Maryland Wage Garnishment Laws
Maryland protects the greater of seventy-five percent of disposable wages or thirty times the state minimum hourly wage — not the federal one. At the $15.00 state rate that is a floor of $450 a week. Most sources still publish the federal version, because Maryland only rewrote the statute on October 1, 2020, and the old fixed-dollar figure had been on the books for decades. This guide works the exemption at the current rate using the Maryland Judiciary’s own arithmetic, walks the writ procedure and the garnishee’s answer, sets out the anti-waiver rule and the penalties an employer faces for getting the withholding wrong, and covers the practical wall every judgment creditor hits first: a Maryland writ is served on an employer, and naming the wrong one starts a fifteen-day clock that can end the garnishment.
The Short Version
Md. Code, Commercial Law section 15-601.1(b)(1) exempts from attachment the greater of seventy-five percent of the debtor’s disposable wages, or thirty times the State minimum hourly wage in effect when the wages are due, multiplied by the number of weeks in which they were earned. Maryland’s minimum wage reached $15.00 an hour on January 1, 2024 under Md. Code, Labor and Employment section 3-413(c), on both the general and the small-employer schedule, and the statute sets no further step-up — so the second prong is 30 x $15.00 = $450 a week, and it stays there until the General Assembly amends 3-413. Note the word State: it is not thirty times the federal minimum, which would be $217.50. Maryland’s statute contains no twenty-five percent figure at all. The twenty-five percent ceiling is federal, under 15 U.S.C. section 1673(a), and because prong (i) always exempts at least seventy-five percent of disposable wages, that ceiling is built into the Maryland exemption rather than bolted on beside it. On smaller paychecks the $450 floor bites much harder than twenty-five percent would: the Maryland Judiciary’s own worked example takes a $600 gross week down to $465.50 disposable and yields the creditor $15.50. A creditor gets a judgment, files a writ naming the debtor’s employer as garnishee, and the employer answers and withholds. None of it starts until you can name the right employer — and if the one you name answers that the debtor does not work there, you have fifteen days to request a hearing or the court may dismiss the garnishment.
Watch: Maryland Wage Garnishment
How the limits work and why the employer is step one.
Watch Overview
Maryland’s Statewide Exemption Rule
One formula, tied to the state minimum wage, in every county.
The amount of a paycheck a Maryland judgment creditor must leave alone is set by Md. Code, Commercial Law section 15-601.1.
The exempt floor, in the statute’s own words. Subsection (b) provides that the following are exempt from attachment: “(1) The greater of: (i) 75 percent of the disposable wages due; or (ii) 30 times the State minimum hourly wage in effect at the time the wages are due, multiplied by the number of weeks during which the wages due were earned; and (2) Any medical insurance payment deducted from an employee’s wages by the employer.” Two structural points fall straight out of that text. The conjunction between (1) and (2) is and, not or, so an employer-deducted medical insurance payment is exempt in addition to the floor, not counted inside it. And subsection (a) defines disposable wages as the part of wages remaining after deduction of any amount “required to be withheld by law” — taxes and other mandated withholdings reduce the base, but a voluntary deduction the employee chose, such as a retirement contribution, does not.
Which minimum wage, and why $450 is stable. The second prong is pinned to the State rate, and Md. Code, Labor and Employment section 3-413(c) sets it: “beginning January 1, 2024, $15.00 per hour,” on the general schedule and on the small-employer schedule alike. The statute stops there — there is no scheduled step-up behind it — so thirty times $15.00 is $450.00 a week and remains so until the General Assembly amends 3-413. Two precision points a payroll department gets wrong. First, section 3-413(d) lets an employer pay an employee under eighteen eighty-five percent of the State minimum, $12.75; that does not lower the garnishment floor, because 15-601.1(b)(1)(ii) refers to “the State minimum hourly wage,” the rate set by statute, not the rate this worker is paid. Second, a higher county minimum wage does not raise the floor either, for the same reason: the exemption is pinned to the State rate. That is a real jurisdictional difference and not a quibble — California’s Code of Civil Procedure section 706.050 expressly uses the state or local minimum wage, so a Bay Area floor moves with the city. Maryland’s does not.
