New York Wage Garnishment Laws
New York does not call it “wage garnishment” in the statute books at all. It calls it an income execution, and the rules under CPLR 5231 are noticeably more protective of the debtor than the federal floor. A New York creditor cannot simply take a quarter of someone’s check the way the federal cap allows; the statute sets a three-band test capped at ten percent of gross wages, and a low earner’s pay can be off-limits entirely. This page reads CPLR 5231 all the way through — including the 40x middle band, the medical-debt bar, and the ninety-day rule that ends the levy the moment the debtor changes jobs — and explains why none of it starts until you know exactly where the debtor draws a paycheck.
The Short Version
New York calls wage garnishment an income execution, and CPLR 5231 sets no single percentage. It sets a three-band test, printed on every execution: below 30 times the minimum wage nothing may be withheld; between 30x and 40x the ceiling is the excess over 30x, not a percentage; at 40x and above it is 25% of disposable earnings. A 10% of gross income cap sits over all three and is usually what binds. The floor is regional: $510 a week downstate, $480 in the rest of the state. Two further facts decide most files. Medical-debt judgments brought by a licensed hospital or health care professional cannot reach wages at all. And under CPLR 5231(f) the levy dies when the debtor quits or is fired unless they are re-employed within 90 days — a New York wage garnishment does not follow the debtor to the next job. Beating that 90-day clock is what we do: we locate the debtor’s current employer, usually within 24 hours, so the execution names a payer that still issues checks.
Watch: New York Income Execution
How CPLR 5231 caps a wage deduction, and what makes it collectible.
Watch Overview
It’s Called an Income Execution
Why the New York term, not “garnishment,” is the one that matters.
Search New York’s statutes for “wage garnishment” and you will not find a section by that name. The mechanism a judgment creditor uses to reach a debtor’s paycheck is the income execution, governed by CPLR 5231. It is a sequenced procedure rather than a one-step seizure, and the order of operations is what trips up creditors who assume New York works like the federal rules or a neighboring state.
An income execution issues only once you hold a money judgment. The creditor’s attorney prepares it and delivers it to an enforcement officer with jurisdiction over the debtor: a county sheriff almost everywhere, or a city marshal in New York City. That officer does not go straight to the employer — the statute requires service on the judgment debtor first, giving the debtor a chance to pay voluntarily before the employer is ever contacted.
That first-served-on-the-debtor design is deliberate: New York gives the debtor the chance to pay on their own terms and escalates to the workplace only when they do not. It also means the process hinges on identifying where the debtor earns money, because the execution is useless if it names the wrong payer or none at all.
It helps to know what an income execution is not. It is not a hearing the debtor must attend, and it is not a one-time grab of a bank balance. It is a standing instruction, served through an enforcement officer, that attaches to a stream of future payments and keeps deducting the capped installment until the judgment with interest is paid off or the execution is modified or vacated. Because it rides on an ongoing pay relationship, one accurate answer — where does this person currently draw money — separates an execution that collects for months from a piece of paper that comes back unsatisfied.
How Much New York Lets a Creditor Take
Two ceilings, a regional floor, and a middle band almost nobody states.
This is where New York departs sharply from the federal standard. The opening line of CPLR 5231(b) authorises an income execution “for installments therefrom of not more than ten percent” of the money the debtor receives — a hard ceiling of ten percent of gross income. Subdivision (b)(ii) then adds a second ceiling of twenty-five percent of disposable earnings, itself capped by the amount by which disposable earnings exceed the wage floor, “whichever is less.” Because the ceilings are compared and the smallest governs, for most wage earners the binding cap is the ten-percent-of-gross figure, not the federal 25%.
Stating it as “the lesser of 10% or 25%” is where nearly every page on this topic stops, and it is incomplete: between the floor and forty times the minimum wage a third, narrower rule produces a much smaller number. That band is worked through in the next section.
