North Dakota Wage Garnishment Laws
North Dakota lets a judgment creditor reach an employee’s paycheck, but the state writes the math its own way. The reachable slice is the lesser of one quarter of disposable earnings or the amount above forty times the federal minimum wage, and then North Dakota does something most states do not: it shrinks the garnishable amount by a flat sum each week for every dependent the worker supports at home. That dependent reduction is the difference between a routine garnishment and one that captures little or nothing, yet it is not automatic. This guide walks through the cap, the dependent boost with worked examples, the ten-day notice, the garnishee disclosure, the debtor’s exemption claim, and the support and tax carve-outs that override the usual ceiling, all under chapter 32-09.1 of the North Dakota Century Code.
The Short Version
In North Dakota a judgment creditor can garnish the lesser of twenty-five percent of weekly disposable earnings or the amount by which those earnings exceed forty times the federal minimum hourly wage. North Dakota then reduces the garnishable figure by twenty dollars a week for each dependent family member living with the debtor, but only if the debtor files a sworn list of those dependents with the employer within ten days of the garnishment summons. No list, no dependents counted, and the full quarter is fair game. The creditor must also serve a notice at least ten days before issuing the garnishee summons, the employer must return a sworn disclosure within twenty days, and child support orders, bankruptcy plans, and tax debts override the ordinary cap. The cap protects the paycheck only after a creditor has a judgment and knows where the debtor works, which is exactly the locate problem we solve.
Watch: North Dakota Wage Garnishment
The cap, the dependent reduction, and what it takes to enforce.
Watch Overview
The North Dakota Garnishment Cap
Two ceilings apply, and the smaller one wins.
North Dakota’s earnings-garnishment limit lives in the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act as a baseline and in section 32-09.1-03 of the Century Code as the state’s own rule. The maximum part of a worker’s aggregate disposable earnings for any workweek that a creditor can garnish may not exceed the lesser of two figures: twenty-five percent of disposable earnings for that week, or the amount by which disposable earnings for that week exceed forty times the federal minimum hourly wage set by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Whichever number is smaller is the ceiling, and in low-wage weeks the second test does the protecting.
Disposable earnings is the key term. It is not gross pay and it is not take-home after every voluntary deduction. It is what remains after the law requires the employer to withhold amounts such as federal and state income tax, Social Security, and Medicare. Health insurance premiums, retirement contributions you elect, and union dues are not subtracted before the garnishment math runs, so disposable earnings usually sit higher than the figure on the bottom of a pay stub. Getting this base right matters, because every percentage and every floor is measured against disposable earnings, not gross and not net.
The forty-times-minimum-wage floor is what keeps a low earner from being garnished at all. Because the federal minimum wage is seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour, forty times that figure is two hundred ninety dollars a week. Disposable earnings at or below that floor are completely exempt: there is no amount exceeding the floor, so the second test yields zero, and zero is the smaller of the two ceilings. Only the dollars above two hundred ninety per week are even potentially reachable, and even then the twenty-five percent test may cap the take lower still.
North Dakota’s Per-Dependent Reduction
The feature that sets the state apart, and the trap inside it.
Here is where North Dakota parts ways with the bare federal rule. After the cap is calculated, section 32-09.1-03 requires that the maximum amount subject to garnishment for any workweek be reduced by twenty dollars for each dependent family member residing with the garnishment debtor. A worker supporting three dependents at home does not just get the standard quarter taken; the reachable amount is first cut by sixty dollars a week, three dependents at twenty dollars each. Over a year of weekly garnishment, that is more than three thousand dollars the creditor never touches, purely on account of the dependent reduction.
But the reduction is not automatic, and that is the trap. The statute puts the burden squarely on the debtor. Within ten days after receiving the garnishment summons, the garnishment debtor must give the employer a list, signed under penalty of perjury, of the names and Social Security numbers of the dependents who reside with the debtor. The employer applies the reduction based on that sworn list. Until the list arrives, the employer has no basis to subtract anything, so the worker is treated as having zero dependents and the full twenty-five percent is exposed. A debtor who supports a household but misses the ten-day window can lose the entire dependent benefit for that garnishment.