Where the twenty-five percent actually comes from. Maryland’s statute contains no twenty-five percent. It measures an exemption; the twenty-five percent is a federal ceiling, imposed by 15 U.S.C. section 1673(a) and described as federal law in the Judiciary’s own garnishment brochure. The two are not separate constraints that happen to converge. Because prong (i) exempts at least seventy-five percent of disposable wages in every case, the creditor can never reach more than twenty-five percent — the federal ceiling is built into the Maryland exemption. The Court of Appeals put the distinction precisely in Marshall v. Safeway: “the State law measures the amount of exemption, whereas the Federal statute measures the maximum amount that may be garnished, which is why the former applies the greater of the alternatives and the latter applies the lesser of them.”
Calculated per pay period. Section 15-601.1(c) is one line and it decides a lot of arguments: “The amount subject to attachment shall be calculated per pay period.” The floor is not an annual or monthly allowance to be apportioned; it is applied to each pay period as it runs, using the weeks in which those wages were earned. For a biweekly payroll the floor for the period is thirty times $15.00 multiplied by two weeks, or $900; for a semimonthly payroll the multiplier is the number of workweeks the period actually covers, which is why semimonthly employers so often mis-withhold.
The Judiciary’s own worked example, at the current rate
Rather than invent numbers, use the arithmetic the Maryland Judiciary publishes in its wage-garnishment brochure DC-CV-065BR (Rev. 01/2024). A debtor earns $15.00 per hour, the State minimum. Weekly gross earnings are $600.00, being forty hours at $15.00. Deductions required by law come out, leaving disposable earnings of $465.50. Thirty times $15.00 is $450.00; multiplied by one week, that is $450.00. Subtract: $465.50 minus $450.00 leaves $15.50, and $15.50 is what can be garnished that week.
A worker at exactly the State minimum wage therefore yields about $806 a year. Note what the brochure does that most calculators do not: it separates gross from disposable. Running the same paycheck as though $600 were disposable produces $150 a week, nearly ten times the real answer, and that is the most common way a Maryland garnishment estimate goes wrong.
Raise the paycheck and the other prong takes over. On weekly disposable wages of $1,000, seventy-five percent is $750 while thirty times the State minimum is still $450; the statute protects the greater, so $750 is exempt and $250 is reachable — exactly twenty-five percent, which is the federal ceiling showing itself. Drop to $500 disposable and the floor controls again: $450 is exempt and the creditor reaches $50, well under twenty-five percent. The crossover sits at $600 of weekly disposable wages, where both prongs equal $450: above it the seventy-five percent prong governs, below it the $450 floor does. The floor is what makes low-wage garnishments in Maryland close to worthless, and it is the reason a creditor should establish the debtor’s actual rate of pay — which the garnishee’s answer states — before spending money on enforcement.
Chapter 183 of 2020: what was repealed, and the writs it did not touch
Before October 1, 2020 Maryland had no single statewide rule, and the version most sources still publish is the one that was thrown out. Most of the State ran on a fixed figure — the product of $145 and the number of weeks in which the wages were earned — while Caroline, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Worcester counties used thirty times the federal minimum wage. It is natural to read the four Eastern Shore counties as the odd exception, and that reading is backwards. Under 15 U.S.C. section 1677, federal law preempts a state exemption to the extent the state “allows a greater amount of a debtor’s earnings to be reached than does the federal law”; as the Court of Appeals summarised the rule in Marshall v. Safeway, citing Anderson v. Anderson, states “can provide a greater exemption than that provided by the Federal law, but not a lesser one.” A $145 weekly exemption was less protective than thirty times the federal minimum, so the rest-of-State track was unenforceable whenever the comparison mattered. The four counties were the valid track; the rest of Maryland was the outlier.
House Bill 365, enacted as Chapter 183 of the 2020 Laws of Maryland, fixed both halves at once. The enrolled bill strikes the $145 product and the entire county subsection, and changes “30 times the federal minimum hourly wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act” to “30 times the STATE minimum hourly wage.” It took effect October 1, 2020. The result is a single statewide formula, and a Maryland floor of $450 a week against a federal floor of $217.50 — more than double — that self-corrects whenever the legislature moves the minimum wage.