Both terms are defined in the statute, and CPLR 5231(c) is more expansive than creditors expect. Earnings means compensation for personal services “whether denominated as wages, salary, commission, bonus, or otherwise,” and expressly includes periodic payments under a pension or retirement program — so a retiree drawing a monthly pension is receiving earnings here, not merely exempt benefits. Gross income includes “any and all overtime earnings, commissions, and income from trusts” before deductions. Disposable earnings are what remains after “any amounts required by law to be withheld.” That is a narrow subtraction: 401(k) contributions and health premiums are voluntary, so they do not come out first, and a debtor who increases them does not shrink the creditor’s number.
Which Minimum Wage — and Why It Is Not the City’s
On top of those two ceilings sits a floor. The 25%-of-disposable figure applies only to the portion of disposable earnings exceeding thirty times the minimum wage per week. CPLR 5231(b)(i) is specific about which wage: the greater of thirty times the federal minimum hourly wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act, or thirty times “the state minimum hourly wage prescribed in section six hundred fifty-two of the labor law.” Because New York’s rate is far above the federal $7.25, the New York figure controls.
A precision point that is routinely stated wrongly, including in an earlier version of this page. CPLR 5231 contains no local-minimum-wage substitution. It points only at Labor Law § 652, the state rate — which the Legislature sets at different levels by region. That regional variation is the state rate; it is not a city ordinance. Some other states do substitute a locally enacted wage, and importing that framing into New York produces the wrong floor for the roughly fifty counties outside the downstate region.
Per the New York State Department of Labor, the rate as of January 1, 2026 is $17.00 in New York City and in Long Island and Westchester, and $16.00 in the remainder of the state. Thirty times those rates gives a protected weekly floor of $510.00 downstate and $480.00 upstate. Below the floor for the region where the wage is payable, nothing can be deducted at all.
The thirty-dollar gap is not academic. A debtor with $500 in weekly disposable earnings working in Poughkeepsie sits above the $480 upstate floor and can be reached; the identical paycheck in Yonkers sits below the $510 Westchester floor and cannot be touched. Same wage, same judgment, opposite outcomes, decided by which side of a county line the payroll runs through. A creditor who applies the NYC figure statewide writes off collectible upstate debtors; one who applies the upstate figure downstate files executions that return nothing.
CPLR 5231 is also not the whole exemption picture: it closes by providing that nothing in the section “shall be construed to modify, abrogate, impair, or affect any exemption from the satisfaction of a money judgment otherwise granted by law.”
Support Executions Are a Different Instrument
The ten-percent cap is the consumer-and-commercial-judgment rule. An execution enforcing a child or spousal support obligation is not held to it; support runs on its own track under CPLR 5241 and 5242 and the higher federal percentages. That matters here for a reason most creditors have backwards, worked through below: an existing support deduction does not merely compete with an ordinary judgment, it can extinguish it.
The Three-Band Table Printed on Every Execution
CPLR 5231(g) is a lookup, not a multiplication — and the middle band is the one nobody quotes.
CPLR 5231(g) sets out the notice that must appear on every income execution served in New York. Buried in it, under the heading “ILLUSTRATIONS REGARDING EARNINGS,” is a table that tells the debtor and the employer exactly what to deduct. It has three rows, not two, and the arithmetic changes at each one: below 30 times the minimum wage, between 30 and 40 times the minimum wage, and 40 times or more.
| If weekly disposable earnings are | Amount to deduct | Downstate ($17.00) | Upstate ($16.00) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30x the minimum wage or less | No payment or deduction allowed. | $510.00 or less | $480.00 or less |
| More than 30x and less than 40x | The lesser of: the excess over 30x in disposable earnings, or 10% of gross earnings. The missing band | $510.01 to $679.99 | $480.01 to $639.99 |
| 40x the minimum wage or more | The lesser of: 25% of disposable earnings, or 10% of gross earnings. | $680.00 and up | $640.00 and up |
The middle row matters because it is not a percentage of anything. For a debtor just above the floor, the ceiling is the raw dollar excess over thirty times the minimum wage: a debtor $30 above the floor exposes $30 a week, not 25% of their disposable pay.
