New Hampshire Wage Garnishment Laws
New Hampshire’s wage rule is neither a percentage nor a flat ban. It is two questions asked in order: which court issued your judgment, and what day was the writ served. RSA 512:21 exempts every dollar a worker earns after a trustee writ reaches the employer, so there is no continuing garnishment and no standing deduction order. Wages already earned when the writ landed are exempt too, with one carve-out: a judgment from a New Hampshire court reaches them above fifty times the federal minimum hourly wage for each week. Any other judgment, including one from the state next door, reaches a Granite State paycheck not at all until it has been brought into a New Hampshire court. This page walks through that timing rule, the employer duties that come with it, the debts that do reach wages here, and the remedies that collect instead.
The Short Version
In New Hampshire an ordinary consumer or commercial creditor cannot run an ongoing wage garnishment. RSA 512:21, I exempts every wage a debtor earns after a trustee writ is served on the employer, so there is no continuing stream to capture and no standing order an employer keeps deducting from. Wages the debtor had already earned when the writ arrived are exempt as well under paragraph II, with a single exception: in an action founded on a debt on a judgment issued by a New Hampshire court of competent jurisdiction, those already-earned wages are exempt only up to fifty times the FLSA minimum hourly wage for each week, and the employer must still pay the exempt portion to the employee on the usual payday. At $7.25 an hour that floor is $362.50 a week, so on an average paycheck there is often nothing above it. The consequence nobody prints: a judgment from any other state reaches New Hampshire wages not at all until it has been brought into a New Hampshire court. What works here instead is a periodic-payment order under RSA 524:6-a, a trustee-process levy on non-exempt bank funds, and execution against non-exempt property. Support orders, tax levies, federal student loans, and one state agency collecting unemployment-fraud overpayments reach wages under separate authority the RSA 512:21 exemption does not touch. Every one of those paths starts with knowing where the debtor works, banks, and holds property. That locate is what we do, and for a legitimate judgment a verified report usually comes back within 24 hours.
Watch: How New Hampshire Collection Works
Why wages are off-limits and what replaces garnishment.
Watch Overview
The New Hampshire Rule: No Wage Stream
Why a creditor cannot keep a deduction running on a Granite State paycheck.
Most states let a judgment creditor serve a continuing wage garnishment: the employer becomes a garnishee, withholds a slice of every paycheck up to the federal cap, and keeps sending it to the creditor until the judgment is paid. New Hampshire does not work that way. The state has a wage-attachment provision in RSA chapter 512, the trustee-process chapter, but RSA 512:21 carries a pair of exemptions that between them switch it off as a routine collection tool. Paragraph I is the flat one: wages “for labor performed by the defendant after the service of the writ upon the trustee” are exempt, full stop, with no percentage and no ceiling.
Paragraph II: wages already earned, and the courthouse that unlocks them
Paragraph II governs the only wages a creditor could ever reach here, the ones the debtor had already earned but not yet been paid on the day the writ arrived. Its default is that those wages are exempt too. It then carves out exactly one case, and the carve-out is the whole rule: pre-service wages are exempt “except in actions founded upon a debt on a judgment issued by a New Hampshire court of competent jurisdiction.” In that single case, the statute continues, wages earned before service are exempt “to the amount of 50 times the minimum hourly wage as established by the Fair Labor Standards Act for each week,” and it adds a duty most creditors never hear about: “the employer shall pay said exempted amount to the employee on the usual payday unless other cause exists prohibiting such payment.” That structure has been in force since 1 January 2005.
Note the multiplier: it is fifty, not thirty. The federal Consumer Credit Protection Act formula that a great many New Hampshire pages recite, twenty-five percent of disposable earnings or the excess over thirty times the minimum wage, is federal law, not RSA 512:21, and it is not the rule for a private New Hampshire judgment. New Hampshire’s own number is fifty times, and it appears that way in three separate chapters of the RSA. Because the statute names the FLSA rate expressly rather than a state figure, the floor moves only when Congress moves the federal wage. At $7.25 an hour, fifty times that rate is $362.50 of weekly earnings that stay with the employee. That dollar figure is arithmetic applied to the multiplier, not a number printed in the RSA, which is why the multiplier is the durable thing to remember. The condition attached to it, the New Hampshire court, is important enough that it has its own section below.
