Virginia Wage Garnishment Laws
Virginia uses a federal-style lesser-of test that caps wage garnishment at twenty-five percent of disposable earnings, but the Commonwealth layers on protections that surprise out-of-state creditors: a weekly floor measured against Virginia’s own higher minimum wage, a per-dependent poor-debtor exemption under Virginia Code section 34-4.2, a homestead deed that must be recorded by the garnishment return date, and a garnishment summons that expires and has to be renewed against the debtor’s current employer. This guide walks creditors, attorneys, and collection professionals through how much a Virginia paycheck can actually be reached, the exemptions a debtor can assert, and why a verified employer is the prerequisite that makes any of it enforceable.
The Short Version
In Virginia a creditor with a money judgment can garnish the lesser of twenty-five percent of the debtor’s disposable earnings for the week, or the amount by which those earnings exceed forty times the higher of the federal and Virginia minimum hourly wages, under Virginia Code section 34-29. Because Virginia’s own minimum wage is $12.77 per hour for 2026, that weekly floor is $510.80, not the $290 a federal-only reading produces. On top of that cap, Virginia gives a working parent an extra weekly exemption for each dependent minor child living with them, and lets any householder shield additional cash and property by recording a homestead deed before the garnishment return date. Child support, spousal support, and unpaid state and federal taxes blow past the ordinary twenty-five-percent limit and reach far more of the check, though the state-tax half of that carve-out is written out of section 34-29(B)(3) on July 1, 2027 and only federal tax debt keeps it after that date. None of it works against a paycheck you cannot point to: a Virginia garnishment summons names a specific employer, expires after its return period, and must be re-served on whoever signs the debtor’s checks today. We are a public-records research firm that confirms that current employer, usually within 24 hours, so your summons lands on a live payroll instead of a former one.
Watch: How Virginia Garnishment Works
The cap, the exemptions, and why the employer is the linchpin.
Watch Overview
How Much of a Virginia Paycheck Can Be Reached
The lesser-of test, in plain numbers.
Virginia does not invent its own percentage. Under Virginia Code section 34-29, the maximum part of an individual’s disposable earnings subject to garnishment in any workweek is the lesser of two figures: twenty-five percent of disposable earnings for that week, or the amount by which those disposable earnings exceed forty times the federal minimum hourly wage prescribed by 29 U.S.C. section 206(a)(1) or the Virginia minimum hourly wage prescribed by section 40.1-28.10, whichever is greater, in effect when the earnings are payable. The state-minimum leg was added by the 2021 Special Session I, chapter 8 amendment, and it is the leg that controls today. Both published versions of section 34-29, the one effective until July 1, 2027 and the one effective after it, carry an identical subsection A, so the cap itself is not a rule that is about to shift. Subsection B is a different matter, and the difference is dated: on July 1, 2027 subdivision B(3) narrows from “any debt due for any state or federal tax” to “any debt due for any federal tax.” Everything below about the tax carve-out is written against the version in force now.
Run the arithmetic and the difference is large. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, so forty times federal is $290 a week. Virginia Code section 40.1-28.10 sets the Commonwealth’s minimum wage at $12.77 per hour for calendar year 2026, so forty times Virginia is $510.80 a week. The statute takes the greater, which means the exempt weekly base in Virginia is $510.80 for 2026, roughly $220 a week more than a federal-only calculation protects. Do not memorize the dollar figure: memorize the mechanism, because section 40.1-28.10 moves the state rate on a schedule and the floor moves with it. That schedule is printed on the face of the statute rather than left to guesswork. Subsection C sets $13.75 per hour from January 1, 2027; subsection D sets $15.00 per hour from January 1, 2028; and from January 1, 2029 subsections E and F substitute an adjusted state hourly minimum wage that the Commissioner of Labor and Industry must establish by October 1 each year from the Consumer Price Index, with each annual adjustment barred from falling below zero. Multiply those two printed rates by forty and the protected weekly base becomes $550.00 for 2027 and $600.00 for 2028. Those two products are arithmetic performed here from the rates the statute prints; the Code of Virginia does not print the weekly figures itself.