Why the Statute Draws the Line at 40x
The 40x threshold is not arbitrary. Subdivision (b)(ii) caps the deduction at the lesser of 25% of disposable earnings or the excess over 30x the minimum wage, and those two quantities are equal at exactly forty times the wage: at 40x, the excess over 30x is 10x, and 25% of 40x is also 10x. Below that point the excess is smaller and governs; above it, the 25% figure is smaller and governs. Forty times the minimum wage is simply the crossover, and (g) prints it as a band so a payroll clerk never has to derive it.
One wrinkle worth stating rather than glossing: the (g) illustration expresses its bands as multiples of the federal minimum wage, while the operative caps in (b)(i) and (b)(ii) run on the greater of the federal or New York rate. In New York the state rate is always greater, so the band edges compute off $17.00 or $16.00, not $7.25. A creditor who reads the printed form literally will overstate what may be withheld by a wide margin.
Three Debtors, Worked Through
Band two, downstate. A Brooklyn employee grosses $850 a week with $640 in disposable earnings. The floor is 30 x $17.00 = $510 and the crossover is 40 x $17.00 = $680, so $640 lands in the middle band. The excess over 30x is $640 − $510 = $130. Ten percent of gross is $85. The lesser governs, so the execution yields $85 a week — not the $160 that 25% of disposable would suggest.
Band three, upstate. A Rochester employee grosses $1,200 a week with $900 in disposable earnings. The upstate crossover is 40 x $16.00 = $640, so $900 sits in the top band. Twenty-five percent of disposable is $225; ten percent of gross is $120. The execution yields $120 a week. This is the ordinary case, and it is why the ten-percent-of-gross ceiling is the one that usually binds.
Band one. A part-time employee anywhere in the state with $470 in weekly disposable earnings is below both regional floors. The deduction is zero, and it stays zero however large the judgment is. Ten percent of gross would have been a real number; the floor overrides it.
Run these before you spend on enforcement, not after. Band two versus band three on an otherwise identical file is often the difference between an execution worth serving and one that will not cover the officer’s fee.
New York vs. the Federal Cap
Why a New York income execution reaches less than the federal default.
| Issue | Federal Default (15 USC 1673) | New York (CPLR 5231) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary cap | 25% of disposable earnings. | The lesser of 10% of gross income or 25% of disposable earnings. |
| Usual binding limit | 25% of disposable. | 10% of gross More protective |
| Number of bands | Two: below the floor, and above it. | Three; the 30x-to-40x band pays the excess over 30x, not a percentage. |
| Protected weekly floor | 30x the federal minimum wage ($7.25), or $217.50. | 30x the greater rate: $510.00 downstate, $480.00 upstate. |
| Low earner below the floor | No deduction. | No deduction, computed off the higher New York rate. |
| Debtor served first | Not required federally. | Yes; debtor gets a 20-day window before the employer is served. |
| Competing creditors | Federal cap is an aggregate ceiling. | Paid in the order the executions reached the officer. |
| Existing support deduction | Counts toward the same aggregate ceiling. | Subtracted from the 25% figure; at 25% or more, the ordinary creditor takes nothing. |
| Medical-debt judgments | Garnishable like any other debt. | No amount may be imposed at all. No federal analogue |
| Debtor changes jobs | Order generally lapses; no fixed window. | Levy ineffective, execution returned unless re-employed within 90 days. |
The federal Consumer Credit Protection Act at 15 USC 1673 sets the national ceiling, but states are free to be more protective, and New York is. None of these protections, however, change the threshold question for a creditor: the income execution has to name a real, current employer, or there is no paycheck for any percentage to apply to.
The 20-Day Sequence Under CPLR 5231
Debtor first, employer second, in a fixed order.
