Nebraska Wage Garnishment Laws
Nebraska is one of a small group of states that gives a working parent a deeper paycheck shield than the federal floor. Under Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1558, a debtor who is the head of a family can have only fifteen percent of disposable earnings garnished, while everyone else faces the standard twenty-five percent. That single distinction changes what a judgment is worth, how a writ must be calculated, and whether a garnishment is even worth serving. This guide walks through the head-of-family cap, the math behind each rate, the summons-and-interrogatory procedure, the ninety-day continuing lien that keeps a Nebraska garnishment running and the deadlines that kill it, the exemptions, and the one step that decides every garnishment before the percentages ever matter: knowing where the debtor actually works.
The Short Version
In Nebraska, a creditor with a money judgment can garnish wages, but the ceiling depends on the debtor’s family status. Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1558(1) caps the garnishable part of a workweek’s disposable earnings at the lesser of three amounts: twenty-five percent of disposable earnings, the amount by which those earnings exceed thirty times the federal minimum hourly wage prescribed by 29 U.S.C. 206(a)(1), or fifteen percent of disposable earnings if the debtor is the head of a family. Disposable earnings means take-home after legally required withholding, not gross pay. The reduction is not something the debtor applies for: subsection (3) says the exemptions are granted to anyone entitled to them “without any further proceedings,” and Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1056(1) makes the employer pay the exempt earnings straight through to the worker. Once the court turns the garnishment into a continuing lien it runs ninety days, is extendable once inside a fifteen-day window, and is the only such lien that can be in effect against that paycheck. Child support, spousal support, bankruptcy orders, and certain tax debts fall outside these caps and can reach far more. None of it works, though, until the creditor knows the debtor’s current employer and serves the right garnishee. That locate is the part this firm handles: as a public-records research firm, we confirm where a Nebraska debtor works, typically within 24 hours, so the writ lands on a live payroll instead of a former one.
Watch: Nebraska Garnishment Basics
The fifteen-percent head-of-family rule, in plain terms.
Watch Overview
Two Rates, One Statute
The head-of-family distinction that sets Nebraska apart.
Most wage-garnishment guides recite the federal ceiling and stop there. Nebraska deserves a closer read, because its statute carries a second, lower cap that the federal rules do not. Under Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1558, the maximum part of a worker’s weekly disposable earnings that may be reached by garnishment is the lesser of three figures: twenty-five percent of disposable earnings, the amount by which disposable earnings for that week exceed thirty times the federal minimum hourly wage, or fifteen percent of disposable earnings if the individual is the head of a family.
Read that carefully, because the shape of the sentence matters as much as the numbers in it. The statute is a lesser-of test on the amount that may be taken, not a greater-of test on the amount that is protected. Guides that flip it around — “eighty-five percent of a head of a family’s pay is exempt, seventy-five percent otherwise, whichever is greater” — land on the same arithmetic and then invite the wrong question, because a “whichever is greater” floor is the shape used by states that measure their floor against a state minimum wage. Nebraska’s does not. Run the statute the way it is written: compute all three amounts and withhold the smallest.
For an ordinary debtor with no dependents, prong (c) never enters the comparison and the operative number is usually the familiar twenty-five percent, unless the over-the-floor figure comes in lower. But for a debtor who actually supports a spouse, child, or other dependent, the law adds a third and lower ceiling of fifteen percent. That is a roughly two-fifths reduction in what any single creditor can collect each pay period, and it applies automatically once the debtor’s status is established. Nebraska did not bolt this protection on as an afterthought; it is written directly into the same sentence that sets the standard rate.
What “head of a family” actually means
The statute does not leave the phrase to guesswork. A head of a family is an individual who actually supports and maintains one or more people connected by blood, marriage, adoption, or guardianship, where the duty to provide rests on a moral or legal obligation. The key word is “actually.” A debtor cannot simply claim the title; there must be a real dependent who relies on that debtor’s support. A single worker with no one to support does not qualify and is held to the twenty-five percent ceiling. A parent providing for a minor child, a spouse supporting a non-earning partner, or a guardian maintaining a ward generally does. Because the reduction is so substantial, family status is frequently the live dispute in a Nebraska garnishment — and Nebraska is one of the few states that hands the debtor that argument by statute, on the face of the court’s own mandatory notice form.