The structure mirrors the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act ceiling at 15 U.S.C. section 1673, but Virginia’s relationship to that ceiling is unusual. Under 15 U.S.C. section 1675, the Secretary of Labor may exempt a state whose own law gives substantially similar protection, and 29 C.F.R. 870.57(a) names Virginia as that state, exempting garnishments issued under Virginia law from the federal restrictions and identifying section 34-29 as the qualifying statute. So the operative limit in a Virginia garnishment is the Virginia statute itself, not the federal one, and the regulation adds that if a Virginia court applies another state’s law to a garnishment not governed by section 34-29, the federal CCPA limits apply again.
The phrase that does the work is “disposable earnings.” It does not mean gross pay, and it does not mean take-home after the debtor’s voluntary deductions. Disposable earnings are what remains after the deductions an employer is required by law to withhold: federal and state income tax withholding, Social Security and Medicare, and any mandatory contributions. Health insurance premiums, retirement plan contributions the worker chose, union dues, and similar voluntary items are not subtracted before the cap is applied. A creditor who calculates against net take-home pay almost always under-collects, and a debtor who assumes the garnishment comes off gross almost always over-worries.
Notice what the second prong protects. That weekly floor is exempt no matter what. Virginia is more generous than the bare federal rule twice over: its multiplier is forty rather than the thirty times used in 15 U.S.C. section 1673, and it measures that multiplier against the higher state minimum wage. Forty times $12.77 against thirty times $7.25 is $510.80 against $217.50 for 2026. For a worker earning near minimum wage the twenty-five-percent prong may not bite at all, because subtracting the floor leaves little or nothing above it to garnish. For a higher earner the twenty-five-percent prong is almost always the binding limit. The creditor takes whichever number is smaller, every single workweek.
Two Worked Examples
The same statute, three very different outcomes.
The Floor Protects the Check
Suppose disposable earnings are $560 in a week, against the 2026 floor of $510.80 (forty times Virginia’s $12.77). Twenty-five percent of $560 is $140. The amount above the floor is $49.20. The creditor takes the lesser figure, so $49.20 is reachable, not $140. Below $510.80 in a week, nothing is reachable at all.
The Percentage Binds
Now suppose disposable earnings are $800 in a week. Twenty-five percent is $200. The amount above the $510.80 floor is $289.20, which is larger. The lesser figure is the two-hundred-dollar quarter, so $200 is reachable that week. For most salaried debtors the twenty-five-percent prong is the one that controls; the floor only takes over below about $681 a week in 2026.
The Poor-Debtor Carve-Out
Take the $560-a-week earner again, but they support two dependent minor children at home and qualify under section 34-4.2. An additional $52 per week is exempt, and the $49.20 disappears. How the $52 stacks is an open question this page will not pretend to settle. Treated as a deduction taken before the cap math, it drops the figure the floor is measured against to $508. Read literally, section 34-4.2 lets the parent hold the amount exempt “in addition to” what section 34-29 already protects, which points instead at a further exemption applied to the section 34-29 result. Both routes reach nothing reachable in this example and they diverge at higher earnings. Put that to Virginia counsel rather than to a calculator. Either way the exemption must be claimed; it is not applied automatically.
These examples use the 2026 floor of $510.80. That figure moves whenever the wage feeding it moves: section 34-29 measures against whichever of the federal or Virginia minimum wage is greater, and Virginia’s rate is set by section 40.1-28.10, which steps up on a published schedule and then adjusts annually with the Consumer Price Index. Re-derive the floor each January rather than carrying last year’s number forward. The point is the method, not the cents: run both prongs every pay period, take the smaller, then apply any exemption the debtor has properly claimed. A creditor who skips the second prong garnishes too much and risks a court trimming the order; a debtor who never claims an exemption leaves protected wages on the table.
Why So Much of the Internet Still Prints $290
Virginia’s own regulation disagrees with Virginia’s own statute, and it says so in print.
If you audit this page against the Virginia Administrative Code you will find $290 and conclude we got it wrong. Read this section before you make that correction, because the two instruments genuinely conflict and the conflict is the story.