The order of service is the heart of a New York income execution, and CPLR 5231(d) sets the clock precisely: “within twenty days after an income execution is delivered to the sheriff,” the sheriff must serve a copy on the judgment debtor, who then has the option to begin paying the installments directly. If the debtor pays as required, the employer is never involved.
Two details in (d) are worth getting right, because both are places a levy quietly fails. Service may be made in the same manner as a summons or, in the alternative, by certified mail return receipt requested — but only if an additional copy also goes by regular mail. Certified mail alone does not complete service. And the twenty-day figure is not universal: where the creditor issues an amended execution because the applicable interest rate has changed under CPLR 5004, the statute gives the sheriff forty-five days instead.
CPLR 5231(e) governs what happens next. If the debtor fails to pay installments for twenty days, or the sheriff cannot serve the debtor within twenty days of delivery, the officer levies by serving the execution on the person or entity paying the debtor. That copy must be indorsed to indicate the extent to which paid installments have already satisfied the judgment — an unindorsed second service tells the employer to withhold against a balance the debtor may have partly paid down.
Priority Runs From Delivery, Not From Service
Where two executions target the same payer, CPLR 5231(j) satisfies them “in the order in which the executions are delivered to an officer authorized to levy.” Priority is fixed when the execution reaches the sheriff or marshal, not when the employer is finally served weeks later — so the creditor who identifies the payer and delivers first outranks one whose paperwork happens to reach the employer sooner. The aggregate still cannot break the ten- and twenty-five-percent ceilings, so a second consumer execution collects little until the first is satisfied.
Subdivision (j) also supplies a remedy that is overlooked when an execution comes back empty: if it is returned unsatisfied because the sheriff cannot find the payer within the county, it “may be delivered to the sheriff of any county in which such person or entity has an office or place of business.” A returned execution is often a venue problem rather than a dead file.
Public Payrolls: Fifteen Days, Two Dollars, and Albany
CPLR 5231(h) treats public payrolls differently in three ways a standard filing gets wrong. A levy on a municipal or public benefit corporation, or a board of education, is not effective on service — it “shall be effective fifteen days after such service.” The execution must specify the debtor’s title or position and the bureau, office, department or subdivision employing them, a higher identification standard than naming a private company. And the entity served is “entitled to a fee of two dollars.”
State employment is stricter again. A levy on money payable by a department of the state must be made by serving the head of that department at its office in Albany; where money is payable on the comptroller’s warrant, service goes to the state department of audit and control at its Albany office. Serving the regional office the debtor actually reports to does not effect a levy at all.
Sheriff or NYC Marshal
Across most of the state the enforcement officer is the county sheriff; inside the five boroughs it is typically a New York City marshal. The execution must be delivered to an officer with jurisdiction over the place the levy will land, and the officer’s fee comes out of the recovery. Delivering to an officer with no reach over the debtor’s actual workplace is a quiet way a valid judgment produces nothing.
What the Employer Must Do
Once served, the obligation is mandatory. The employer must withhold the capped amount each pay period, remit it to the officer, and continue until the judgment is satisfied or the execution is lifted. An employer that ignores a valid execution can be held personally liable for the amounts it failed to withhold. New York also forbids firing an employee because a single judgment results in an income execution, mirroring the federal anti-discharge protection. For the creditor, that is precisely why naming the correct payer is valuable: a verified payer is one the law compels to pay.
Modification Runs Both Ways
Under CPLR 5231(i) and the catch-all relief provision CPLR 5240, a debtor may ask the court to modify, suspend, or limit an execution imposing undue hardship, or assert the income is exempt under CPLR 5205. What almost no treatment mentions is that (i) is symmetrical: “at any time, the judgment creditor or the judgment debtor may move … for an order modifying an income execution.” The printed notice describes only the debtor’s right, which is presumably why the creditor’s is so rarely used — but a creditor who learns the debtor’s income has changed, or a support order has ended, can move on the existing execution rather than start over.