One live consequence, and it is easy to miss. Section 2 of Chapter 183 provides that the Act “shall be construed to apply only prospectively and may not be applied or interpreted to have any effect on or application to any writ of garnishment or writ of execution issued before the effective date of this Act.” Because a Maryland wage garnishment is a continuing lien that runs until the judgment is satisfied, a writ issued before October 1, 2020 and still withholding today is still governed by the repealed formula — the $145 figure, or the federal thirty-times prong in the four counties. An employer administering a 2019 writ and a 2026 writ is administering two different statutes, so date the writ before checking the math above. One caution on Marshall itself: it was decided in 2014 under the pre-2020 statute, and its statement of the formula refers to the federal minimum. It is the history that produced Chapter 183, not a statement of the current test.
The Current Rule vs. the Old Pre-2020 Structure
What changed on October 1, 2020, and what controls today.
| Factor | Current statewide rule (since Oct. 1, 2020) | Superseded pre-2020 structure |
|---|---|---|
| Governing rule | Md. Code, Commercial Law section 15-601.1 as amended by Chapter 183 of 2020, uniform in all counties | A fixed-dollar formula in most counties; thirty times the federal minimum in four Eastern Shore counties |
| Exempt floor | Greater of seventy-five percent of disposable wages or thirty times the State minimum hourly wage per week: $450 at the $15.00 rate in force since January 1, 2024 | Most counties: $145 multiplied by the weeks worked. Caroline, Kent, Queen Anne’s, Worcester: thirty times the federal minimum, which is $217.50 at $7.25 |
| Minimum wage used | State rate under Labor and Employment 3-413(c). County and city minimums do not raise it; the youth rate does not lower it | A fixed dollar amount, or the federal minimum wage in the four counties |
| Which track was actually enforceable | All of it. The State floor exceeds the federal one, so 15 U.S.C. 1677 raises no question | The four-county track. The $145 rule was preempted whenever it protected less than federal law required |
| Which writs it governs | Writs issued on or after October 1, 2020 | Writs issued before October 1, 2020 — still, under Chapter 183 section 2, if the lien is still running |
| Maximum a creditor can take | Twenty-five percent of disposable earnings, as a federal ceiling under 15 U.S.C. 1673(a); Maryland’s own seventy-five percent exemption produces the same result | Same federal ceiling |
| Medical insurance withheld | Exempt in addition to the floor, under 15-601.1(b)(2) | Exempt from attachment |
| What you must know first | The debtor’s current employerLocate | The debtor’s current employerLocate |
The bottom row is not a technicality, and Maryland attaches a deadline to it. A writ of garnishment is served on the employer, not the debtor, so the creditor has to name a garnishee before any of the arithmetic above matters. The Judiciary’s brochure sets out what happens when the name is wrong: “If an alleged employer reports that the debtor is not employed, creditor must file a request for a hearing within 15 days, or the court may dismiss the garnishment.” Naming the wrong employer does not merely waste a filing fee — it starts a fifteen-day clock that can end the writ. That is why establishing the debtor’s current employer, with the legal entity name and a service address that will hold up, belongs before the filing rather than after it.
The Maryland Writ of Garnishment
From judgment to withholding, the procedure in order.
Wage garnishment in Maryland is a post-judgment remedy. A creditor cannot garnish wages on the strength of a debt alone; first there must be a money judgment from a Maryland court. Once the judgment exists, the creditor files a Request for Garnishment of Wages, form DC-CV-065 in the District Court, which produces the writ. The writ names two parties beyond the creditor: the judgment debtor (the employee) and the garnishee, the employer holding the wages. One forum note that trips up self-represented filers: this is the commercial track. Child support and alimony withholding is not filed here at all — the Judiciary states plainly that “the District Court does not handle these cases. You must file in circuit court.”
Service, and how it may not be done. The writ is served on the garnishee-employer, and Maryland is specific about the method: service “is not permitted by ordinary mail.” It must be made by the sheriff or a constable, by registered mail with return receipt requested, or by a person at least eighteen years old who is not a party to the suit. A garnishee that never answers because it was never properly served is not in default.
The answer. The garnishee must reply to the writ within thirty days of receipt, “indicating . . . whether the debtor is employed, the rate of pay, and any prior garnishments on wages.” That answer is more useful than creditors expect: it establishes the pay rate the exemption math runs on, and it discloses the senior writs already in line. A garnishee that ignores the writ can be cited for contempt of court and assessed attorney’s fees and court costs.