Section 34-29(A)(2) ends by handing the non-weekly problem to an agency: for a pay period other than a week, “the State Commissioner of Labor and Industry shall by regulation prescribe a multiple.” That regulation exists. It is 16VAC15-21, Maximum Garnishment Amounts, and section 34-29 is its stated statutory authority. Its definitions section builds everything on one term, “F.M.W.R.”, which it defines as the current federal minimum hourly wage rate under 29 U.S.C. section 206(a)(1). There is no Virginia limb anywhere in the chapter. And 16VAC15-21-30 does not merely imply a number, it prints one: “Based on a federal minimum wage rate of $7.25 per hour, 40 times the F.M.W.R. is $290,” followed by a worked example telling the reader that nothing may be withheld from weekly disposable earnings at or below $290.
Check the amendment dates and the picture resolves. The chapter’s historical note runs to Virginia Register Volume 25, Issue 20, effective July 24, 2009. The Virginia minimum-wage leg was added to section 34-29(A)(2) by the 2021 Special Session I, chapter 8 amendment, and Virginia Minimum Wage Act rates only began running on May 1, 2021. The regulation is twelve years older than the statutory language it is supposed to implement, and nobody has amended it since. So the $290 circulating on debtor-help sites and calculators is not invention or carelessness. It is a live, official, currently published Virginia government source that the General Assembly outran.
Which one governs. A regulation cannot enlarge a limit the enabling statute sets, and section 34-29(D) forbids any court or officer to make, execute, or enforce any order or process in violation of the section. On the ordinary rule the statute controls and the exempt weekly base is $510.80 for 2026. We are stating that as the reason rather than quietly harmonising the two texts, and we did not find a Virginia decision or an Attorney General opinion addressing this specific pair. If real money turns on the difference, that is a question for a Virginia attorney, not for a web page.
Virginia’s own non-weekly multipliers
The same regulation is the only place Virginia states what happens when payroll does not run weekly, and it is worth having even while its base figure is stale. 16VAC15-21-20(B) sets the weekly floor at the F.M.W.R. times forty, doubles it for a biweekly period, applies a factor of 2.16665 for a semimonthly period and 4.33330 for a monthly period, and for any period longer than a month multiplies by the number of weeks worked, computed by dividing the total days in the period by seven and carrying the result to four decimal places. Those semimonthly and monthly factors are Virginia’s, not the federal “4 1/3 workweeks” convention.
Apply the regulation’s multipliers to the statute’s greater-of rate for 2026 and the periodic floors work out to roughly $1,021.60 biweekly, $1,106.72 semimonthly, and $2,213.45 monthly against the $510.80 weekly figure. Label that for what it is: our arithmetic, combining a multiplier from the regulation with a rate from the statute, which are exactly the two instruments that disagree. No Virginia source prints those three numbers. A payroll department computing a non-weekly garnishment should confirm the method with counsel rather than lift the products from here.
Virginia’s Per-Dependent Poor-Debtor Exemption
The protection that makes Virginia different from the bare federal rule.
This is the provision out-of-state creditors most often miss. Under Virginia Code section 34-4.2, a parent who supports a dependent minor child residing with them may exempt an additional weekly amount from garnishment, on top of everything section 34-29 already protects. The amount is tiered by the number of children: $34 per week for one child, $52 per week for two children, and $66 per week for three or more children. Note the statute’s own words for how that slice sits alongside the cap: the parent holds it exempt “in addition to” the property and earnings already exempt under sections 20-108.1, 34-4, 34-4.1, 34-26, 34-27, 34-29, and 64.2-311. Whether “in addition to” means a deduction taken before the section 34-29 math or a further exemption applied to its result is the open question the worked example above flags.
The exemption is means-tested. It is not available to a parent whose household gross income, including any support payments received for children living in the home, exceeds $1,750 per month. The statute is aimed squarely at lower-income working parents, which is why it is called a poor-debtor exemption. The claiming procedure is spelled out and it is not a formality: subsection B of section 34-4.2 requires the parent to attach, to the claim-for-exemption form set out at Virginia Code section 8.01-512.4, an affidavit documenting the dependent children, the household income, and the income of other adults in the home, together with two items of proof. A creditor who receives a bare assertion without the affidavit and the two proof items has a procedural answer to it. A creditor evaluating a Virginia file should assume a working parent near the income threshold will assert it, because for them it can wipe out an otherwise modest garnishment.