Two Judgments That Reach No Wages At All
Before you compute a percentage, check whether the percentage applies.
Medical-Debt Judgments: CPLR 5231(b)(iv)
The fourth proviso in CPLR 5231(b) is short, absolute, and effectively absent from every competing page on this topic. It states that “no amount shall be imposed in judgments arising from a medical debt action brought by a hospital licensed under article twenty-eight of the public health law or a health care professional authorized under title eight of the education law.” There is no percentage, no floor, no band. The income execution simply cannot reach wages.
State the conditions exactly, because they are narrower than “medical debt is exempt.” The bar turns on who brought the action, not on what the debt was for: the plaintiff must be an Article 28 licensed hospital or a Title VIII authorized health care professional. A hospital bill sued on by a debt buyer, or a credit-card judgment on a card that funded a procedure, does not obviously sit inside that text — a question to settle from the judgment caption rather than the debtor’s account history.
For a creditor the instruction is to read the caption before spending anything. A medical creditor holding a New York judgment in its own name has no wage remedy at all, and must plan around assets and accounts from the outset rather than after an execution returns empty. As with any carve-out this consequential, confirm the operative text before relying on it in a filing.
The Support Offset That Zeroes an Ordinary Creditor: CPLR 5231(b)(iii)
The better-known point about support is that a support execution can take more than an ordinary judgment can. The consequence creditors almost never plan for is the inverse. Where the debtor’s earnings are already subject to deductions for alimony, support or maintenance under CPLR 5241 or 5242, subdivision (b)(iii) provides that the amount withheld under an ordinary income execution “shall not exceed the amount by which twenty-five percent of the disposable earnings … exceeds the amount deducted” for support. The support deduction is not something the ordinary creditor shares the paycheck with. It is subtracted from the ordinary creditor’s ceiling.
Take the Rochester debtor from the band-three example: $1,200 gross, $900 disposable. Twenty-five percent of disposable is $225. If an existing support order is already deducting $180 a week, the ordinary creditor’s ceiling becomes $225 − $180 = $45, before the separate ten-percent-of-gross ceiling is even applied. If the support deduction is $225 or more, the ceiling is $0, and the execution collects nothing at all while that order remains in force.
The mandatory notice in CPLR 5231(g) says so in terms, in capitals, on the face of the document: if deductions under orders for alimony, support or maintenance “equal or exceed twenty-five percent (25%) of the judgment debtor’s disposable earnings, no deduction can be made” under the income execution. This is worth checking before filing rather than discovering from a remittance of zero — and it is worth re-checking later, because subdivision (i) lets a creditor move to modify when a support order ends.
What an Income Execution Cannot Touch
The wage floor is only part of New York’s exemption picture.
Beyond the minimum-wage floor inside CPLR 5231, New York’s broader exemption statute, CPLR 5205, shields whole categories of income and property from enforcement. Certain income is exempt regardless of amount: Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, public assistance, unemployment and workers’ compensation, veterans’ benefits, and most pensions and retirement funds. Child support and spousal support a debtor receives are also protected.
The Ninety Percent Rule Is Its Own Statute
New York’s ninety-percent income exemption is frequently described — including in an earlier version of this page — as a by-product of the income-execution cap. It is not. It is CPLR 5205(d)(2), a free-standing exemption with two features the CPLR 5231 cap does not have, and both of them cut against the creditor.
First, its reach is retrospective. It exempts “ninety per cent of the earnings of the judgment debtor for his personal services rendered within sixty days before, and at any time after, an income execution is delivered to the sheriff.” The CPLR 5231 cap operates only forward from service; 5205(d)(2) reaches back sixty days, so earnings accrued for work done before the execution existed carry the exemption with them.
Second, it is not absolute. All of CPLR 5205(d) is prefaced by an exception: the listed income is exempt “except such part as a court determines to be unnecessary for the reasonable requirements of the judgment debtor and his dependents.” That discretionary carve-out has no counterpart anywhere in CPLR 5231. It is a motion rather than a right, but it means the ninety-percent figure is a starting position a court may adjust, not a hard ceiling.
