Colorado Wage Garnishment Laws

Take a Denver-area worker with $1,000 in weekly disposable earnings. Prong one, 20 percent of that, is $200. Prong two, the amount above the $606.40 floor, is $393.60. The statute garnishes the lesser of the two, so the creditor reaches $200 that week and the debtor keeps $800. For a lower earner with $700 in disposable weekly earnings, prong one is $140 while prong two is only $93.60, so the creditor takes the smaller figure of $93.60. And for anyone at or under $606.40, prong two is zero and nothing can be taken.

Two Colorado-specific wrinkles matter beyond the basic formula. First, C.R.S. 13-54-104 contains an express hardship exemption: a judgment debtor can ask the court to shield a greater portion, or all, of their earnings by showing the reduction is necessary to support the debtor or the debtor’s dependents. This is broader than a fixed head-of-household percentage; it is fact-driven and decided by the court. Second, certain debts override the ordinary 20 percent cap entirely, and Colorado writes those ceilings out in numbers rather than leaving them to federal law. Under C.R.S. 13-54-104 (3)(b), a garnishment enforcing a support order may reach 50 percent of disposable earnings where the debtor is supporting another spouse or dependent child and 60 percent where the debtor is not, and each of those figures rises to 55 and 65 percent to the extent the arrears predate the twelve-week period ending with the workweek being garnished. Court-ordered support, bankruptcy court orders under chapter 13, and any state or federal tax debt are the three carve-outs the statute lists. Colorado also sets a second, less familiar cap in subsection (2)(a)(II): a judgment for fraudulently obtained public assistance is collected at the lesser of 35 percent of disposable earnings or the amount those earnings exceed 30 times the minimum wage, a different percentage and a different multiplier from the ordinary rule. And under subsection (3)(b)(III) a debtor who is totally and permanently disabled, and who shows that at least 75 percent of income comes from disability benefits, may ask the court to set a support garnishment below even those ceilings.

If the Debtor Is Not Paid Weekly

The statute is written per workweek, but almost nobody in Colorado is paid that way, and C.R.S. 13-54-104 (2)(b) simply directs that an equivalent multiple be used for any other pay period. The equivalents are printed on the exemption chart that appears on CRCP Form 27, the Calculation of the Amount of Exempt Earnings, which is the worksheet the employer actually fills in. That chart states the rule as an exemption rather than as a cap, and it is worth reading in that direction, because it is the direction the payroll department reads it: the amount exempt is the greater of the wage multiple or 80 percent of disposable earnings. Eighty percent exempt is the same thing as 20 percent collectible, so the two framings agree.

The multiples are 40 times the minimum hourly wage weekly, 80 times bi-weekly, 86.67 times semi-monthly, and 173.3 times monthly. Run against Colorado’s 2026 minimum wage of $15.16, the protected floor is $606.40 a week, $1,212.80 every two weeks, $1,313.92 twice a month, and $2,627.23 a month. Those are the numbers a creditor should test a prospective garnishment against before paying to serve one, because a debtor on a semi-monthly payroll whose disposable earnings run near $1,300 a period will yield almost nothing on a writ that looks collectible when the same wage is mentally converted to a weekly figure. The chart also notes what the statute means by the minimum hourly wage: the state or federal figure, whichever is greater, which in Colorado is always the state one.

What “Disposable Earnings” Actually Includes

The whole formula turns on the definition of disposable earnings, and Colorado defines it narrowly in the debtor’s favor. Disposable earnings are gross compensation for personal services, whether called wages, salary, commission, or bonus, minus only the deductions required by law. Those required deductions are federal and state income tax withholding, Social Security and Medicare (FICA), and, since House Bill 19-1189, the amount the worker pays for any health insurance the employer provides. Voluntary deductions do not reduce the base. A 401(k) contribution, a union due, a charitable payroll deduction, or a car-loan payment routed through payroll is not subtracted, so a debtor cannot shrink the garnishable amount simply by diverting more pay into voluntary withholdings. Because the health-insurance carve-out is genuinely a required-style deduction under the 2019 reform, it is the one optional-looking item that does come out first, which is why two workers with identical gross pay can have different disposable earnings depending on whether they carry the employer health plan.