Pair this with the broader homestead exemption and you see how Virginia builds protection in layers. Section 34-4 lets a householder hold exempt up to $5,000 in value, or up to $10,000 if the householder is sixty-five or older, plus an additional $500 in value for each dependent, and up to $50,000 in value in a principal residence. These figures are scheduled to adjust for inflation on April 1, 2027, and at three-year intervals after that, tied to the Consumer Price Index and rounded to the nearest $25 by the terms of section 34-4 itself. The same subsection carves out bankruptcy cases commenced before April 1, 2027, which keep the pre-adjustment values. The dependent-based protections in sections 34-4 and 34-4.2 are exactly why two debtors with identical paychecks can owe a creditor very different amounts.
Virginia vs. the Bare Federal Floor
Where the Commonwealth adds protection a federal-only analysis ignores.
| Protection | Federal Baseline (15 U.S.C. 1673) | Virginia (Va. Code Title 34) |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary wage cap | Lesser of twenty-five percent of disposable earnings or amount over thirty times the federal minimum wage ($217.50 at $7.25). | Same twenty-five-percent prong, but the floor is forty times the greater of the federal or Virginia minimum wage: $510.80 a week at Virginia’s $12.77 rate for 2026. |
| Per-dependent exemption VA EXTRA | None. Federal law sets no per-child wage exemption. | $34 (one child), $52 (two), $66 (three or more) per week, if household income is at or under the threshold. |
| Homestead / cash exemption | Governed by state law; no federal wage homestead. | Up to $5,000 in value, ten thousand if sixty-five or older, plus five hundred per dependent; recorded by homestead deed. |
| How exemption is claimed | Varies by state procedure. | Debtor must file the claim and record the homestead deed by the garnishment return date or lose it. |
| Support and tax debts | Higher caps for support; tax and bankruptcy orders exempt from the ordinary limit. | Support reaches fifty to sixty-five percent under section 34-29(C); bankruptcy orders and tax debts sit outside the twenty-five-percent cap, but from July 1, 2027 subdivision B(3) covers federal tax only and state tax debt falls back inside the cap. |
The single biggest takeaway sits in the highlighted row: Virginia is one of the states that adds a per-dependent wage exemption with no federal equivalent. A creditor who models a Virginia garnishment using only the federal numbers will overstate recovery against a working parent, and a Virginia debtor who never claims sections 34-4.2 and 34-4 surrenders protection the law hands them for free. For a fuller side-by-side across jurisdictions, see our overview of wage garnishment laws by state.
Support and Tax Debts Break the Cap
When far more than a quarter of the check is reachable.
The twenty-five-percent ceiling is the rule for ordinary judgment creditors: a credit-card balance, a medical bill, a deficiency on a repossessed car, a small-claims award. Several categories of debt sit outside that ceiling entirely. Subsection B of section 34-29 expressly carves out any order for the support of a person, any order of a bankruptcy court, and any debt due for any state or federal tax. For those debts, the ordinary cap simply does not apply. Put a date on the third one. The version of section 34-29 effective July 1, 2027 rewrites subdivision B(3) to read “any debt due for any federal tax,” so a Virginia state tax debt loses its exemption from the subsection A restrictions on that day and is thrown back onto the ordinary lesser-of test. The carve-out is correct as stated until then, and a creditor or payroll office working a state tax debt should diary that date rather than trust a copy of the statute printed today.
Domestic support is the most dramatic example. For an order supporting a spouse or child, garnishment can reach up to sixty percent of disposable earnings, dropping to fifty percent where the worker is also supporting another spouse or dependent child not covered by the order. Read subsection C for yourself, because it does not add five points to those numbers. It substitutes them: the fifty percent “shall be 55 percent” and the sixty percent “shall be 65 percent” “if and to the extent that” the earnings are subject to garnishment to enforce a support order for a period more than twelve weeks before the beginning of that workweek. The qualifier is the half everyone drops. The higher ceiling attaches to the portion of the withholding attributable to that older period, not to the entire order because part of it happens to be stale. Support obligations and property division are decided separately, and how Virginia divides marital property governs the second question rather than this one. A worker who pictures the twenty-five-percent comfort zone can find well over half of the check withheld for back support. Tax levies and bankruptcy-court orders likewise follow their own collection rules rather than the section 34-29 limit. If you are collecting an ordinary money judgment, the twenty-five-percent prong governs; if you are enforcing support or a tax obligation, expect to reach much deeper.