Keep the two authorities separate when arguing about them. Wage-type exemptions live in CPLR 5205(d); the property side of the same statute — homestead tiers, vehicle and tools-of-trade allowances, and the rest of what else New York protects from a money judgment — runs on different figures entirely. A debtor living wholly on exempt Social Security has income that cannot be reached at all, while the same debtor’s job at a new employer is fully subject to the execution.
A Paycheck Is Not a Bank Account
Different instrument, different statute, different floor — and a different page.
A common conceptual error is treating wages and bank balances as one target. They are not, and nothing on this page transfers. Wages are reached by an income execution under CPLR 5231, served on the payer and paid out of future earnings period by period. A bank balance is reached by a restraining notice under CPLR 5222 or a levy under CPLR 5232, served on the bank, freezing money already sitting there.
The protective floors do not resemble each other either. The wage floor is thirty times the minimum wage per week. The account floor comes from the Exempt Income Protection Act at CPLR 5222-a, runs on a different multiple entirely, and is a lump sum shielded automatically from restraint rather than a weekly test, with its own exemption-notice sequence. Applying the 30x figure to an account, or the EIPA figure to a paycheck, is wrong by an order of magnitude.
Because that machinery is a separate subject, it is treated in full — EIPA arithmetic, the exemption-claim timetable, restraining notices, information subpoenas, turnover, judgment interest and the twenty-year clock — in our New York judgment collection guide rather than duplicated here.
Enforcement Beyond the Paycheck
When wages are thin, New York gives a creditor a long runway and other targets.
If wages are exempt or unreachable, a New York judgment is far from spent: the sheriff can levy on non-exempt personal property under CPLR 5232, and docketing with the county clerk creates a lien on real estate. Under CPLR 5203(a) that docketing defeats a later transfer of the debtor’s interest “until ten years after filing of the judgment-roll.” These remedies belong to the judgment-collection guide rather than to this page.
The time limit is worth stating precisely, because it is usually stated loosely. A judgment does not “expire” at twenty years. CPLR 211(b) provides that a money judgment is presumed paid and satisfied after twenty years “from the time when the party recovering it was first entitled to enforce it,” and that the presumption is conclusive except against a debtor who, within those twenty years, makes a payment or gives a signed written acknowledgment. The horizon is the same length; the mechanism is a presumption running from first enforceability, not a deadline running from entry.
That horizon is why a debtor with no reachable paycheck today is worth re-checking later. People change jobs, open accounts and buy property, and each change can convert a dormant judgment into a collectible one.
The Levy Has an Expiry Date
CPLR 5231(f): a New York wage garnishment does not follow the debtor to the next job.
Everything above describes how much an income execution collects. This is the provision that decides how long it collects anything at all, and it is the single most consequential sentence in CPLR 5231 for a creditor. It is also, as far as we can measure, absent from every page currently competing for this topic.
Subdivision (f) sets out the payer’s withholding duty and then adds this: if the money due to the judgment debtor consists of salary or wages and “his employment is terminated by resignation or dismissal at any time after service of the execution, the levy shall thereafter be ineffective, and the execution shall be returned, unless the debtor is reinstated or re-employed within ninety days after such termination.”
Read that carefully, because it does not say what creditors assume. The levy does not shrink when the debtor leaves, does not pause, and does not transfer to the next employer. It becomes ineffective and the execution is returned — resignation and dismissal alike. The only thing that revives it is reinstatement or re-employment with that same payer inside ninety days. A debtor who takes a new job across the street is, as far as your existing execution is concerned, unreachable.
What That Means Operationally
The instrument is perishable, and a job change ends it rather than reducing it. Collecting again means a fresh execution naming the new payer, delivered to an officer with reach over it — a new filing, not an amendment.
