with the floor for every other pay period.
| Pay period | Nothing can be taken at or below | Full 25% applies at or above |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | $217.50 | $290.00 |
| Biweekly | $435.00 | $580.00 |
| Semimonthly | $471.25 | $628.33 |
| Monthly | $942.50 | $1,256.66 |
Between those columns the creditor gets everything above the floor and no more.
A warehouse worker earns $22.00 an hour for 40 hours: $880.00 gross. Legally required deductions are federal income tax withheld of $61.00 (an assumption from his W-4 — yours will differ), Social Security of $54.56 and Medicare of $12.76, leaving disposable earnings of $751.68. He also has a 5% 401(k) deferral of $44.00, an $85.00 health premium and $12.00 in union dues, so his take-home is $610.68 — but none of those three reduce disposable earnings. First cap: 25% × $751.68 = $187.92. Second cap: $751.68 less $217.50 = $534.18.
The lesser applies, so the creditor gets $187.92 a week — $9,771.84 a year — and $422.76 of take-home still lands in his account. Had he taken 25% of his $610.68 take-home he would have expected $152.67: short by $35.25 a week, $1,833.00 a year. That arithmetic is ours, from the figures above.
Now run it the other way. Someone at $9.00 an hour for 25 hours grosses $225.00. Social Security takes $13.95 and Medicare $3.26, so disposable earnings are $207.79 — below $217.50, and a consumer creditor gets nothing at all. At $250.00 of disposable earnings, 25% would be $62.50, but the excess over $217.50 is only $32.50, and $32.50 is what is taken. The floor, not the percentage, is what protects low-wage workers.
The debts that break the 25% ceiling
The 25% cap is the rule for ordinary debt. Section 1673(b) exempts court orders for the support of any person, orders under a chapter 13 bankruptcy plan, and debts due for state or federal taxes. Those run on their own numbers.
| Type of debt | Ceiling | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer debt with a judgment | Lesser of 25% or the amount above $217.50 a week | 15 U.S.C. § 1673(a) |
| Support, where you support another spouse or child | 50%, rising to 55% for arrears older than 12 weeks | 15 U.S.C. § 1673(b)(2) |
| Support, where you do not | 60%, rising to 65% for arrears older than 12 weeks | 15 U.S.C. § 1673(b)(2) |
| Defaulted federal student loan | 15% of disposable pay, and no more than the amount above 30 times the minimum wage | 34 CFR 682.410(b)(9) |
| Federal tax levy | No percentage — an exempt amount is left to you instead | 26 U.S.C. § 6334 |
| Chapter 13 plan payments | Set by the bankruptcy court | 15 U.S.C. § 1673(b)(1)(B) |
Those support figures are worth a second look: 65% of disposable earnings is life-altering, and entirely lawful.
The student loan rule is a smallest-of test, not a flat 15%: the amount stated in the order, 15% of disposable pay, or the amount by which disposable pay exceeds thirty times the minimum wage, whichever is smallest. The same regulation adds a protection worth knowing: a guaranty agency “may not garnish the wages of a borrower whom it knows has been involuntarily separated from employment until the borrower has been reemployed continuously for at least 12 months.”
The IRS is structurally different, and the direction of the difference is the thing to hold onto. A creditor takes a percentage and leaves you the rest. A federal tax levy takes everything except an exempt amount. Under 26 U.S.C. § 6334, wages are exempt only to the extent they do not exceed “the applicable exempt amount,” which is your standard deduction plus personal exemption deductions divided by the number of pay periods. The IRS publishes the resulting figures each year in Publication 1494; the edition governing 2026 levies is Rev. 12-2025. Section 6334 also lists income the IRS cannot levy at all, including unemployment benefits, workers’ compensation and public assistance such as SSI.
One rule spans all of this: the Title III cap is written against aggregate disposable earnings, so two consumer judgments share one 25% ceiling rather than taking 50%.
Your job, and the state you live in
The fear that ends careers is not the money, it is being fired over the embarrassment of it. Federal law answers that directly, and it answers it narrowly.