Disposable earnings, not gross pay
Every percentage runs against disposable earnings, defined as the part of earnings remaining after deductions required by law to be withheld. That covers federal and state income tax withholding, Social Security and Medicare, and similar mandatory items. It does not include voluntary deductions a worker chooses, such as retirement contributions beyond what the law mandates, union dues, or health-premium elections. Calculating the garnishment off gross pay rather than disposable earnings is one of the most common and costly errors creditors make, and it can expose the garnishing party to objection.
The floor is pegged to the federal minimum wage, not Nebraska’s
The second prong does not say “the minimum wage.” It says the amount by which disposable earnings exceed thirty times the federal minimum hourly wage prescribed by 29 U.S.C. 206(a)(1), in effect when the earnings are payable. That express cross-reference is the entire mechanism, and it is why the Nebraska floor has sat still while almost everything else about Nebraska pay has moved: thirty times $7.25 is $217.50 a week, exactly, and it will stay $217.50 until Congress raises the federal rate. There is nothing approximate about the figure and no year in which it quietly indexes.
Nebraska’s own minimum wage went in the opposite direction. Neb. Rev. Stat. 48-1203(1) stepped it from nine dollars an hour through ten fifty, twelve, and thirteen fifty to $15.00 an hour on and after January 1, 2026, a schedule Nebraska voters wrote by ballot initiative, and subsection (2) raises it again every January 1 beginning in 2027, with the Nebraska Department of Labor publishing the coming year’s rate by October 15. Thirty times $15.00 would be $450 a week — more than double the garnishment floor. That number appears nowhere in a Nebraska garnishment calculation, and neither does any city rate. The two statutes simply do not touch, and the gap between them widens every January.
Say it that way and the figure stays right on its own. Nebraska guides published under “2026 update” headings still recite a nine-dollar state minimum wage — three statutory steps stale — and then tell the reader to compare disposable earnings against it. Both halves are wrong, and the second is the worse of the two: the state rate was never an input. 25-1558(1)(b) names 29 U.S.C. 206(a)(1) and nothing else.
No residency condition, and it reaches nonresident employees
Nebraska’s head-of-family prong turns entirely on the support relationship. Nothing in 25-1558 requires the debtor to live in Nebraska — a real difference from the states that attach a residency condition to the equivalent reduction. Missouri’s head-of-family rate is conditional on residency, and is ten percent rather than fifteen; a creditor who reasons from one state to the other on this point will be wrong in both directions.
The Nebraska position is more than a silence, too. The annotations the Legislature publishes alongside 25-1558 record the long-standing holding that “This section applies though employee is nonresident” (Wright v. Chicago, B. & Q. R. R. Co., 19 Neb. 175, 27 N.W. 90 (1886)). The practical reading for a creditor is that a garnishment served on a Nebraska payroll is governed by the Nebraska caps whether or not the employee lives in the state. The same annotations record that the wage exemption is “personal to the debtor and cannot be utilized for the garnishee’s benefit” (Spaghetti Ltd. Partnership v. Wolfe, 264 Neb. 365, 647 N.W.2d 615 (2002)) — so an employer that withholds nothing and then points at the debtor’s exemption has not answered for its own liability as garnishee. These are the Legislature’s annotation summaries rather than passages we have read from the reports, and they are presented as such.
Four subsections most Nebraska summaries leave out
Subsection (4)(a) defines “earnings” to include periodic payments made under a pension or retirement program. A retiree drawing a monthly pension is drawing garnishable earnings in Nebraska, subject to the same caps as a paycheck — a point no competing Nebraska guide we measured carries. Subsection (5) makes every assignment, sale, transfer, pledge, or mortgage of exempt wages “void and unenforceable by any process of law” to the extent of the exemption, so a voluntary wage assignment offered over the protected portion is worth exactly nothing. Subsection (6) gives Nebraska its own anti-discharge rule — no employer may discharge an employee because earnings have been garnished “for any one indebtedness” — and that last phrase is load-bearing rather than decorative, because the protection does not carry over to a second, separate garnishment. Subsection (7) hands non-weekly pay periods to the Nebraska Commissioner of Labor, who prescribes by regulation the multiple of the federal minimum wage equivalent to the weekly figure; the statute delegates the number instead of stating it, so a biweekly or monthly calculation belongs against the Commissioner’s regulation and not against a doubled or quadrupled weekly floor.