Why there is no stream, in the statute’s own words
The reason there is no continuing garnishment is not folklore, and it does not rest on paragraph I alone. Two further provisions in the same chapter say it directly. RSA 512:9-c tells the trustee to hold what it has and nothing more: the trustee “shall place a hold on money, goods, chattels, rights, or credits of the defendant that are in the trustee’s hands at the time of service, but shall have no duty to collect” anything “that may become due or owing the defendant after that time.” And RSA 512:20 limits what a court may ever charge the trustee for to property “in the trustee’s possession at the time of the service of the writ and not exempted from trustee process.”
Read together, the three sections describe a snapshot, not a subscription. The writ photographs what the employer owes on the day it lands; everything earned afterwards is outside the picture and the employer has no obligation to go looking for it. To reach even a sliver a creditor would have to serve a fresh action timed to the moment a paycheck was owed but unpaid, then repeat it the next payday, and the next, each time clearing the $362.50 weekly floor before a dollar moved. The economics of that are hopeless, which is why practitioners treat New Hampshire as, for practical purposes, a no-wage-garnishment state for ordinary debt.
Be precise about what this does and does not mean. The exemption protects wages; it is not a shield over every dollar a debtor has. A New Hampshire judgment is real and enforceable, generally for twenty years, and the law gives creditors other live remedies described below. Note too that trustee process here is not purely a post-judgment device, since RSA 512:1 allows that “any personal action may be begun by trustee process” apart from replevin, which is what makes paragraph II’s judgment condition meaningful rather than redundant.
One boundary we keep rather than paper over. New Hampshire’s floor of fifty times the federal minimum is higher than the federal thirty-times figure in 15 U.S.C. 1673, so on a New Hampshire-court judgment the state exemption is the constraint that actually binds on ordinary earners. How the federal percentage cap and a RSA 512 attachment of pre-service wages interact is a structural reading of two statutes rather than a settled New Hampshire holding, and we have not found a New Hampshire authority deciding it. The federal layer itself is covered on our state-by-state wage garnishment overview and is not re-taught here.
Which Debts Can Reach New Hampshire Wages
The state exemption stops ordinary creditors; federal and family-court obligations are a different story.
| Type of Debt | Can It Garnish New Hampshire Wages? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Judgment from a New Hampshire court | Pre-service wages only, above the weekly floor | RSA 512:21, II exempts already-earned wages to 50 times the FLSA minimum per week; everything earned after service is exempt outright under paragraph I. |
| Judgment from any other state | No, until domesticated | Paragraph II opens only for “a debt on a judgment issued by a New Hampshire court of competent jurisdiction.” An out-of-state judgment reaches nothing here first. |
| Credit card / medical / commercial | No continuing garnishment | Debt type is irrelevant to RSA 512:21; what matters is the issuing court and the date of service. There is no stream to capture either way. |
| Small-loan contract under RSA 399-A | Pre-service wages above $50 per week | RSA 512:21, IX sets a separate and much lower weekly floor for actions founded on a regulated loan contract. |
| Child or spousal support | Yes, continuously, from any state | RSA 458-B:1, VI defines a legal order of support to include one issued by any court or administrative body of New Hampshire “or any other state,” so income assignment follows the paycheck. |
| Federal & state taxes | Yes, by tax levy | Tax authorities levy wages under their own statutory powers, outside the state creditor-exemption scheme. |
| Defaulted federal student loans | Yes, administrative garnishment | Federal agencies use administrative wage garnishment under federal law that the state exemption does not override. |
| Unemployment-benefit fraud overpayment | Yes, 25% / 50x, no court order | RSA 282-A:152-a lets Employment Security serve a notice of garnishment directly on the employer after 90 days, capped at the lesser of 25 percent of weekly disposable earnings or the excess over 50 times the FLSA minimum. |
The split is clean: the New Hampshire wage exemption is aimed at private money judgments. Support obligations, tax debts, and federal student loans live in separate legal channels with their own collection powers, and those channels reach paychecks regardless of the RSA 512:21 timing rule, so a parent behind on support or a borrower in default should not read this page as protection.