15 U.S.C. § 1674(a): “No employer may discharge any employee by reason of the fact that his earnings have been subjected to garnishment for any one indebtedness.” Subsection (b) makes a willful violation criminal — a fine of “not more than $1,000, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”
Read the phrase “any one indebtedness” literally. The federal shield covers the first debt; a second creditor with a second judgment puts you outside § 1674, and the Labor Department’s summary says the same. A single debt withheld week after week is still one indebtedness — it takes a second debt, not a second paycheck, to cost you the protection.
That gap is what Congress left to the states. Section 1677 says Title III “does not annul, alter, or affect” state laws that prohibit garnishment, that garnish less than federal law allows, or that bar discharging an employee whose earnings are garnished “for more than one indebtedness.”
Fact Sheet #30 gives the tie-breaker in one line: where state and federal garnishment law differ, “the law resulting in the lower amount of earnings being garnished must be observed.” The more protective rule wins.
Some states go all the way. Texas exempts current wages from creditor garnishment outright: Tex. Prop. Code § 42.001(b)(1) protects “current wages for personal services, except for the enforcement of court-ordered child support payments.” A credit card judgment in Texas cannot reach a paycheck — though it can still reach the money once it lands in a bank account.
Pennsylvania, North Carolina and South Carolina are widely described as barring most consumer-debt wage garnishment too, but we did not read those statutes directly, so that claim is labeled Unverified below. State garnishment law varies more than almost anything else in consumer finance; find your own state’s exemption statute before relying on any of it.
Social Security, SSI and the money already in your account
A paycheck is one thing. Federal benefits are another, and they carry a protection that works automatically — you do not file anything to get it.
Under 31 CFR Part 212, a bank served with a garnishment order has two business days to check whether it carries a Notice of Right to Garnish Federal Benefits. If not, the bank must run an account review for federal benefit deposits.
The regulation defines the lookback period as “the two month period that begins on the date preceding the date of account review.” The protected amount is the lesser of all benefit payments posted during that window, or the account balance at review. That money cannot be frozen or paid out, and the bank cannot charge its garnishment fee against it.
Covered payments come from the Social Security Administration, Supplemental Security Income, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Railroad Retirement Board and the Office of Personnel Management. The CFPB puts it plainly: the bank “must review your account and protect two months’ worth of direct-deposited benefits before freezing or garnishing any money.”
The protection attaches to benefits that arrived by direct deposit, into the account being garnished, inside the two-month window. Cash a check and deposit it, or sweep the money to another bank, and the automatic review will not find it. You may still claim an exemption — but you will have to claim it, and that is a slower fight.
Two distinctions matter. First, the protection has an exception built in: an order from the U.S. government, or from a state child support enforcement agency, carrying that Notice gets no account review and no protected amount. Second, SSI and Social Security are not the same animal. The CFPB states that “federal agencies like the Internal Revenue Service or the Department of Education can take up to 15 percent of your Social Security or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits,” while § 6334 exempts public assistance including SSI from IRS levy entirely. If you are on SSI, the disability wealth guide works through the difference.
What is confirmed, what is unverified, what is convention
| Claim | Status | What establishes it, or doesn’t |
|---|---|---|
| Cap is the lesser of 25% or the excess over 30 times the federal minimum wage | Confirmed | 15 U.S.C. § 1673(a), read on the Cornell LII text. |
| $217.50 weekly floor is still current in 2026 | Confirmed | DOL Fact Sheet #30, read 12 August 2026, prints $217.50 / $435.00 / $471.25 / $942.50 against a $7.25 federal minimum wage. |
| Disposable earnings excludes voluntary deductions | Confirmed for the definition, Convention, reasoned for the list | DOL defines it as earnings after “legally required deductions.” Calling a 401(k) deferral or a health premium not legally required follows from that definition; no agency list was quoted item by item. |
| Firing penalty of $1,000 and up to one year | Confirmed | 15 U.S.C. § 1674(b), quoted directly. |
| Federal student loan garnishment capped at 15% of disposable pay | Confirmed | 34 CFR 682.410(b)(9), which cites section 488A(a)(1) of the Higher Education Act. |
| 2026 IRS exempt-amount dollar figures | Unverified | Publication 1494 Rev. 12-2025 is confirmed as the 2026 edition, but its table did not transcribe reliably and two readings disagreed, so no dollar figure from it is printed here. |
| Texas bars wage garnishment for consumer debt | Confirmed | Tex. Prop. Code § 42.001(b)(1), read through a statutory reproduction; the state’s own server returned a navigation page rather than the section. |
| Pennsylvania, North Carolina and South Carolina also bar it | Unverified | Repeated by law firms and consumer publishers. No state statute was read directly, so it is not stated as fact above. |
| SSI cannot be reached for child support | Unverified | Widely asserted. The 31 CFR Part 212 exception is written around the Notice of Right to Garnish, not a benefit-specific rule, and no SSI-specific provision was traced here. |
What trips people up
1. Calculating 25% of take-home pay. The base is disposable earnings, and voluntary deductions do not reduce it. In the example above the gap is $187.92 against $152.67 — $35.25 a week, $1,833.00 a year of budget that was never going to be there. The budget calculator is only as good as the number you feed it.