Nebraska Caps Side by Side
How the head-of-family rule compares to the standard and federal limits.
| Limit | Maximum Garnished | Who It Applies To | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nebraska head of family Lowest | Fifteen percent of weekly disposable earnings | Debtor who actually supports a dependent by blood, marriage, adoption, or guardianship | Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1558 |
| Nebraska standard | Twenty-five percent of weekly disposable earnings | Debtor with no qualifying dependents | Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1558 |
| Minimum-wage floor | Earnings above thirty times the federal minimum hourly wage | Every debtor, as the third figure in the lesser-of test | Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1558 / 15 U.S.C. 1673 |
| That floor in dollars | The first $217.50 of a week’s disposable earnings is beyond reach | Every debtor; thirty times the $7.25 federal rate, unchanged by Nebraska’s own $15.00 minimum wage | Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1558(1)(b) / 29 U.S.C. 206(a)(1) |
| Continuing lien | Ninety days from service, extendable once by ninety more | One lien at a time; priority runs by time of service | Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1056 |
| Federal ceiling (CCPA) | Twenty-five percent of disposable earnings, or the thirty-times floor | Baseline nationwide; states may protect more | 15 U.S.C. 1673 |
The takeaway is that Nebraska never lets a creditor reach more than the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act allows, and for a head of family it protects considerably more. Where more than one of these limits could apply, 25-1558(1) does not ask you to pick between them: it directs you to the smallest garnishable amount of the ones in play. The fifteen-percent figure is unique to Nebraska’s family-support policy and has no federal counterpart, and the dollar floor is a federal figure sitting inside a Nebraska statute.
The Math, Worked Out
Same paycheck, two very different results.
Numbers make the head-of-family rule concrete. Assume a Nebraska worker with weekly disposable earnings of $1,000. The floor prong of Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1558(1)(b) puts the first $217.50 of the week out of reach, so the amount above the floor is $782.50 — far more than either percentage — and for a paycheck this size the percentage is the binding limit.
Example one: standard debtor, no dependents
Twenty-five percent of $1,000 in disposable earnings is $250. A single creditor’s writ may take up to $250 from that week’s pay, leaving the worker with $750. That is the ordinary outcome for a Nebraska debtor who does not support anyone.
Example two: same paycheck, head of family
Now assume the identical thousand-dollar paycheck belongs to a parent supporting a child. The cap drops to fifteen percent, so the garnishment is $150, and the worker keeps $850. The creditor collects $100 less every single pay period purely because the head-of-family status applies. Over a year of weekly pay, that is more than $5,000 in difference on the very same wage.
Example three: a lower paycheck near the floor
Take a worker with weekly disposable earnings of $400. Twenty-five percent is $100 and fifteen percent is $60, but the floor prong has to be computed too. The federal minimum hourly wage under 29 U.S.C. 206(a)(1) is $7.25, so thirty times that is $217.50 exactly, and the amount by which $400 exceeds it is $182.50. Now apply 25-1558(1) as written. For an ordinary debtor the three candidates are $100 and $182.50, and the garnishable amount is the lesser: $100. For a head of family the candidates are $100, $182.50 and $60, and the garnishable amount is $60. The practical lesson is to compute every prong that applies each week and withhold the smallest, because which prong binds changes with the size of the check — near the floor the over-$217.50 figure can undercut both percentages and reduce the withholding to a few dollars or to nothing at all.
Why the difference compounds over time
A single pay period rarely tells the whole story, because wage garnishment in Nebraska keeps running until the judgment is fully satisfied or released. On a larger judgment that takes many months to collect, the gap between the fifteen-percent and twenty-five-percent rates is not a one-time hundred dollars; it is that hundred dollars repeated across every paycheck for the life of the garnishment. A creditor who assumes the higher rate and is later forced to drop to the head-of-family cap may also have to credit back the over-withheld amount, which is one more reason to establish the debtor’s status correctly at the outset rather than litigate it after the fact. For the debtor, the same arithmetic explains why the head-of-family claim is worth raising even when the per-week difference looks modest. The rate is not academic; over the months a judgment is enforced, it is the single largest factor in how much of the paycheck survives each cycle, and it is precisely why Nebraska’s two-tier structure rewards getting the family-status question right before the first dollar is withheld.
How a Nebraska Garnishment Proceeds
From judgment to the garnishee’s answer.