The last row is the one worth pausing on, because it is the only place a New Hampshire percentage exists at all. Under RSA 282-A:152-a, a “notice of garnishment” is defined in terms as “a notice requiring an employer to garnish an individual debtor’s earnings without a court order.” Once a determination creating a fraud overpayment of unemployment benefits has been final for 90 days and remains unpaid, the Department of Employment Security may serve that notice on “any employer that owes, or may owe in the future, earnings” to the debtor, after mailing a notice of intent 14 days ahead. The withheld amount, added to anything already withheld for support, “may not exceed 25 percent of the individual debtor’s weekly disposable earnings, or the amount by which the individual debtor’s weekly disposable earnings exceed 50 times the minimum hourly wage as established by the Fair Labor Standards Act, whichever is less.” The employer must start no later than the first earnings paid 21 days after the notice was mailed, support withholding under RSA 458-B takes priority over it, and it is “binding upon the employer until payment in full.”
Set that beside paragraph II and the asymmetry is stark. The state’s own agency gets a continuing garnishment with no judge involved, on a percentage formula, at the same fifty-times floor the private creditor gets. A creditor holding a New Hampshire judgment gets one snapshot of one payday. The paycheck here is not closed; it is closed to ordinary creditors specifically. Note too that the benefits themselves are largely untouchable: RSA 282-A:159 exempts them “from levy, execution, attachment, or any other remedy whatsoever” for collecting debt, carving out only debts “incurred for necessaries furnished to such individual or such individual’s spouse or dependents during the time when such individual was unemployed.” For an ordinary creditor the paycheck is a dead end, and the move is to turn to the remedies the state actually provides.
Which Courthouse Issued It, and What Day the Writ Landed
The two questions that decide a New Hampshire wage case, in the order the statute asks them.
Almost every other state answers “can I garnish wages here” with a number. New Hampshire answers it with a date and an address. Paragraph II opens the pre-service window only for “actions founded upon a debt on a judgment issued by a New Hampshire court of competent jurisdiction,” and paragraph I closes the post-service window against everyone. So a creditor’s first two enquiries are not about the debtor’s income at all: which court signed my judgment, and what was owed and unpaid on the day the writ reached the employer.
Get the first wrong and nothing else matters. A Massachusetts or Maine judgment, however valid at home, is not a judgment “issued by a New Hampshire court,” so it does not unlock paragraph II and does not reach a Granite State paycheck at all; the creditor’s real first move is to bring the judgment into a New Hampshire court. Get the second wrong and the writ captures nothing, because what the employer owed on the day of service is all a court can ever charge it for. Note that the debt type never enters into it: paragraph II does not care whether the balance is medical, commercial, or a credit card.
The asymmetry that defines New Hampshire
Now compare the same paycheck under a different chapter. RSA 458-B:1, VI defines a “legal order of support” as any valid judgment or order for the support of spouses or dependent children “issued by any court or administrative body of the state of New Hampshire or any other state, including an order in a final decree of divorce.” A support order from Vermont reaches New Hampshire wages by income assignment, continuously. An ordinary money judgment from Vermont reaches those identical wages not at all. Same worker, same employer, same payday, opposite answer, and all that changed is which chapter of the RSA the creditor is standing in. New Hampshire also declines to legislate its own support ceiling: RSA 458-B:4, IV provides that “the total amount withheld shall not exceed the amount specified in 15 U.S.C. 1673(b),” adopting the federal cap by reference.
One further limit: the writ reaches the defendant’s wages. RSA 512:21, III separately exempts “wages for the personal services and earnings of the wife and minor children of the defendant,” so a spouse’s own earnings are not a target of a trustee writ against the debtor. What a creditor may reach when property is jointly held is a different question, and how New Hampshire treats marital property covers it.