The Virginia Garnishment Summons, Step by Step
From judgment to a check that actually withholds.
Hold a Judgment
You first need a Virginia money judgment. Docketing it in the circuit court creates a lien on the debtor’s real estate. Under section 8.01-251 the enforcement clock is ten years for a judgment dated on or after July 1, 2021 and twenty for one dated before it.
Identify the Garnishee
A wage garnishment summons names the current employer as garnishee. Naming a former payroll wastes the cycle, which is where a verified employer locate pays off.
Serve the Summons
The summons is issued and served on the employer with a return date. The employer must answer and begin withholding the garnishable portion each pay period.
Garnishee Answers and Pays In
The employer files its answer stating wages owed and pays the withheld funds into court by the return date, where exemptions are resolved before money is released.
Two procedural facts trip up creditors. First, the debtor’s window to protect wages runs through the return date: a debtor may file a claim of homestead exemption after the summons is served on the employer but before or on the return date, and the garnishing court must consider it. Recording the homestead deed late, or not at all, forfeits that extra protection. Second, a Virginia garnishment summons is not a perpetual order. Each summons runs for its return period and then expires, so a creditor collecting a large balance files a fresh summons for each new cycle, confirming the employer is still correct each time. Continuous collection in Virginia is really a series of renewed windows, and every renewal depends on naming a payroll that is still live.
The garnishment summons in Virginia also travels with a statutory notice of the exemptions available to the debtor, so the worker learns at the moment of service that they can object. That notice tells the debtor how to assert the exemptions discussed above and when the hearing on the garnishment will be held. From the creditor’s side, this is one more reason a clean summons matters: a defective filing, a misnamed garnishee, or a missed return date gives the debtor an easy opening to defeat the garnishment without ever reaching the merits of who can shield what. Get the front end right, and the exemption fight at least happens on the facts rather than on a procedural stumble.
How long the judgment itself lasts, and the date that split it
The twenty-year figure that circulates for Virginia judgments is now the minority case. Virginia Code section 8.01-251 was amended to split on a single date. A judgment dated, extended, or renewed prior to July 1, 2021 supports no execution and no action after twenty years from its date. A judgment dated on or after July 1, 2021 supports none after ten years from the date of the judgment or its domestication. The exception preserved in the same subsection is a judgment created by nonpayment of child support, which keeps the twenty-year life. Both regimes are live in 2026, because five years of judgments now fall on the ten-year side, and those are the judgments a creditor is most likely to be enforcing right now. Either clock can be extended, but only by recording the certificate described in subsection B, in the form set out at subsection G, before the period expires.
The rate is chosen on the summons, and the employer cannot fire over it
Two provisions rarely make it onto a garnishment page and both are worth knowing. The statutory summons form at Virginia Code section 8.01-512.3 carries a maximum-portion statement on its face with boxes to tick: support at fifty, fifty-five, sixty, or sixty-five percent, or state taxes at one hundred percent. The form supplies its own defaults. Tick support without a rate and fifty percent applies; tick nothing at all and subsection A of section 34-29 governs. The rate in a Virginia garnishment is therefore selected on the instrument, not merely recited in a code section, and the same form directs the garnishee to withhold sums falling due between the date of service and the appearance date, which is the statutory basis for the rule that each summons expires with its return period.
The second is subsection G of section 34-29: no employer may discharge any employee by reason of the fact that his earnings have been subjected to garnishment for any one indebtedness. Virginia writes its own anti-discharge protection rather than borrowing the federal one at 15 U.S.C. section 1674(a), and it carries the identical load-bearing limit. “Any one indebtedness” means the shield covers the first debt garnished. A second creditor arriving with a separate summons is outside it. Related provisions in the same section are worth a creditor’s attention too: subsection E defines “earnings” to include payments to an independent contractor and periodic pension or retirement payments, and subsection F voids any assignment, sale, transfer, pledge, or mortgage of the wages the section exempts.