Petitioning the Court for a Larger Exemption

The hardship exemption is not automatic; the debtor has to raise it. A judgment debtor who believes the standard 20 percent leaves too little to live on can file a written objection or motion with the court and ask the judge to reduce or eliminate the withholding. Colorado courts weigh the request against the debtor’s actual cost of necessities, and the factors a judge typically considers include rent or mortgage, utilities, food, medical and dental costs, child care, clothing, education, transportation, and any court-ordered support the debtor already pays. The point is whether the garnishment would deprive the debtor or the debtor’s dependents of the basic necessities of life. Because the analysis is individualized, two debtors earning the same wage can receive very different relief, and the burden is on the debtor to document the budget. A creditor, for its part, should expect that a thin-margin debtor may shrink the collectible amount this way, which is one more reason the value of a writ lies in serving it on a debtor who actually has reachable income.

Two details of that process are checkable, are fixed by statute, and are missing from most Colorado summaries. The first is the proof window. C.R.S. 13-54-104 (2)(a)(I)(D) tells the court to decide the question on “proof of such expenses incurred during the sixty days prior to the hearing,” so the budget a debtor has to document is the last sixty days, not a typical month or a projection. The second is that the hardship objection is the one objection a Colorado debtor may raise without first conferring with the garnishee; the same subsection says so expressly and routes the debtor straight to a hearing under C.R.S. 13-54.5-109 (1)(a). Both grounds live on the same court form, CRCP Form 28, the Objection to Calculation of the Amount of Exempt Earnings, whose title now carries the statutory subsection in its heading and which offers three boxes: that the employer’s arithmetic is wrong, that the money garnished is a wholly exempt pension, retirement, deferred-compensation or insurance payment, or that a greater portion should be exempt to support the debtor’s family.

The Two Objection Clocks, and the One Most People Miss

Colorado runs two different objection deadlines and they are easy to confuse, which is why the generic advice that “you have 14 days to object” is wrong about half the time. On a continuing wage garnishment, C.R.S. 13-54.5-108 (1)(a) gives the debtor seven days from receiving the copy of the writ to resolve a disputed calculation by agreement with the employer, and during that week the employer is forbidden to tender anything to the court or the creditor. Only if that good-faith effort fails may a written objection be filed with the clerk, and a copy must go to the creditor or its attorney by certified mail, return receipt requested. The fourteen-day deadline everyone quotes is the other one: C.R.S. 13-54.5-108 (1)(b) covers property other than earnings, such as a bank account, and runs from service of the notice of exemption and pending levy.

Once something is filed, the clock swings back toward the debtor. Filing an objection or a claim of exemption stays any further disposition of the money under C.R.S. 13-54.5-108 (2). The court must set the hearing not more than fourteen days after filing under C.R.S. 13-54.5-109 (1)(a), and if the exempt amount was miscalculated the court orders the over-garnished earnings returned to the debtor within seven days. And a debtor who blew the original deadline is not finished: C.R.S. 13-54.5-108 (3) allows a late motion at any time within 182 days of receiving the writ on a showing of mistake, accident, surprise, irregularity in the proceedings, newly discovered evidence, or events outside the debtor’s control. For a creditor, the practical reading is that money withheld in the first weeks of a Colorado writ is not money in hand, and that an accurate writ served on the right garnishee is the cheapest way to keep it uncontested.

The Garnishee’s Duties and the Answer Clock

Once the writ is served, the burden shifts to the employer, who is the garnishee. The employer must calculate the exempt and non-exempt portions of each affected paycheck, begin withholding the non-exempt amount, and answer under oath. This is the part of Colorado practice most often described from the pre-2019 rulebook, so it is worth stating from the current one: House Bill 19-1189 repealed and reenacted C.R.S. 13-54.5-105 in its entirety, and the old answer deadlines went with it. There is no forty-two-day answer window in Colorado law today; that phrase appears nowhere in Article 54.5.