New Hampshire is often grouped with the handful of states where wage garnishment is effectively unavailable, but each arrives there by a different route, and the route changes what survives. New Hampshire’s basis is a timing exemption inside an existing attachment statute rather than a constitutional bar or a missing enabling act, which is why the mechanism formally exists yet captures nothing ongoing, and why the state supplies a substitute remedy in its place. The cross-state comparison belongs on our judgment collection by state guide, which maintains it properly.
The Periodic-Payment Order Under RSA 524:6-a
New Hampshire’s primary collection tool, enforced by contempt.
If the paycheck is off the table, the periodic-payment order is the centerpiece of New Hampshire judgment collection. Under RSA 524:6-a, a judgment creditor petitions the court for an order that the debtor pay the judgment in installments. The debtor is summoned to appear and make a financial disclosure, submitting a statement of assets and liabilities and answering under oath about income, expenses, property, and ability to pay. The court reviews that disclosure, sets aside an appropriate amount for the debtor’s own support and that of any family, and then orders periodic payments it deems appropriate from the debtor’s income or from the sale of non-exempt assets.
Two procedural details matter before you file. The court need not act on its own initiative: it may order the debtor to appear “upon petition of the plaintiff after judgment,” so a creditor who got no order at rendition has an affirmative route to one later. And where the order issues at judgment, it “shall not provide for payments to begin until after the appeal period has expired.”
The teeth are in the enforcement: failure to make the payments “shall constitute civil contempt of court.” But the statute writes three escape hatches into the same sentence, and a creditor who does not know them will over-promise. There is no contempt where the judge, upon inquiry, finds the failure “was the result of a change in circumstances,” or “was not intentional or in bad faith,” or occurred “for other good cause.” Contempt here is leverage over a debtor who will not pay, not one who cannot.
The exemption inside the remedy, and the cost of choosing it
The statute carries its own arithmetic, and it is the same signature multiplier. Under paragraph II, income from a retirement plan qualified for tax exemption purposes, as defined by RSA 511:2, XIX, “shall be exempt from periodic payments up to the amount of 50 times the minimum hourly wage as established by the Fair Labor Standards Act, per week” – the $362.50 weekly figure again. It then doubles for a shared household: where the debtor “shares income and expenses with another person with whom he or she lives” and both draw retirement income, the combined exemption rises to 100 times the minimum hourly wage per week in total, or $725.00. A creditor targeting a retired debtor’s pension should run that number before petitioning.
Choosing this remedy also carries a strategic cost that is easy to miss. Once the order has issued, “unless the parties otherwise agree, after an order for periodic payments has been issued by the court, no writ of execution shall be issued by the court without prior notice to the defendant.” A creditor who wanted surprise for a later levy has traded it away. The judgment may still be enforced “against any property of any kind of the debtor, except such income and property as is now exempt from attachment or execution,” so the ordered figure is built around what is genuinely available – which makes the debtor’s true financial picture, not guesswork, the foundation of a workable order.
The Remedies That Actually Work Here
Where a New Hampshire creditor should spend effort instead of on a paycheck.
Periodic-Payment Order
Petition the court, compel a financial disclosure, and obtain a court-ordered installment plan from income or non-exempt assets, backed by contempt. This is the state’s most effective tool.
Bank-Account Levy
Serve a bank officer, branch supervisor, or head teller between 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays. The trustee is chargeable only for what it holds at that moment.
Property & Vehicle
Levy on non-exempt personal property and equity above the statutory exemptions, including a vehicle protected only up to a limited amount. The homestead exemption shields most home equity.
The bank levy rewards precision about time as much as place. RSA 512:9-b provides that a bank or similar corporation named as trustee “shall be summoned by service only upon a bank officer, branch supervisor, or head teller of a branch only from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., Monday through Friday except bank holidays,” and that a trustee served after 3:00 p.m. “shall have until the beginning of the next business day to effect the attachment.” Serve late in the afternoon and you have handed the account a night’s grace.