For a creditor, the practical takeaway runs the other direction. You do not pre-subtract dependents, and you do not guess at a worker’s family size. The reduction enters the calculation only when the debtor properly claims it, and a debtor who fails to file leaves the larger figure on the table. Either way, the dependent reduction is the single most important North Dakota-specific variable in any garnishment estimate, and ignoring it produces numbers that are simply wrong for this state.
The Math, Worked Out
How the cap and the dependent reduction interact at real wage levels.
The cleanest way to see North Dakota’s rule is to run it. Take a worker with five hundred dollars in weekly disposable earnings and no dependents claimed. The twenty-five percent test gives one hundred twenty-five dollars. The floor test gives the amount over two hundred ninety dollars, which is two hundred ten dollars. The lesser of the two is one hundred twenty-five dollars, so the creditor reaches one hundred twenty-five dollars that week.
Now give that same worker two dependents who live at home, properly claimed within ten days. The starting reachable figure is still one hundred twenty-five dollars, but North Dakota subtracts twenty dollars for each of the two dependents, a forty-dollar reduction. The creditor now reaches eighty-five dollars instead of one hundred twenty-five. Add a third dependent and the reduction climbs to sixty dollars, dropping the take to sixty-five dollars. The dependent reduction has carved a third off the garnishment without changing the worker’s pay at all.
At the low end the floor does the heavy lifting. A worker with two hundred ninety dollars or less in weekly disposable earnings has nothing reachable, dependents or not, because no dollars exceed the floor and the smaller ceiling is zero. At the high end the percentage governs: a worker with one thousand one hundred dollars in disposable earnings faces a twenty-five percent take of two hundred seventy-five dollars, and that quarter is still reduced by twenty dollars per claimed dependent before the employer withholds. The table below lays the levels side by side.
| Weekly Disposable Earnings | 25% Test | Over 40x Floor Test | Reachable (No Dependents) | Reachable (Two Dependents Claimed) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Two hundred ninety dollars | Seventy-two dollars fifty cents | Zero | Zero (floor protects) | Zero |
| Five hundred dollars | One hundred twenty-five dollars | Two hundred ten dollars | One hundred twenty-five dollars | Eighty-five dollars |
| Seven hundred dollars | One hundred seventy-five dollars | Four hundred ten dollars | One hundred seventy-five dollars | One hundred thirty-five dollars |
| Nine hundred dollars | Two hundred twenty-five dollars | Six hundred ten dollars | Two hundred twenty-five dollars | One hundred eighty-five dollars |
| One thousand one hundred dollars | Two hundred seventy-five dollars | Eight hundred ten dollars | Two hundred seventy-five dollars | Two hundred thirty-five dollars |
Read the table left to right and the pattern is clear: above the floor, the twenty-five percent test is almost always the binding ceiling for North Dakota wage earners, and every claimed dependent peels twenty dollars off whatever that ceiling produces. These figures are illustrations for understanding the formula, not a quote on any individual case, and the federal minimum wage figure that drives the floor can change.
North Dakota vs. the Federal Baseline
Where the state follows the federal rule, and where it diverges.
| Element | Federal Baseline (CCPA) | North Dakota (N.D.C.C. 32-09.1) |
|---|---|---|
| Percentage ceiling | Twenty-five percent of disposable earnings | Same twenty-five percent of disposable earnings |
| Low-wage floor | Amount over thirty times federal minimum wage | Amount over forty times federal minimum wage (a higher, more protective floor) |
| Per-dependent reduction | None in the baseline | Minus twenty dollars per week for each dependent who lives with the debtor ND ONLY |
| How dependents are counted | Not applicable | Debtor files a sworn list with the employer within ten days, or no dependents are counted |
| Notice before garnishment | Not federally required for the wage cap itself | Creditor must serve a ten-day pre-garnishment notice; failure voids the garnishment |
| Support, bankruptcy, tax | Higher limits or exemptions apply | The ordinary cap does not apply to support orders, chapter 13 plans, or state and federal tax debt |
The headline difference is the dependent reduction, which has no federal equivalent, and the floor: North Dakota’s forty-times-minimum-wage floor sits above the federal thirty-times floor, so the state shields a slightly larger band of low earnings from garnishment entirely. For a full state-by-state view of how these caps and floors compare, see our roundup of wage garnishment laws by state.