What the current writ requires is a sequence of three clocks. Within 7 days of service, CRCP Form 26 directs the garnishee to answer the questions on the writ under oath, file those answers with the Clerk of Court and mail a completed copy to the judgment creditor or its attorney; both, not one or the other. In that same seven days, C.R.S. 13-54.5-105 (5)(a) requires the garnishee to tell the creditor if the named person is not its employee, or if the writ is missing required information. Withholding then begins on the first payday that falls at least 21 days after service under subsection (6), or the first qualifying payday after a prior writ expires. Separately, the statutory Notice of Garnishment the employer hands the worker states that money comes out beginning with the first payday at least 14 days after that notice is sent. Once withholding starts, Form 26 sets the remittance rhythm: pay the non-exempt earnings over no less than 7 nor more than 14 days after each time the debtor is paid, with a copy of the Form 27 calculation attached to every payment. That seven-to-fourteen-day window is a payment clock, not an answer clock, and conflating the two is the most common error in Colorado garnishment write-ups.

The seven-day non-employee report deserves more attention than it gets, because it is where a bad writ dies. A creditor who serves last year’s employer does not find out at the first payday; the garnishee is obliged to say so inside a week, and the creditor has then spent a $45 filing fee and a service fee to learn that the writ has no target. Form 26 also warns the garnishee that failing to answer may result in the entry of a default against it, which is why an employer that has been served takes the deadline seriously and why the writ has to name the correct legal employer entity in the first place: the obligation, and the exposure, fall on whoever is actually served.

Colorado handles wage garnishment through a writ of continuing garnishment under C.R.S. Article 54.5 of Title 13. Unlike a one-time levy, the writ creates a lien on the debtor’s earnings that operates for 182 days from service, capturing each pay period in that window. After 182 days the writ expires and the creditor must issue a fresh one to keep collecting, which means an unpaid balance on a long judgment is collected in repeated 182-day cycles. One older wrinkle survives on the form itself: line 1(a) of CRCP Form 26 is a checkbox offering 91 days for a judgment entered before August 8, 2001 and 182 days for one entered on or after that date, so a creditor reviving a genuinely old Colorado judgment is working a half-length writ. Continuing garnishment also reaches only individuals. C.R.S. 13-54.5-102 (3) confines it to the earnings of a judgment debtor who is a natural person; when the debtor is a company, the creditor uses Form 32 instead.

The garnishee is the employer, and the writ is only valid against the employer actually named and served. The employer must answer the writ, begin withholding the calculated amount, and remit it to the court or creditor. If a second creditor serves a writ while one is already running, Colorado law sets a priority order, so timing matters. The lien ends early if the judgment is satisfied, vacated, or modified, if the debtor leaves that employer, or if the parties file a written suspension agreement with the court. The practical consequence of all of this is simple: the entire machinery depends on naming the debtor’s current employer. Serve last year’s employer and the writ withholds nothing.

When More Than One Writ Is in Line

Colorado resolves competing garnishments by a strict priority rule under C.R.S. 13-54.5-104, and the order is decided by the time of service on the garnishee, not by when the judgment was entered. The first writ served runs its full 182 days first; a second creditor’s writ does not begin its own 182-day clock until the higher-priority writ expires. In practice this means a junior creditor can wait the better part of a year before collecting a dollar, which is exactly why getting a writ served quickly, and served on the right employer, has real value. Two categories jump the line regardless of service order: a continuing garnishment for child support takes priority over any other continuing garnishment, and a notice of income assignment for support outranks every garnishment, attachment, or lien. So a debtor already paying support through an income assignment may have little or no room left under the 20 percent cap for an ordinary creditor, even with a valid writ in hand.

There is also a renewal discipline most self-represented creditors miss. Because the lien lapses at day 182, a creditor who wants uninterrupted collection has to issue and serve a fresh writ before the old one expires, and that fresh writ is only as good as the employer name on it. If the debtor changed jobs anywhere inside that 182-day window, the renewal writ has to carry the new employer, not a stale one carried forward out of habit. Each renewal cycle is, in effect, another moment where the current-employer question has to be answered correctly.