One exemption here we will not pretend to resolve. RSA 512:21, XI exempts “money, rights, and credits of the defendant deposited in any account designated as a payroll account.” Whether that means the employer’s payroll account or the debtor’s own is not settled by the text, and we have not located a New Hampshire authority deciding it, so treat the question as open and take advice rather than assume either reading.
Two of the three remedies, the bank levy and the property execution, only work if you know where the assets are. Serve the wrong institution and you capture nothing; execution works only against property held above the exemptions.
Where to look things up. This page covers the instrument: who may serve a trustee writ, on what judgment, on which day, and what the employer must do about it. The schedule of what the law protects – homestead, vehicle, tools, wildcard, retirement, and wages as one row among them – is maintained on our page covering New Hampshire’s asset-exemption rules for creditors, which carries the current homestead figure. Those amounts are deliberately not restated here, so there is one place to keep them current.
Where New Hampshire Collections Go Wrong
The avoidable mistakes that burn months on a Granite State judgment.
Serving on an Out-of-State Judgment
Paragraph II opens only for a judgment issued by a New Hampshire court, so a writ served on the strength of an out-of-state judgment reaches nothing at all.
Skipping the Payment Order
Ignoring the RSA 524:6-a periodic-payment order forfeits the state’s most effective remedy and the contempt leverage that comes with it.
Serving the Bank After 3:00 p.m.
RSA 512:9-b gives a bank served after 3:00 p.m. until the next business day to effect the attachment, so a late service can miss the balance entirely.
Levying the Wrong Bank
The trustee process only captures funds in the account it is served on, so guessing at the institution wastes the levy and tips off the debtor.
Letting the Judgment Lapse
A New Hampshire judgment is generally enforceable for twenty years; failing to track and renew it throws away years of recovery runway.
Skipping the Collectibility Check
Petitioning for an order before confirming the debtor has reachable income or assets spends court time chasing a judgment that cannot be satisfied.
What the Employer Must Do When the Writ Arrives
Thirty days, one form, and liability for the whole judgment if it is ignored.
Because New Hampshire routes wage attachment through trustee process, the employer is not a bystander withholding a percentage. It is a named party, the trustee, with duties that carry real consequences. RSA 512:3 requires that the trustee be served with a disclosure form alongside the writ, and that the first page of the attachment “bear a notice in boldface, in at least 12-point type,” advising the trustee to complete and file it with the court, the plaintiff, and the defendant “within 30 days of receipt or suffer the risk of default.” RSA 512:9-d limits that form to four interrogatories “and nothing more,” chiefly the date of service and what was held at that moment.
The penalty for silence is the striking part. Under RSA 512:11, an employer that “fails to file a trustee disclosure form with the court within 30 days of service” of the writ “may be adjudged chargeable for a sum up to the amount of the judgment which may be recovered by the plaintiff against the defendant” – exposure for the whole debt of an employee it never owed money to. Conversely, RSA 512:18-a provides that where the court receives no objection to a disclosure within 30 days of receipt, “the disclosure shall determine the chargeability of the trustee,” so a creditor who lets that window pass has accepted the employer’s own account of what it held.
Support withholding runs on a tougher clock
Employers should not read these rules across to income assignment, because RSA 458-B is stricter in almost every respect. Withholding must begin “no later than the first pay period that occurs after 14 days after the notice was mailed,” the employer is liable for the accumulated amount it should have withheld, and that withholding “shall have priority over any other legal process under state law against the same income.” The employer may deduct a fee of $1.00 for each withholding.
Two provisions go further than the federal floor. Federal law protects an employee from discharge for garnishment on any one indebtedness; New Hampshire makes the employer “guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to a fine of up to $1,000 for discharging, refusing to employ, or taking any disciplinary action against an obligor because of the withholding procedures,” reaching hiring and discipline, not just firing. And RSA 458-B:6, IX requires notice to the state or other payee “within 15 days of the obligor’s termination of employment,” including the last known address “and the name and address of the present employer, if known.” New Hampshire law itself treats the identity of the current employer as the fact the mechanism turns on, and writes a reporting duty around it.