Wage garnishment in Nebraska is a post-judgment remedy. Before any of the percentages matter, the creditor must already hold a valid money judgment from a Nebraska court. With that in hand, the mechanics fall into a recognizable sequence.
The garnishment summons and interrogatories
The creditor obtains a garnishment summons and serves it on the garnishee — for wage garnishment, that is the debtor’s employer. Served with the summons is a set of garnishee interrogatories: written questions the employer must answer under oath, stating whether it employs the debtor, what the debtor’s earnings are, what other garnishments or support orders are already in place, and how much it is holding. The employer’s sworn answers to those interrogatories are the heart of the process; they tell the court and the creditor exactly what can be reached.
The employer’s ten-day clock, and what it does with the money
The windows are not left to local practice. Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1056(1) makes the summons returnable within ten days of issuance and requires the garnishee to answer within ten days of service upon it, and Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1026 requires that answer to be made under oath, disclosing truly the amount owing “whether due or not.” The same subsection tells the employer what to do with the pay in the meantime, and it is more specific than most employers expect: when wages are involved the garnishee pays the employee all disposable earnings the statute exempts, and retains only what is left over until the court orders otherwise. An employer that ignores a properly served garnishment can be held answerable for the debt itself, which is why payroll departments take these summonses seriously.
The creditor’s own twenty-day deadline
The deadline most likely to cost a Nebraska creditor its garnishment belongs to the creditor. Under Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1030, where the garnishee appears and answers and the disclosure is not satisfactory to the plaintiff, the plaintiff may file an application within twenty days for a determination of the garnishee’s liability — and if the plaintiff fails to file that application within twenty days, “the garnishee shall be released and discharged.” A thin or evasive employer answer is therefore a clock, not a nuisance. Sit on it for three weeks and the employer walks, judgment intact and uncollected.
What happens automatically, and what the debtor actually has to do
A great deal of published Nebraska guidance describes the head-of-family reduction as something the debtor must apply for, usually by filing an affidavit or an exemption claim. The statute says close to the opposite. Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1558(3) provides that “the exemptions allowed in this section shall be granted to any person so entitled without any further proceedings,” and 25-1056(1) puts the duty of paying the exempt portion over on the employer rather than on any form the debtor files. On the face of the statute the protection is self-executing.
What a debtor may still have to supply is not the entitlement but the fact of head-of-family status, which an employer has no way of reading off a payroll record. Nebraska routes that through a notice rather than a claim. Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1011(2) requires the judgment creditor to send the judgment debtor, by certified mail within seven business days of the court’s issuance, a copy of the summons and order of garnishment, a notice-to-judgment-debtor form, and a request-for-hearing form, and to certify the mailing date to the court in writing. Subsection (4)(b) requires that notice to tell the debtor, in terms, that “the amount that can be garnished varies if the judgment debtor is the head of a family” — the forms themselves are promulgated statewide by rule of the Supreme Court under subsection (3). The debtor files the request for hearing within three business days of receiving the notice, and under subsection (5) the court must grant the hearing within ten days of the request. The route, in other words, is a short hearing on status, not an application for an exemption the statute has already granted.
One honest caveat, recorded rather than resolved. The annotations published with 25-1558 still carry an 1886 case stating that the “garnishee must set up facts showing wages are exempt” (Turner v. Sioux City & Pacific R. R. Co., 19 Neb. 241, 27 N.W. 103 (1886)) — decided more than eighty years before the 1969 amendment that conformed this section to federal law and more than a century before the 2001 rewrite that produced its present text. We have not found modern authority reconciling that annotation with subsection (3), and we are not going to assert that no Nebraska debtor ever has to do anything. What is not in doubt is the statutory language: the exemption is granted without further proceedings, and the employer pays the exempt earnings over. A creditor who plans on the debtor sleeping through a claim form is planning against the statute.
Support, Taxes, and Competing Creditors
Where the ordinary caps stop applying.
The fifteen and twenty-five percent ceilings govern ordinary consumer and commercial judgments. Several categories sit outside them entirely, and a Nebraska creditor needs to know which fight they are in.