2. Not opening the lawsuit papers. A default judgment costs exactly as much as one you fought and lost, and it usually adds court costs and post-judgment interest. Showing up is the only stage where the amount is still in dispute.
3. Assuming the 25% resets for each creditor. Section 1673 caps “aggregate disposable earnings,” so two consumer judgments share one 25% ceiling. People brace for half their check, then misread a delayed second garnishment as a debt that went away.
4. Waiting for a lawsuit that is never coming. Defaulted federal student loans, federal tax debts and child support do not need to sue you. If your only mental model of garnishment is a courtroom, an administrative notice will not look serious — and the thirty-day window in 34 CFR 682.410(b)(9) is the one moment the process is designed to be answerable.
5. Moving benefit money to keep it safe. The automatic bank protection works on federal benefits direct-deposited into the account under order, inside the two-month lookback. Moving the money elsewhere is the most common way people lose a protection they already had.
6. Never checking your own state. Federal law is the ceiling, not the answer. Your state may garnish less, bar it outright, or extend the anti-firing rule past the first debt. Rebuilding after a judgment is the subject of Stage 2: Stabilize, and if you are rebuilding after prison, the reentry guide covers old judgments and bank access together.
Frequently asked questions
What is wage garnishment?
Wage garnishment is a legal order that requires your employer to withhold part of your pay and send it to someone you owe, before the money reaches you. For most consumer debts the creditor has to sue you, win a judgment, and then get a writ served on your employer. Title III of the Consumer Credit Protection Act caps how much can be withheld. Child support, federal student loans and federal taxes run on separate limits, and some do not require a lawsuit at all.
How much of my paycheck can be garnished?
For an ordinary consumer debt, federal law allows the lesser of two amounts: 25 percent of your disposable earnings for the week, or the amount those earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum hourly wage. At the $7.25 federal minimum that second figure is $217.50 a week, which the Labor Department still publishes as of August 2026. If your disposable earnings are $217.50 or less, nothing can be taken. At $290.00 a week or more, the full 25 percent applies.
What counts as disposable earnings?
Disposable earnings is gross pay minus legally required deductions only: income tax withholding, Social Security, Medicare, and mandatory retirement contributions. It is not your take-home pay. Voluntary 401(k) contributions, health insurance premiums, union dues and payroll savings do not reduce it, so using take-home pay produces an estimate that is too low. One caution: the federal student loan rules use a different definition that does subtract health insurance premiums.
Can I be fired because my wages are garnished?
Not for the first debt. Federal law at 15 U.S.C. section 1674 says no employer may discharge an employee because their earnings have been garnished for any one indebtedness, and a willful violation carries a fine of up to $1,000, up to a year in prison, or both. The protection is written narrowly: it covers one debt, so a second creditor with a second judgment puts you outside the federal rule. Some states extend it further, which federal law expressly permits.
Can Social Security or SSI be garnished?
Ordinary creditors cannot reach federal benefits, and the protection is automatic. Under 31 CFR Part 212 a bank served with a garnishment order must review the account and protect two months of direct-deposited federal benefits before freezing anything, covering Social Security, SSI, VA, Railroad Retirement and OPM payments. It has holes. The CFPB states that federal agencies such as the IRS or the Department of Education can take up to 15 percent of Social Security or SSDI benefits.
Can wages be garnished without going to court?