From Judgment to Recovery
How a New Hampshire creditor turns a paper judgment into a paid one.
Check the Issuing Court
Confirm the judgment came from a New Hampshire court, or domesticate it first. Then plan around the periodic-payment order, trustee process, and execution rather than a wage stream.
Locate Income & Assets
Identify the debtor’s current employer, bank relationships, and non-exempt property so every remedy is aimed at something real.
Petition the Court
File for a periodic-payment order under RSA 524:6-a, force the financial disclosure, and obtain a court-set installment plan backed by contempt.
Collect & Renew
Levy non-exempt bank funds, execute against property, and track the judgment across its twenty-year window, renewing before it lapses.
Why the Locate Decides Everything
In a no-garnishment state, finding the assets is the whole game.
In a typical garnishment state, a creditor can lean on the employer to do the heavy lifting; once a wage order lands on a payroll department, the money flows with little further effort. New Hampshire removes that crutch. Here, every working remedy depends on the creditor already knowing the debtor’s financial map: which bank holds the account the trustee process should hit, where the debtor actually earns income the court can order paid out, and what non-exempt property an execution could reach. Without that map, a periodic-payment order is set in a vacuum and a bank levy is a coin flip.
That is where a public-records research firm changes the math. We build a current profile of the debtor, confirming where they live and work and surfacing the banking and property footprint that makes each New Hampshire remedy land. Finding the employer matters even in a state where you cannot garnish, because employment proves there is income for a payment order to capture and it anchors the debtor to a county and a court. New Hampshire’s own statute makes the point for us: RSA 458-B:6, IX treats “the name and address of the present employer” as a fact the state requires to be reported, because the mechanism does not function without it. Our guide on finding a debtor’s employer for collection and our walkthrough of how to find someone’s current employer cover the verification side. When the judgment itself needs a strategy, our New Hampshire judgment-collection guide ties the remedies together and carries the twenty-year enforcement clock in detail.
How that work is done matters as much as what it finds. Nobody here poses as a bank, a payroll clerk, a courier, or the debtor to get a New Hampshire employer or branch manager to give up information, and we do not pretend to be anyone we are not to obtain a record. The research is public records and licensed databases, worked under a documented permissible purpose. We are a public-records research firm operating under FCRA, GLBA, and DPPA rules and not a consumer reporting agency; the debtor profile we build is not a consumer report and may not be used to decide employment, tenancy, credit, or insurance.
There is also work we turn down. We do not accept a request to locate someone where the purpose looks like reaching a person who is hiding from the requester rather than collecting a debt. If a file carries the marks of domestic violence, stalking, a restraining or protective order, or an address confidentiality program, we decline it and refer the requester to the court or to law enforcement, whatever the stated reason. A judgment is a court’s finding about money; it is not a licence to find someone who does not want to be found. For a valid judgment, a verified locate typically comes back within 24 hours.
Who Brings Us New Hampshire Files
We locate the debtor, income, and assets; you pursue the remedy.
Granite State Creditor Counsel
Debtors located for RSA 524:6-a petitions
Agencies Working NH Paper
Bank branches identified before service
Out-of-State Judgment Holders
Assets traced before domestication
Portfolio Purchasers
NH files scored for collectibility
Small-Business Owners
Customers behind on a judgment
New Hampshire Landlords
Former tenants traced for balances
Whatever seat you sit in, the New Hampshire constraint is identical: the paycheck is closed, so recovery rides on locating income, accounts, and property the law still lets you reach. We deliver that profile through professional skip tracing, then hand you a current, verified picture so your periodic-payment petition, bank levy, or execution lands on something real. If a debtor has filed, our overview of New Hampshire bankruptcy exemptions helps you read what is in play. We do not give legal advice and we do not pursue the remedy for you; we make sure the remedy you choose is aimed at the right target.