And an employer that withholds too much has its own exposure. In Marshall v. Safeway, Inc. the Court of Appeals held that employees “have a direct civil cause of action under Md. Code, section 3-507.2 of the Labor and Employment Article against employers who deduct from the employee’s wage more than is allowed,” and that absent a bona fide dispute the court may award up to three times the wage and reasonable attorneys’ fees. That is why Maryland garnishees read a writ closely — and why the entity named on it has to be the right one.
A continuing lien, not a one-time grab
A Maryland wage garnishment is not a single withdrawal, and the statute says so. Under Md. Code, Commercial Law section 15-602(a), when an attachment is levied against a judgment debtor’s wages it “shall constitute a lien on all attachable wages that are payable at the time the attachment is served or which become payable until the judgment, interest, and costs, as specified in the attachment, are satisfied.” The employer withholds pay period after pay period until the debt is paid or the court stops it.
And the exemption cannot be signed away. Section 15-602(b) is a single sentence with real consequences: “Any waiver of the limitations contained in section 15-601.1(b)(1) and (2) of this subtitle is void.” A creditor holding a signed agreement in which the debtor consented to a larger withholding holds nothing; a payroll department shown such a document should ignore it and apply the statutory floor.
What the judgment is growing at while the lien runs. Under Md. Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings section 11-107, the legal rate of interest on a judgment is ten percent per annum, with one carve-out that matters to a specific audience: a money judgment “for rent of residential premises” accrues at six percent. Pair that with the order in which Maryland applies what is collected — first against accrued interest on the unpaid balance, second against principal, third against attorney’s fees and costs — and the arithmetic of a small garnishment becomes clear. At $15.50 a week, roughly $806 a year, a $6,000 judgment accruing ten percent is gaining about $600 a year in interest alone. The withholding barely outruns the interest, which is why long Maryland garnishments so often look like they are going nowhere.
Two different fifteen-day clocks. Both exist and they belong to different parties. The garnishee must report and distribute to the creditor the total wages withheld for the month “within 15 days after the close of the employee’s last pay period in the month.” The creditor files the Judgment Creditor’s Monthly Report, form DC-CV-066, showing payments received and how they were credited. Confusing the two produces a creditor waiting for money the employer has not yet had to send, or an employer that thinks the reporting duty is somebody else’s. (Neither is the fifteen-day hearing deadline described above, which is a third clock and the only one that can kill the writ.)
Priority among competing writs. The Judiciary states the rule without qualification: “remittance to a second or subsequent creditor is not made until the first judgment is paid in full. When one judgment is paid, the lien of the next one is in effect.” Maryland does not pro-rate. A second-in-line commercial writ collects nothing at all until the senior one is satisfied, which is why the garnishee’s disclosure of prior garnishments is the single most valuable line in the answer.
Whose wages the subtitle reaches. Commercial Law section 15-601(b) defines “employee” to include an employee “whether he is a resident or nonresident of the State,” and subsection (c) defines “wages” as all monetary remuneration paid to any employee for his employment. So a debtor who has left Maryland is still garnishable if the paycheck issues from a Maryland employer the court can reach: the question is where the garnishee is, not where the debtor sleeps. It is the out-of-state employer, not the out-of-state debtor, that forces domestication.
If the debtor leaves the job, the garnishment does not vanish instantly. It “terminates 90 days after end of employment unless the debtor is re-employed during that period,” and the employer notifies the court and the parties when the debtor stops working there. That ninety-day tail is exactly the moment a creditor needs a fresh employer locate, because the old writ is winding down and a new garnishee has to be identified to keep collecting.
Maryland also limits the consequences a worker can face for being garnished. Under Md. Code, Commercial Law section 15-606, an employer “may not discharge his employee because the employee’s wages are subjected to attachment for any one indebtedness within a calendar year,” and an employer who willfully violates that provision “is guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction is subject to a fine not exceeding $1,000 or imprisonment not exceeding one year or both.” The federal analogue at 15 U.S.C. section 1674 carries the same “any one indebtedness” limit and the same $1,000 and one-year penalty, but Maryland adds four words the federal text does not have: within a calendar year. On the face of the two provisions, a second garnishment arriving in a later calendar year does not strip the Maryland protection the way the bare federal wording reads.
How a Debtor Claims an Exemption
The protections do not always apply themselves automatically.