Child and spousal support
Court orders for the support of any person are expressly excepted from the 25-1558 limits by subsection (2)(a). Support withholding runs on the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act tiers instead, and the mechanism there is worth stating precisely, because it is widely misdescribed. Under 15 U.S.C. 1673(b)(2) the ceiling is fifty percent of disposable earnings where the worker is supporting another spouse or dependent child, and sixty percent where the worker is not. Those two figures are then deemed to be fifty-five and sixty-five percent respectively — the statute replaces the number rather than adding five points to it — and only “if and to the extent that” the withholding is for support owed for a period before the twelve-week period ending with the current workweek. The arithmetic often lands in the same place; the limitation does not, and “an extra five percent for being twelve weeks behind” describes a rule Congress did not write.
Nebraska layers its own employer duties on top of the federal ceiling. Neb. Rev. Stat. 42-364.01 directs the employer to deduct as its own compensation an amount set by the court “but not to exceed two dollars and fifty cents in any calendar month,” to remit within seven calendar days of the date the obligor is paid to the State Disbursement Unit, and to refrain from dismissing, demoting, disciplining, or otherwise penalizing the employee over the withholding. Subsection (6) adds the duty that matters most to anyone tracking a support obligor: within thirty days of the employment ending, the employer must notify the clerk of the court in writing of the termination, the parent-employee’s last known address, and the name and address of the new employer if it knows it.
Taxes and bankruptcy
Court-ordered bankruptcy payments and state and federal tax debts also fall outside the ordinary garnishment caps. Tax authorities collect under their own statutory schemes, and a worker facing a tax levy cannot rely on the head-of-family fifteen-percent shield to limit it. A drafting note for anyone reading the section closely: 25-1558(2)(b) still refers to “Chapter XIII of the Bankruptcy Act,” the pre-1978 statute superseded by chapter 13 of the Bankruptcy Code. That is an un-refreshed cross-reference in the published text rather than a live distinction, and nothing should be built on it.
One continuing lien at a time, and it runs ninety days
Nebraska does not operate a sharing rule and it does not let garnishments stack. Once the court, on the judgment creditor’s application, orders that the garnishment is a continuing lien against the debtor’s nonexempt earnings under Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1056(2), the employer delivers the nonexempt earnings for each pay period to the court that issued the garnishment and the exempt earnings to the debtor. Subsection (5) is flat about what happens to everyone else: “Only one order of continuing lien against earnings due the judgment debtor shall be in effect at one time,” and the lien already in place “shall have priority over any subsequent garnishment or wage assignment.” Priority is not a matter of local practice either — subsection (4)(a) provides that “to determine priority, garnishments and liens shall rank according to time of service,” with garnishments and liens that are not for support ranking below wage assignments and garnishments that are.
So the second creditor in line does not quietly share the twenty-five percent. It waits — and the statute says exactly how long it might have to. Under subsection (3), a continuing lien becomes invalid and has no force or effect on the occurrence of any of seven events: the underlying judgment is satisfied in full, vacated, or expires; the debtor leaves that employer for more than sixty days; the creditor releases the garnishment; the proceedings are stayed, the United States Bankruptcy Court included; the debtor earns no nonexempt earnings for at least sixty days; the court quashes the garnishment; or ninety days pass since service of the writ. The creditor holding the lien may buy one more ninety-day period by filing a notice of extension — but only during the fifteen days immediately before the first period expires. Miss that fifteen-day window and the lien simply lapses; a fresh garnishment can be served, but it takes its priority from the new date of service, behind anyone who arrived in the meantime.
The disclosure duty in the back half of subsection (5) is the part a creditor should plan around rather than merely note. Where an employee’s wages are already subject to a continuing lien when a new garnishment is served, the answer to the garnishment interrogatories must include that fact together with the date the existing lien terminates and the title of the case it issued from. A second creditor therefore gets back, sworn, from the employer: the date to re-serve, and the file to go and read. A Nebraska garnishment that comes back “this employee is already garnished” is a scheduling instruction, not a dead end — and a creditor who treats it as a refusal is giving away a queue position the statute just handed it.
One consequence runs straight back into collections practice. Because the lien dies sixty days after the debtor leaves that payroll, and because no one owes an ordinary judgment creditor a forwarding address, a debtor who changes jobs leaves the creditor holding a valid judgment and a lien attached to nothing. Nebraska does impose that reporting duty — but only in support cases, under 42-364.01(6). The asymmetry between the two statutes is the plain, sourced reason an ordinary Nebraska judgment creditor has to go and find the next employer itself.
Where Nebraska Garnishments Go Wrong
The errors that cost creditors their collection.