Ninety days runs whether or not you know it started. Nothing obliges anyone to tell the creditor the debtor has left; the first signal is usually a remittance that stops arriving, by which point part of the window is gone.
Priority resets with it. Because CPLR 5231(j) fixes priority by the order executions reach the officer, whoever identifies the new payer and delivers first takes first position on that paycheck regardless of who ranked first at the old employer. A job change rebuilds the queue, and it is the one moment a junior creditor can move to the front.
That is the honest reason employer identification sits at the commercial centre of New York judgment enforcement rather than being a marketing add-on: the statute itself puts the paycheck on a ninety-day timer. The method of finding a payer is a separate subject, covered in our explainer on how a creditor finds an employer for wage garnishment and the walk-through on finding someone’s current employer. What CPLR 5231(f) supplies is the reason the answer has a shelf life.
Why a New York Judgment Sits Uncollected
The cap is rarely the problem. The missing employer usually is.
No Known Employer
You hold a valid New York judgment but have no idea where the debtor draws a paycheck, so the income execution has nowhere to land.
The 90-Day Window Closed
Employment ended after service, so under CPLR 5231(f) the levy became ineffective and the execution was returned. It does not transfer to the new payer.
The Payer Was Never Identified
CPLR 5231(b) reaches money from any source, so 1099 or LLC income is not beyond it. What defeats the execution is not naming the entity that actually pays them.
Wrong Sheriff or Marshal
The execution is delivered to an officer without jurisdiction over the current employer, and the 20-day clock never produces a levy.
Outranked at Delivery
Another execution reached the enforcement officer first. Under CPLR 5231(j) priority runs from delivery, so yours waits however quickly the employer was served.
Only Exempt Income
The debtor lives on Social Security or other CPLR 5205 exempt income, so the time to learn that is before you spend on enforcement, not after.
From Judgment to Collectible Execution
How we turn a New York judgment into something the sheriff can act on.
Send the Judgment Details
The debtor’s name, last known address, date of birth, and any prior employer or business names become the starting point for the search.
We Locate the Employer
A current employer and place of work are rebuilt from public records and licensed databases, cross-checked against known associates and prior filings.
We Verify and Flag Income Type
We confirm the employer and surface signals of W-2 versus 1099 or self-employment, so your execution targets the right income source.
You File the Income Execution
Your attorney delivers the CPLR 5231 execution to the proper sheriff or marshal, naming a verified current employer that the levy can actually reach.
Who We Help in New York
We find the employer; you run the income execution.
New York Judgment Holders
A payer the 5231 levy can name
Creditors' Counsel
Verified payer before delivery
Self-Filed Judgment Winners
Small-claims wins, no attorney
Landlords After Eviction
Money judgment on unpaid rent
Support Obligees
Locating an obligor’s payer
Commercial Claimants
Trade and contract judgments
Whatever brought you the judgment, the New York income execution stalls at the same wall: you cannot levy on a paycheck you cannot find. We close that gap through lawful skip tracing, locating the debtor’s current employer so your execution names a real income source. Where the debtor has left the state entirely, the broader survey of wage garnishment laws by state is the place to start, because the caps, the floors, and the job-change rules all change at the border. For a legitimate judgment-enforcement matter, a verified employer locate typically comes back within 24 hours.
How that work is done matters as much as the result. Everything we run comes from public records and lawfully licensed data sources. We do not pretext. Nobody here telephones an employer, a payroll department, or the debtor under a false identity or invented reason, and nobody misrepresents who is asking or why — which is the ordinary illegal shortcut to confirming where someone works, and the reason a locate that cannot be sourced to a record is worth nothing to you in a filing anyway. We are a public-records research firm. We are also not a consumer reporting agency, and an employer locate is not a consumer report: it exists to point a CPLR 5231 execution at a real payroll, and it cannot be used to screen a job applicant, a rental applicant, or anyone’s credit or insurance eligibility. Locating work is also where the wrong request turns up, so a matter that reads less like judgment enforcement and more like an attempt to find a former partner gets more scrutiny at intake, not less; domestic violence, stalking, and harassment are the specific risks we ask about, and we want to see the judgment before anything is run. Where those risks are present, or where the request looks like a way to reach someone who has moved away from the person asking, we decline it and say why. There is no judgment and no permissible purpose that changes that answer.