Maryland’s exemption floor is not always self-executing. A judgment debtor who believes more is being withheld than the law allows, or that specific funds are protected, can file a motion to release the property or an exemption claim with the court that issued the writ. The debtor states the legal ground — typically that the withholding leaves less than the greater-of floor in section 15-601.1(b)(1), or that it exceeds the federal ceiling — and the court can hold a hearing and order an adjustment or release. Acting quickly matters, because once funds are remitted to the creditor they are far harder to claw back.
The named vehicle is Maryland Rule 3-646. District Court writs of garnishment of wages issue under that Rule, and it is the Rule that supplies the motion practice for disputing the amount withheld. In Marshall v. Safeway the Court of Appeals called it the “far superior” route for a worker challenging what an employer has deducted — superior to a free-standing wage-payment suit — so a debtor should move in the case that produced the writ rather than open a new action. (The Maryland Rules are not published in full on the Judiciary’s website; the Rule is named here on the authority of the Marshall opinion and the DC-CV-065BR brochure, and subsection references should be checked in the annotated Rules.)
Certain income is categorically off-limits to ordinary garnishment, including most federal benefits such as Social Security and many public-assistance payments. Those protections sit on top of the wage-exemption math, not inside it. None of this is legal advice for a specific case; a Maryland debtor with an active garnishment should confirm the current figures and procedure with the court or counsel, because minimum-wage numbers and forms change over time.
Bank-account garnishment is a different track
Wages are not the only target, and the exemption rules for a bank levy are not the wage rules. Md. Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings section 11-504(e) says so in one line: “The exemptions in this section do not apply to wage attachments.” That is the statutory reason the two tracks never mix, and it is worth knowing before anyone tries to claim a general exemption against a paycheck.
On the account itself, section 11-504(b)(5) automatically protects up to $500 in a deposit account without any election by the debtor, and (b)(6) lets the debtor elect, within thirty days of the attachment or levy, to exempt cash or selected property up to a cumulative value of $6,000. These are not additive. The statute closes (b)(6) with an express cap: “the cumulative value of cash and property exempted under this item and item (5) of this subsection may not exceed $6,000.” The automatic $500 sits inside the $6,000, not on top of it — a distinction routinely stated backwards online, and one that changes what a debtor can actually keep by five hundred dollars. The full exemption schedule, and how the election interacts with the other categories in 11-504, belongs to our guide to Maryland’s exemption schedule under Courts and Judicial Proceedings 11-504. The practical point here is the same as with wages: a bank garnishment requires knowing where the debtor banks, which is its own locate problem.
How long the judgment lives
A Maryland money judgment is enforceable for twelve years and can be renewed by notice before the term runs out, which keeps the garnishment remedy behind it alive. The clock, the renewal mechanics and what else the judgment reaches are set out in our guide to how long a Maryland collection judgment stays enforceable.
Support, Taxes, and Competing Garnishments
When the ordinary twenty-five-percent ceiling is not the ceiling.
The twenty-five-percent cap and the statewide exempt floor govern ordinary commercial judgments, the unpaid credit card, the medical bill, the small-claims win. Several categories of debt run on their own tracks with higher reach and different priority, and a Maryland creditor needs to know which lane a paycheck is already in before counting on what is left.
Child support and alimony. Support obligations are not capped at twenty-five percent, and in Maryland they are not even filed in the same court — support withholding goes to the circuit court, not the District Court. The percentages are federal, not Maryland: 15 U.S.C. section 1673(b)(2) sets fifty percent of disposable earnings where the worker supports another spouse or dependent child and sixty percent where not. The arrears uplift is commonly misstated as adding five points. It does not. The statute provides that those figures “shall be deemed to be” fifty-five and sixty-five percent “if and to the extent that” the withholding is for support due more than twelve weeks before the current pay period — so the higher ceilings reach only the portion attributable to that arrearage, not the whole order. A support withholding generally outranks a commercial garnishment, so a paycheck can be largely committed before a commercial writ attaches. The federal scheme in full is set out in our state-by-state overview.
Taxes and federal program debts. Federal and state tax levies, and collections for certain federal program debts, follow their own statutory procedures and limits rather than the Commercial Law section 15-601.1 formula. They can attach independently of a private creditor’s writ and frequently sit ahead of it in line.