The North Dakota Garnishment Procedure
From judgment to withheld wages, step by step.
Get and Docket the Judgment
Wage garnishment is post-judgment relief. A creditor must first win and docket a money judgment in a North Dakota court before any paycheck can be touched.
Serve the Ten-Day Notice
At least ten days before issuing the garnishee summons, the creditor must serve the debtor with notice that a garnishment may follow. Skipping this step renders the garnishment void.
Serve the Garnishee Summons
The employer, the garnishee, is served with the summons and a copy goes to the debtor, who then has ten days to file the sworn dependent list with the employer.
Disclosure and Withholding
Within twenty days the employer returns a sworn disclosure of disposable earnings subject to garnishment, applies the cap and any dependent reduction, and withholds.
Two procedural deadlines do the most work here. The creditor’s ten-day pre-garnishment notice under section 32-09.1-04 is mandatory; a garnishment issued without it is void, not merely defective. And the employer’s disclosure under section 32-09.1-09 must be served within twenty days, stating under oath the disposable earnings subject to garnishment and any property of the debtor the employer holds. An employer who ignores the summons can end up personally liable, which is why disclosures are returned even when the answer is that the named worker is not employed there.
Exemption Claims and What Overrides the Cap
The debtor’s defenses and the debts that ignore the ceiling.
The debtor’s exemption claim
The dependent reduction is not the only protection a North Dakota debtor can assert. When a garnishment reaches funds rather than ongoing wages, such as a bank account, the debtor generally has twenty days to file a claim of exemptions and stop the seizure of protected money. Certain income is exempt at the source no matter where it lands first, including Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, veterans’ benefits, and most other federal benefit payments. A worker who believes the wrong amount is being withheld, or that exempt funds were swept, raises it through the exemption process rather than by ignoring the garnishment.
Support, bankruptcy, and tax debts
The ordinary twenty-five percent ceiling is not universal. Section 32-09.1-03 expressly states that its restrictions do not apply to a court order for the support of any person, to a bankruptcy order under chapter 13, or to a debt due for any state or federal tax. Child and spousal support orders can reach a much larger share of disposable earnings, well above a quarter, under separate federal and state support-withholding rules. Tax authorities collect under their own statutes. So a debtor protected by the twenty-five percent cap against an ordinary credit card or medical creditor may see a far deeper bite from a support order or a tax levy, and a creditor estimating recovery has to know which kind of debt it is collecting.
One garnishment at a time, and priority
North Dakota generally limits a worker to having earnings garnished by one creditor at a time, with later garnishments queuing behind the active one. A support withholding order, however, takes priority over an ordinary creditor garnishment. For a general creditor, that means the practical question is often not just the cap but the line: whether another garnishment or a support order is already attached to the paycheck, which determines whether anything is reachable right now at all.
Why a Garnishment Stalls Before It Starts
The cap is moot until you can name the employer.
No Known Employer
You have a judgment but no idea where the debtor works, so there is no garnishee to serve and the cap never comes into play.
Debtor Changed Jobs
The employer on file laid the worker off or the worker moved on, so the garnishment lands on a payroll that owes the debtor nothing.
Paid as a Contractor
A worker paid on a 1099 as an independent contractor is harder to garnish through ordinary wage garnishment, which targets an employer-employee relationship.
Moved Out of State
The debtor left North Dakota, raising whether to garnish here or domesticate the judgment in the new state where the wages are now paid.
Already Garnished
Another creditor or a support order is first in line, so even a perfect garnishment captures nothing until the prior one clears.
Below the Floor
The debtor’s disposable earnings sit at or under the forty-times floor, so nothing is reachable and a different asset has to be pursued.
Notice that most of these are not legal problems at all. They are information problems. A garnishment is only as good as the employer named in the summons, and a judgment creditor who cannot identify a current, correct payroll has a piece of paper and no leverage. This is the gap a public-records research firm closes: confirming where the debtor actually works right now, before the ten-day notice goes out and the clock starts running.