Our Commitment
We find what New Hampshire law still lets you reach: the debtor’s current employer, bank relationships, and non-exempt property, so your periodic-payment order, trustee process, or execution is built on facts. Lawful, permissible-purpose research for creditors, attorneys, and agencies since 2004.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a creditor garnish wages in New Hampshire?
Not as a continuing garnishment. RSA 512:21, I exempts every wage earned after a trustee writ is served, so there is no ongoing stream and an employer never holds a standing deduction order. Wages already earned when the writ landed are exempt as well under paragraph II, unless the action is founded on a debt on a judgment issued by a New Hampshire court of competent jurisdiction; in that one case they are exempt only above 50 times the FLSA minimum hourly wage for each week, which is $362.50 at the current federal rate of $7.25 an hour.
If wages are protected, how do creditors collect in New Hampshire?
The main tool is a periodic-payment order under RSA 524:6-a, where the court compels the debtor to disclose finances and orders installment payments enforced by contempt. Creditors also use the trustee process to levy non-exempt bank funds and execution to reach non-exempt property above the exemptions.
What is a periodic-payment order under RSA 524:6-a?
It is a court order requiring the judgment debtor to appear, submit a statement of assets and liabilities, answer under oath about income and ability to pay, and then make court-set payments from income or non-exempt assets. Failure to pay is civil contempt, but not where the judge finds a change in circumstances, that the failure was not intentional or in bad faith, or other good cause. Retirement-plan income is exempt from periodic payments up to 50 times the FLSA minimum per week, doubling to 100 times where the debtor and a person they live with both draw retirement income.
Can an out-of-state judgment reach New Hampshire wages?
Not until it has been brought into a New Hampshire court. RSA 512:21, II opens the pre-service wage window only for “actions founded upon a debt on a judgment issued by a New Hampshire court of competent jurisdiction,” so a valid judgment from another state unlocks nothing here on its own. Support orders are the opposite: RSA 458-B:1, VI expressly includes an order issued by any court or administrative body of New Hampshire “or any other state,” so out-of-state support reaches the same paycheck continuously.
Can a New Hampshire bank account be levied?
Yes, and the timing is prescribed. RSA 512:9-b allows a bank to be served only on a bank officer, branch supervisor, or head teller, and only from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Monday through Friday excluding bank holidays; a trustee served after 3:00 p.m. has until the next business day to effect the attachment. The bank is chargeable only for what it holds at the time of service, so identifying the right institution first matters enormously. Protected deposits stay out of reach even when the account is levied.
Does New Hampshire have a 25 percent garnishment formula?
It has exactly one, and it does not belong to private creditors. RSA 282-A:152-a lets the Department of Employment Security recover a fraud overpayment of unemployment benefits by serving a notice of garnishment directly on an employer without a court order, once the determination has been final and unpaid for 90 days. The withheld amount may not exceed 25 percent of weekly disposable earnings or the excess over 50 times the FLSA minimum, whichever is less, must begin no later than the first earnings paid 21 days after the notice was mailed, and is binding on the employer until payment in full.
What does a New Hampshire employer have to do with a trustee writ?
File the trustee disclosure form with the court, the plaintiff, and the defendant within 30 days of receipt. RSA 512:11 provides that an employer who misses that deadline “may be adjudged chargeable for a sum up to the amount of the judgment,” so ignoring the paperwork can put the employer on the hook for the employee’s whole debt. Where wages are partly exempt, RSA 512:21, II also requires the employer to pay the exempt portion to the employee on the usual payday.
How fast can you locate a New Hampshire debtor and their assets?
For a legitimate judgment, a verified locate typically comes back within 24 hours. Send whatever you have, such as a name, last known address, date of birth, or place of work, and we build a current profile of the debtor’s employer, bank relationships, and non-exempt property so each remedy is aimed at something real.
Can't Garnish Wages in New Hampshire?
You do not need the paycheck. We locate the debtor’s employer, bank relationships, and non-exempt property so your periodic-payment order, trustee process, or execution lands on real assets, typically within 24 hours. Contact us to get started.
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