Multiple commercial writs. Among ordinary garnishments Maryland is strictly first-served, with no pro-rating: the earlier writ is worked to satisfaction and the next lien takes effect only when it is paid. For a creditor weighing the cost of a writ that is decisive, because a paycheck already carrying a senior support order and a first-in-line commercial garnishment may have no attachable margin at all. The garnishee’s answer discloses the prior garnishments, so the priority picture is knowable — but only once you have identified the right garnishee to serve.
Why Maryland Garnishments Stall Before They Start
The exemption math is the easy part. The employer is the hard part.
No Current Employer on File
You have a Maryland judgment but no idea where the debtor works now, so there is no garnishee to name on the writ.
Debtor Changed Jobs
The garnishee answered that the debtor is not employed there. You now have fifteen days to request a hearing or the court may dismiss the writ.
Self-Employed or Paid Cash
The debtor reports being a contractor, leaving no traditional employer-garnishee and a thin payroll trail.
Stale Exemption Math
The estimate used thirty times the federal minimum, or the repealed $145 figure, instead of 30 x $15.00 — and the projected recovery was never real.
Debtor Moved Out of State
Section 15-601(b) reaches a nonresident employee, so a Maryland payer is still garnishable. An out-of-state employer is the case that needs domestication.
Multiple Employers
Gig and multi-job workers split income across payers, and you need to know which one is worth a writ.
From Judgment to Garnishee
How we turn a Maryland judgment into a serveable employer.
Send Us What You Have
The debtor’s name, last known address, date of birth, a Social Security fragment, or a prior employer becomes the starting point.
We Trace Employment
A current employer is rebuilt from public records and permissible-purpose databases, cross-checked against associates and address history.
We Verify the Garnishee
The employer’s legal name and service address are confirmed so your writ names the right entity and your withholding math starts from the correct garnishee.
You File the Writ
Your attorney requests garnishment of wages and serves the garnishee. We do the locate; you run the Maryland procedure.
Who We Help in Maryland
We find the employer; you complete the garnishment.
Maryland Collection Counsel
A garnishee to name on DC-CV-065
Holders of a Md. Judgment
An employer before the 12 years run
Debt Buyers and Agencies
Portfolio debtors placed at a payer
Circuit Court Support Matters
Income traced for withholding orders
Small-Claims Winners
Self-represented and ready to collect
Residential Rent Judgments
Accruing at 6 percent, not 10
Whoever you are, the obstacle is the same: a Maryland garnishment runs against an employer, and you cannot name an employer you have not found. As a public-records research firm we locate the debtor’s current workplace through professional employer skip tracing for wage garnishment and proven techniques for finding a person’s current employer, then hand your attorney a verified garnishee. Because the rules differ by jurisdiction, it pairs naturally with our state-by-state wage garnishment guide and Maryland’s own debt-collection statute of limitations. For a legitimate post-judgment matter, a verified employer locate typically comes back within 24 hours.
Our Commitment
We find the employer so your Maryland garnishment can actually run: a verified current workplace and service address for the writ, or a clear answer when the debtor is self-employed or has moved on. Lawful, permissible-purpose locating for attorneys, agencies, and judgment creditors since 2004. The work is done from public records and permissible-purpose data: we never pretext, so nobody here calls a Maryland payroll office posing as the debtor, a bank or a courier, and nobody misrepresents who is asking or why. An employer confirmation is not a consumer report and this firm is not a consumer reporting agency, so it is good for serving a writ and good for nothing else: not a hiring call, not a lease, not a loan, not a policy. We hold no investigator’s license, and a Maryland request that reads as domestic violence, stalking, or harassment rather than judgment enforcement gets more scrutiny at intake and is turned down.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much of a paycheck can a creditor garnish in Maryland?
Only the disposable wages sitting above the exempt floor, and never more than twenty-five percent of disposable earnings. Commercial Law section 15-601.1(b)(1) exempts the greater of seventy-five percent of disposable wages or thirty times the State minimum hourly wage per week. The State minimum is $15.00 an hour, reached January 1, 2024 under Labor and Employment section 3-413(c) on both schedules, so the floor is 30 x $15.00 = $450 a week until the General Assembly amends 3-413. The twenty-five percent ceiling is federal, from 15 U.S.C. section 1673(a); Maryland’s statute contains no percentage cap. The Judiciary’s own example runs $600 gross to $465.50 disposable, exempts $450, and leaves $15.50 garnishable that week.