Charging 25% to a Head of Family
Withholding the standard quarter from a debtor who supports a dependent overcharges them and invites an exemption claim that resets the rate to fifteen percent.
Garnishing Gross Pay
The caps run against disposable earnings after legally required withholding, not gross. Using gross inflates the take and is objectionable.
Serving a Former Employer
A summons sent to a payroll the debtor left months ago returns a blank answer. The locate has to be current before the writ goes out.
Ignoring the Minimum-Wage Floor
For lower paychecks the over-thirty-times-minimum-wage figure protects more than the percentage. Skipping that comparison overstates what can be reached.
Letting the Judgment Go Dormant
Under Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1515 a judgment goes dormant if five years pass without execution, or five years intervene between executions. A dormant judgment must be revived before it can support a garnishment.
Skipping Collectibility
Garnishing a debtor with no steady payroll burns court fees for nothing. Confirm employment and income before spending on the writ.
Blowing the 25-1030 Twenty-Day Window
An unsatisfactory garnishee answer starts a twenty-day clock to apply for determination of liability. Miss it and the employer is released and discharged.
Letting the Ninety-Day Lien Lapse
The notice of extension can only be filed in the fifteen days before the lien expires. Lapse it and re-service starts a new priority date at the back of the queue.
Waiting for an Exemption Claim
25-1558(3) grants the exemption without further proceedings and the employer pays the exempt part over. Budgeting on a debtor who never files is budgeting against the statute.
From Judgment to Collection
How a Nebraska garnishment actually gets paid.
Confirm the Judgment
Verify you hold a valid, non-dormant Nebraska money judgment and revive it first if five years have lapsed without execution under 25-1515.
Locate the Employer
Identify where the debtor currently works and assess family status, so the writ uses the correct rate and lands on a live payroll.
Serve and Mail the Notice
Serve the summons and interrogatories on the employer, then mail the debtor the notice and hearing forms by certified mail within seven business days.
Take the Lien and Diary It
Apply for the continuing lien, calendar the ninety-day expiry and the fifteen-day extension window, and watch for the sixty-day job-departure kill switch.
The Step That Comes Before the Percentages
A perfect rate calculation is worthless if the writ misses the payroll.
Everything above assumes you know where the debtor works. In practice, that is the part that defeats most Nebraska wage garnishments. People change jobs, move between counties, take cash work, or join a payroll under a slightly different name, and a summons served on a stale employer comes back with the interrogatory line that says the debtor is not employed there. The judgment is valid, the rate is correct, and nothing is collected — because the writ never reached a live paycheck.
This is where a skip tracing firm earns its place in the collection process. As a public-records research firm, we confirm a Nebraska debtor’s current employer from lawful, investigative-grade sources before the garnishment is filed, so the summons goes to the right payroll the first time. If you are not sure where to begin, our guides on finding an employer for wage garnishment and how to find someone’s current employer walk through what we look for. We also pair this state guide with our wage garnishment laws by state overview for multi-state portfolios, and with our Nebraska briefs on asset exemptions creditors should know and Nebraska bankruptcy exemptions when a debtor’s protections reach beyond wages. For a legitimate collection matter, a verified employer locate typically comes back within 24 hours. See also the wider Nebraska judgment-collection sequence. See also how Nebraska divides marital property.
Who Serves a Nebraska Garnishee
We find the payroll; you serve the writ.
Nebraska Judgment Holders
Employers located for the writ
Garnishment Counsel
Debtor payroll verified pre-filing
Nebraska Portfolio Buyers
Portfolios screened for collectibility
Small Businesses
Owed accounts pursued lawfully
Nebraska Landlords
Rent judgments enforced
Support Enforcers
Obligor employer confirmed
Whatever side of a Nebraska judgment you are on, the same wall stands in the way: you cannot garnish a paycheck you cannot find. We confirm the current employer, you serve the correct garnishee at the correct rate, and the collection finally moves. We do not file writs or give legal advice, but we make sure the writ you file has a live payroll waiting for it.
What a Nebraska Employer Locate Is, and Is Not
We confirm where a Nebraska debtor works so your garnishment reaches a live payroll at the correct head-of-family or standard rate — lawful, court-ready employer locates for creditors, attorneys, and collection professionals since 2004.