The Paperwork, by Form Number

Colorado garnishment runs on a small, fixed set of numbered court forms, and knowing them by number is most of the procedural battle. The wage writ itself is CRCP Form 26, the Writ of Continuing Garnishment; the creditor fills in lines 1 through 5, signs in front of a notary or court clerk, files it, pays the fee, and the clerk signs and issues it back. Service is a package, not a single document: two copies of Form 26, two blank copies of Form 27, the Calculation of the Amount of Exempt Earnings, and one blank copy of Form 28, the Objection to that calculation, all delivered to the garnishee by personal service. A bank account is a different instrument entirely, Form 29, the Writ of Garnishment with Notice of Exemption and Pending Levy, answered by the debtor on Form 30, the Claim of Exemption. Around those sit the judgment-collection forms: JDF 82, the Colorado Judicial Branch’s own instructions for collecting on a judgment; JDF 105 and JDF 108, the pattern interrogatories that compel a debtor to disclose where they work; and JDF 111, the Satisfaction of Judgment filed when the balance is paid. The full set, with the current revision dates, is published on the Colorado Judicial Branch garnishment of wages page.

The fees are modest and published. Issuing a writ of garnishment costs $45.00; a transcript of judgment for recording a lien is $25.00; a writ of execution is $45.00; filing the satisfaction of judgment is $20.00; and setting a hearing on interrogatories is $70.00, per the schedule in JDF 82. A creditor who cannot pay can ask for a waiver on JDF 205 and JDF 206. The economics are what make the employer question decisive rather than academic: the filing fee is small in isolation and ruinous in repetition, and a creditor who serves three wrong employers across a year has spent more on process servers than a correct writ would have collected in its first month.

Two Colorado Limits a Creditor Should Price In

Two provisions restrict what a Colorado writ can actually deliver, and neither is obvious from the percentage. The first is tips. House Bill 19-1189 added C.R.S. 13-54.5-102 (2.5), which states that a garnishee is not required to collect, possess, or control the judgment debtor’s tips, and that tips are not owed by a garnishee to a judgment creditor. In a state where the tipped minimum wage sits at $12.14 an hour and a large share of restaurant and hospitality pay arrives as tips rather than as payroll, a writ served on a busy Denver restaurant may reach a genuinely small slice of what the debtor takes home, entirely lawfully. The second is the anti-retaliation rule, which matters to a creditor because it removes a bargaining lever people sometimes assume exists. C.R.S. 13-54.5-110 forbids an employer to discharge an employee because a creditor has garnished or tried to garnish their wages; an employee fired in violation may sue within 91 days for reinstatement and lost wages, with damages capped at six weeks’ wages plus costs and reasonable attorney fees. A related limit sits in C.R.S. 13-54.5-108.5: the garnishee is not required to deduct, set up, or plead any exemption on the debtor’s behalf except as the writ itself sets out, so the accuracy of the writ, again, is the creditor’s problem and nobody else’s.

Whatever your role, the wall is identical: Colorado’s 20 percent rule only collects against an employer you can name and serve. We run lawful employer locates for wage garnishment and, where the record is thin, broader work to find someone’s current employer from the ground up. The same investigation often surfaces related questions worth checking before you spend a filing fee, such as which assets are reachable outside of wages and whether the debt is still inside its enforcement window. We do not give legal advice or file the writ; we deliver the verified employer so your filing is built on a real garnishee, and for a legitimate judgment a Colorado employer locate typically comes back within 24 hours. How the answer is reached matters as much as the answer: employer information is rebuilt from records and databases we are entitled to use for judgment enforcement, and never by pretexting, by impersonating the debtor, or by posing as a prospective employer calling to verify a reference. Nobody on this team holds a private investigator’s license, and no investigative licensure is claimed on this page; we are a public-records research firm working within FCRA, GLBA and DPPA limits. Working within the FCRA is not the same as reporting under it: we are not a consumer reporting agency, and an employer locate is not a consumer report, so it has no place in a hiring, tenancy, credit or insurance decision.