Do any Maryland counties still follow a different garnishment rule?
Not in the codified statute. Chapter 183 of the 2020 Laws of Maryland (House Bill 365) struck both the old $145-per-week formula and the entire Caroline, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Worcester subsection, effective October 1, 2020, and switched the surviving prong from the federal minimum wage to the State minimum wage. There is one live caveat. Section 2 of that Act applies it only prospectively and expressly not to “any writ of garnishment or writ of execution issued before the effective date,” and because a Maryland garnishment is a continuing lien under section 15-602(a), a writ issued before October 1, 2020 and still withholding today is still governed by the repealed formula.
What statute governs wage garnishment in Maryland?
Commercial Law sections 15-601 through 15-606 are the subtitle. Section 15-601 defines “employee” to include a nonresident and “wages” as all monetary remuneration; 15-601.1 sets the exemption and requires it to be calculated per pay period; 15-602 makes the attachment a continuing lien and voids any waiver of the limits; 15-606 bars discharge for a single indebtedness within a calendar year, on penalty of a fine up to $1,000 or a year’s imprisonment. Maryland Rule 3-646 supplies the District Court writ procedure and the motion practice for challenging what is withheld.
What is a garnishee, and what must they do?
The garnishee is the employer holding the debtor’s wages. Service cannot be by ordinary mail; it must be by sheriff or constable, registered mail with return receipt requested, or a non-party over eighteen. The garnishee then replies to the writ within thirty days of receipt, stating whether the debtor is employed, the rate of pay, and any prior garnishments. Withholding then runs as a continuing lien under section 15-602(a), and the garnishee distributes the month’s withholding to the creditor within fifteen days after the close of the last pay period in that month. Ignoring the writ risks contempt of court plus attorney’s fees and costs; withholding too much risks worse, because under Marshall v. Safeway Labor and Employment section 3-507.2 gives the employee a direct action for up to three times the wage plus attorneys’ fees.
How does a debtor claim an exemption in Maryland?
By filing a motion or exemption claim with the court that issued the writ, stating the legal ground, such as that the withholding exceeds the twenty-five percent ceiling or dips below the statewide exempt floor. The court can hold a hearing and order an adjustment or release. Acting quickly matters because remitted funds are hard to recover.
How long can a wage garnishment last in Maryland?
There is no fixed end date. Wage garnishment is a post-judgment remedy, so the creditor must hold a money judgment first, and once the attachment is levied section 15-602(a) makes it a lien on all attachable wages payable at service and everything that becomes payable afterwards, until the judgment, interest and costs are satisfied. If the debtor leaves the job it terminates ninety days after employment ends, unless the debtor is re-employed there within that period. Behind the writ, the judgment is enforceable for twelve years and renewable, and accrues interest at ten percent per annum under Courts and Judicial Proceedings section 11-107 — six percent on a judgment for rent of residential premises — applied to interest first, then principal, then fees. A low-wage garnishment can run for years without materially reducing the balance.
What income is protected from garnishment in Maryland?
Beyond the wage-exemption floor, certain income is categorically protected, including most Social Security and federal benefits and many public-assistance payments, and medical insurance the employer deducts is exempt in addition to the floor under section 15-601.1(b)(2). Bank accounts run on a separate track, and section 11-504(e) says the exemptions in that section “do not apply to wage attachments.” On an account, section 11-504(b)(5) protects up to $500 automatically and (b)(6) allows an election of up to $6,000 within thirty days — but these are capped at $6,000 combined, not $500 plus $6,000. The exemption cannot be waived: section 15-602(b) makes any waiver of the wage limitations void.
Can you help me find a debtor’s employer for a Maryland garnishment?
Yes. A Maryland garnishment runs against the employer, so we locate the debtor’s current workplace from public records and permissible-purpose databases, verify the garnishee’s legal name and service address, and hand it to your attorney. For a legitimate post-judgment matter, a verified locate typically comes back within 24 hours.
Have the Judgment, Not the Employer?
A Maryland writ of garnishment is only as good as the employer you name on it. We locate the debtor’s current workplace and verify the garnishee so your writ lands, typically within 24 hours. Contact us to get started.
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