Find the Employer, Then File
We do the locate; you run the garnishment.
Current Place of Work
We rebuild where a North Dakota debtor is employed right now from public records and licensed databases, so your garnishee summons names a payroll that actually owes the debtor wages.
Banks and Property
When wages are thin or already garnished, we surface bank and real-property leads so you can pivot to a levy or a lien instead of withholding nothing.
The Debtor’s Whereabouts
If the debtor has moved or gone quiet, we locate the person and the state where they now earn, so you can garnish here or domesticate the judgment where they live.
The North Dakota cap is the easy part once the paycheck is found. The hard part is the locate, and it is what we do. We confirm a debtor’s current employer so you can find an employer for wage garnishment and serve the right payroll the first time, and our guide on how to find someone’s current employer walks through the signals that point to active work. We also map the surrounding picture through skip tracing services, and for the rest of a North Dakota judgment we cover North Dakota asset exemptions for creditors and North Dakota bankruptcy exemptions so you know what is reachable before you spend on enforcement. For a legitimate, permissible-purpose collection matter, a verified employer locate typically comes back within 24 hours.
Who We Help
Creditors and counsel enforcing North Dakota judgments.
Collection Attorneys
Right payroll named on the summons
Collection Agencies
Debtor employers verified to file
Judgment Holders
Self-represented creditors on a clock
Small-Business Creditors
Unpaid invoices reduced to judgment
Landlords
Money judgments against former tenants
Process Servers
Correct garnishee address to serve
Our Commitment
We are a public-records research firm. We find the current employer, bank, and property tied to a North Dakota judgment debtor so your garnishment lands on a real paycheck and clears the procedure cleanly. Lawful, permissible-purpose research for creditors and counsel since 2004.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much can a creditor garnish from wages in North Dakota?
The lesser of twenty-five percent of weekly disposable earnings or the amount by which disposable earnings exceed forty times the federal minimum hourly wage. That cap is then reduced by twenty dollars a week for each dependent the debtor properly claims, under section 32-09.1-03 of the North Dakota Century Code.
What is the per-dependent reduction, and is it automatic?
North Dakota reduces the garnishable amount by twenty dollars per week for each dependent family member living with the debtor. It is not automatic. The debtor must give the employer a list of those dependents, signed under penalty of perjury, within ten days of the garnishment summons, or no dependents are counted and the full twenty-five percent applies.
What counts as disposable earnings?
Disposable earnings are what remain after legally required withholdings such as income tax, Social Security, and Medicare. Voluntary deductions like health insurance, retirement contributions, and union dues are not subtracted first, so disposable earnings are usually higher than net take-home pay.
Is there a minimum income that cannot be garnished?
Yes. Because the cap protects all disposable earnings at or below forty times the federal minimum wage, a worker earning two hundred ninety dollars a week or less in disposable earnings has nothing reachable through ordinary wage garnishment, regardless of dependents.
Can credit card or medical debt reach wages in North Dakota?
Yes, but only after the creditor obtains and dockets a money judgment, serves the required ten-day pre-garnishment notice, and serves a garnishee summons on the employer. The same twenty-five percent cap and dependent reduction then apply.
Do child support and tax debts follow the same cap?
No. Section 32-09.1-03 states its restrictions do not apply to court support orders, chapter 13 bankruptcy orders, or state and federal tax debt. Support and tax collections run under separate rules and can reach a larger share of earnings than the ordinary twenty-five percent ceiling.
What is the garnishee disclosure and when is it due?
After being served, the employer must serve a sworn disclosure, generally within twenty days, stating the disposable earnings subject to garnishment and any of the debtor’s property it holds. An employer who ignores the summons can face personal liability for the amount that should have been withheld.
How does finding the debtor’s employer help?
A wage garnishment is only as good as the payroll named in the summons. We confirm where a North Dakota debtor currently works so the garnishee summons reaches a real paycheck. For a legitimate, permissible-purpose matter, a verified employer locate typically comes back within 24 hours.
Have a Judgment, Need the Paycheck?
We locate the current employer, bank, and property behind a North Dakota judgment debtor so your garnishment lands on real wages, typically within 24 hours. Contact us to get started.
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