Yes, for certain debts. Defaulted federal student loans, federal tax debts and child support enforcement use administrative garnishment, where the agency issues the order without a lawsuit or a judgment. Those processes carry their own notice requirements instead: for a defaulted federal student loan the regulation requires at least 30 days of written notice, a chance to inspect the records, an offer of a repayment agreement, and a hearing. Ordinary creditors, including debt buyers and collection agencies, still need a court judgment first.
Which states do not allow wage garnishment for consumer debt?
Texas is the clearest case: its Property Code exempts current wages for personal services from garnishment, with an exception for court-ordered child support. Pennsylvania, North Carolina and South Carolina are widely described as barring most consumer-debt wage garnishment too, but that claim is labeled Unverified here because those statutes were not read directly. Federal law preserves state rules that protect more of a worker's pay, and where the two differ the rule producing the lower garnishment controls. Even in those states a judgment can usually still reach a bank account, and federal administrative garnishment operates regardless of state law.
Related terms
Where to go next
- Run your own paycheck and separate the legally required deductions from the ones you chose — that line is the whole calculation.
- Stage 1: Survive covers what to do when the money coming in is already less than the money going out.
- Stage 2: Stabilize works through old debt, judgments and getting a bank account that stays open.
- After financial collapse is the long-form guide for rebuilding once the worst has already happened.
- Starting over after prison covers old judgments, child support arrears and banking on reentry in one place.
- U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, Fact Sheet #30: The Federal Wage Garnishment Law, Consumer Credit Protection Act’s Title III — establishes the $217.50 / $435.00 / $471.25 / $942.50 floors, the $290.00 / $580.00 / $628.33 / $1,256.66 thresholds, the $7.25 minimum wage used, the definition of disposable earnings, and the rule that the law producing the lower garnishment controls. Read 12 August 2026.
- Cornell Legal Information Institute, 15 U.S.C. § 1673 — the lesser-of test in subsection (a), and the 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 percent support ceilings and the tax and chapter 13 carve-outs in subsection (b).
- Cornell Legal Information Institute, 15 U.S.C. § 1674 — the ban on discharging an employee garnished for any one indebtedness, and the $1,000 fine and one-year maximum sentence for a willful violation.
- Cornell Legal Information Institute, 15 U.S.C. § 1677 — establishes that Title III does not displace state laws that prohibit garnishment, garnish less, or bar discharge for more than one indebtedness.
- Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, 29 CFR Part 870 — the Labor Department’s regulations implementing Title III. Cited as the regulatory home of these restrictions; Fact Sheet #30 is the source actually read for the figures on this page.
- Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, 34 CFR 682.410 — the 15 percent ceiling on defaulted federal student loan garnishment, the smallest-of test, the different definition of disposable pay that subtracts health insurance premiums, the 12-month protection after involuntary job loss, and the 30-day notice and hearing rights.
- Cornell Legal Information Institute, 26 U.S.C. § 6334 — establishes that a federal tax levy leaves an exempt amount rather than taking a percentage, the standard-deduction-plus-exemptions formula, and the categories exempt from levy including unemployment benefits, workers’ compensation and public assistance such as SSI.
- Internal Revenue Service, Publication 1494, Tables for Figuring Amount Exempt from Levy on Wages, Salary, and Other Income (Rev. 12-2025) — establishes that a 2026 table exists and how the exempt amount is structured. Its dollar figures are not reproduced on this page; see the ledger.
- Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, 31 CFR Part 212 — the covered benefit payments, the two-business-day account review, the two-month lookback period, the protected amount, the bar on charging garnishment fees against protected funds, and the Notice of Right to Garnish Federal Benefits exception.
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Can a debt collector take or garnish my wages or benefits? — establishes that most creditors need a court judgment first, that federal agencies can take up to 15 percent of Social Security or SSDI, and the two-month bank protection stated in plain language.
- Texas Property Code § 42.001, Personal Property Exemption — establishes that current wages for personal services are exempt in Texas except for court-ordered child support. A statutory reproduction, used because the state’s own site returned a navigation page.
- Cornell Legal Information Institute, 15 U.S.C. § 1671 — the congressional findings and purpose that open Title III, cited for the scope of the subchapter.
The figures on this page are checked against the source that publishes them, and dated. Published rates move after the release named above — the linked source always carries the current number. This page explains a term; it does not recommend a product.