What a New York Employer Locate Delivers
We find the employer so your New York income execution can actually collect: a verified current workplace, with income-type signals flagged, delivered for a legitimate judgment-enforcement matter. Lawful, public-records research for creditors, attorneys, and small-claims winners since 2004.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much of a paycheck can a creditor garnish in New York?
CPLR 5231 sets three bands, not one percentage. Below 30 times the minimum wage in weekly disposable earnings, nothing may be withheld. Between 30x and 40x the ceiling is the excess over 30x. At 40x and above it is 25% of disposable earnings. A 10%-of-gross cap sits over all three and is usually what binds, which is more protective than the federal 25% default.
What happens to a New York wage garnishment if the debtor changes jobs?
It ends. Under CPLR 5231(f), if employment is terminated by resignation or dismissal after service, the levy becomes ineffective and the execution is returned, unless the debtor is reinstated or re-employed within 90 days. It does not follow the debtor to a new employer; collecting again requires a fresh execution naming the new payer.
Is there a minimum income that cannot be garnished in New York?
Yes, and it varies by region. CPLR 5231(b)(i) uses the greater of 30 times the federal minimum wage or 30 times the state rate set by Labor Law section 652. As of January 1, 2026 that rate is $17.00 in New York City, Long Island and Westchester and $16.00 in the remainder of the state, giving weekly floors of $510.00 and $480.00. Those are the statute’s last fixed steps: from January 1, 2027 Labor Law section 652 sets the minimum wage by an annual consumer-price-index adjustment that the Commissioner of Labor publishes by October 1 to take effect the following January 1, so both weekly floors move each January.
Can a medical debt judgment garnish wages in New York?
No. CPLR 5231(b)(iv) provides that no amount shall be imposed in judgments arising from a medical debt action brought by a hospital licensed under article 28 of the public health law or a health care professional authorized under title 8 of the education law. The bar turns on who brought the action, not on what the debt was for.
Does the employer get served first?
No. Under CPLR 5231(d) the sheriff or city marshal serves the debtor within 20 days of delivery, as a summons or by certified mail return receipt requested with an additional copy by regular mail. Only if the debtor fails to pay for 20 days, or cannot be served in that time, does the officer levy on the payer under 5231(e).
What happens if there are two garnishments at once?
CPLR 5231(j) satisfies competing executions in the order they were delivered to an officer authorized to levy, not the order the employer was served. The total still cannot exceed the 10%-of-gross and 25%-of-disposable ceilings. An existing support deduction is different: under 5231(b)(iii) it is subtracted from the 25% figure, and at 25% or more the ordinary creditor takes nothing.
What income is exempt from a New York income execution?
Under CPLR 5205, Social Security, SSI, public assistance, unemployment and workers’ compensation, veterans’ benefits and most pensions are exempt regardless of amount, as is support the debtor receives. Separately, CPLR 5205(d)(2) exempts 90% of earnings for personal services rendered within 60 days before and any time after the execution is delivered.
Can you tell me where a New York judgment debtor works?
We locate a debtor’s current payer through lawful public-records research and licensed data sources for legitimate judgment-enforcement purposes, then flag whether the income looks like W-2, 1099 or self-employment. We do not pretext, and we are not a consumer reporting agency, so a locate cannot be used for employment, tenant or credit screening.
Holding a Judgment But No Employer to Levy?
A New York income execution is only as good as the payer it names, and CPLR 5231(f) puts a ninety-day clock on finding the next one. We locate the debtor’s current employer so your levy can actually collect, typically within 24 hours. Contact us to get started.
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