Because that work sits next to a statute, the boundaries around it should be as plain as the statute is. We are a public-records research firm. Every Nebraska employer locate is opened only after the requester states a permissible purpose in writing — here, almost always an unsatisfied Nebraska money judgment the requester holds or represents — and we keep that record with the file.
We are not a consumer reporting agency, and an employer locate from us is not a consumer report. It may not be used to decide employment, housing, credit, or insurance eligibility; those are Fair Credit Reporting Act decisions and they belong with an FCRA-regulated provider, not with us. If that is what a matter actually needs, we will say so and decline it rather than dress up the wrong product.
Nobody on this team holds a Nebraska private detective license — the term Nebraska’s own licensing statute uses — of any kind. What we do is documented public-records and payroll-record research, which is a narrower thing and is described that way throughout this site.
We never pretext. No one here calls a Nebraska payroll department posing as the debtor, a bank, a courier, or a state agency, and we do not misrepresent who is asking or why. A verification obtained by deception is worthless to a garnishment anyway: it is the sort of thing that surfaces at the hearing on the garnishee’s answer and costs a creditor the writ.
And we decline anything that reads as a safety matter rather than a collection matter. If a request looks like an attempt to find someone hiding from an abuser, or if it involves domestic violence, a protection order, or anyone’s safety, we stop, we do not return an address or an employer, and we point the requester to the court or to law enforcement. A judgment is not a reason to be told where a person is when that is the actual question.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much of my wages can be garnished in Nebraska?
Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1558(1) takes the lesser of twenty-five percent of your weekly disposable earnings, the amount by which those earnings exceed thirty times the federal minimum hourly wage under 29 U.S.C. 206(a)(1) — that is $217.50 a week — and, if you are the head of a family, fifteen percent. Whichever of those is smallest is the most an ordinary judgment creditor can take that week.
What is the Nebraska head-of-family garnishment rule?
Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1558 limits garnishment to fifteen percent of disposable earnings for a debtor who actually supports and maintains a dependent connected by blood, marriage, adoption, or guardianship. It is a substantial reduction from the standard twenty-five percent and applies once family status is established.
Who counts as a head of a family?
An individual who actually supports one or more people they are obligated to provide for, such as a parent supporting a child or a spouse supporting a non-earning partner. A debtor with no dependents does not qualify and is held to the twenty-five percent cap.
Is garnishment calculated on gross or take-home pay?
It is calculated on disposable earnings, meaning pay remaining after deductions required by law such as income tax withholding and Social Security. Voluntary deductions do not reduce the base, and using gross pay overstates what can be garnished.
Can child support take more than fifteen or twenty-five percent?
Yes. Support orders are excepted from the 25-1558 caps and run on the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act tiers. Under 15 U.S.C. 1673(b)(2) the ceiling is fifty percent of disposable earnings where the worker supports another spouse or dependent child and sixty percent where not; those figures are deemed to be fifty-five and sixty-five percent, rather than increased by five points, and only if and to the extent the withholding is for support owed for a period before the twelve-week period ending with the current workweek.
How long does a Nebraska wage garnishment last?
Once the court orders a continuing lien under Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1056, it runs ninety days from service of the writ, and the creditor may extend it for one further ninety days by filing a notice of extension during the fifteen days immediately before it expires. It also dies early if the judgment is satisfied or vacated, if the debtor leaves that employer for more than sixty days, if the debtor earns no nonexempt earnings for sixty days, if proceedings are stayed, or if the court quashes it.
Do I have to file something to claim the head-of-family exemption?
Not for the exemption itself. Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-1558(3) says the exemptions are granted to anyone entitled to them without any further proceedings, and 25-1056(1) makes the employer pay the exempt earnings to the worker. What may need establishing is the fact of head-of-family status: 25-1011 requires the creditor to mail you a notice and a request-for-hearing form, which you file within three business days of receipt, and the court must hear it within ten days. An 1886 annotation to the section points the other way and we have found no modern case reconciling it, so raise the status promptly rather than relying on it being noticed.
What if I do not know where the debtor works?
A garnishment served on a former employer collects nothing, so the current employer must be identified first. As a public-records research firm, we confirm a Nebraska debtor’s current employer from lawful sources, typically within 24 hours, so your writ reaches a live payroll.
Garnish a Paycheck You Can Find
We confirm where your Nebraska debtor currently works so your garnishment summons reaches a live employer at the correct rate — typically within 24 hours. Contact us to get started.
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