When Wages Are Not Enough: Bank Garnishment and Liens
The other levers in a Virginia collection toolkit.
Wage garnishment is the workhorse, but it is not the only tool, and for a debtor with thin or irregular paychecks it may not be the best one. A separate garnishment summons can be aimed at the debtor’s bank, which freezes the account balance at the moment the bank is served rather than skimming a percentage of an ongoing stream. Because a bank garnishment is a snapshot, timing it to land just after a deposit is the difference between capturing real money and capturing an empty account. The homestead and dependent exemptions can still be asserted against funds in the account, so those protections are not purely a wage-side concern.
Assertion is no longer the whole picture, and a creditor who models a Virginia bank garnishment on claim-and-hearing procedure alone will overstate what the freeze captures. Two sections enacted by 2026 chapters 637 and 638 make part of the bank-side protection operate on its own. Under Virginia Code section 34-4.3, a financial institution served with a garnishment summons must examine all of the account holder’s accounts and hold exempt a minimum protected account balance, in a combined total the statute currently caps at $1,000. Section 34-4.4(B) then requires the institution to conduct an account review, calculate immediately a protected amount covering benefit payments deposited in the preceding two months, and establish that the protected amount is exempt. Subsection F states the consequence in terms: both are an automatic exemption, and no judgment debtor is required either to claim them or to request a hearing on them. Section 8.01-512.3 closes the loop from the other end, telling a financial-institution garnishee that only funds exceeding the total of the minimum protected account balance and the protected amount may be captured.
Treat that dollar cap the way this page treats the wage floor, because it is indexed on the same logic. Section 34-4.3 adjusts the minimum protected account balance on April 1, 2027 and at each three-year interval after that for the change in the Consumer Price Index, rounded by the statute to the nearest $25. The durable fact is the mechanism: a Virginia bank garnishment now lands on a balance that has already had a statutory floor carved out of it before anyone files a thing.
Beyond garnishment, a docketed Virginia judgment becomes a lien on the debtor’s real estate in the locality where it is recorded, riding quietly on the property until it is sold or refinanced. For a debtor who owns a home but has little garnishable income, that lien may ultimately collect more than years of paycheck withholding. The practical lesson for a creditor is to match the tool to the debtor’s actual financial picture: a steady W-2 worker is a wage-garnishment target, an account-holder with sporadic income is a bank-garnishment target, and a homeowner is a lien target. Each of those choices still begins with knowing where the debtor banks, works, or owns, which is exactly the public-records groundwork that turns a paper judgment into a collected one.
Why the Employer Is the Whole Game
The cap math is meaningless against a paycheck you cannot locate.
Changed Jobs
The debtor left the employer on your old summons. Your withholding order now hits a payroll that no longer cuts them a check.
1099 Contractor
The debtor is paid as an independent contractor, not a W-2 employee, so an ordinary wage summons may not capture the income stream the way you assume.
Cash or Under the Table
A worker paid off the books leaves no garnishee to serve, pushing you toward bank garnishment or other assets instead.
Staffing Agency Maze
The real payroll is a staffing agency or PEO, not the worksite the debtor reports to, so the summons must name the right entity.
Multiple Part-Time Jobs
Income is split across two or three employers, so a single summons captures only a fraction of the reachable wages.
Moved Out of State
The debtor crossed into Maryland, Tennessee, or the Carolinas, raising domestication questions before any new garnishment can issue.
Every one of these failure modes is an employer-identification problem, not a law problem. The statute is clear; the obstacle is knowing exactly whose payroll to name on the summons today. We close that gap as a public-records research firm: confirming the debtor’s current employer so your Virginia garnishment summons reaches a live paycheck.
Three limits on how we do that, stated plainly. Nobody on this team holds a Virginia private investigator’s license from the Department of Criminal Justice Services and we do not imply otherwise; this is records research, and the licensed investigative work a Virginia file sometimes needs belongs with a licensed firm. We never pretext. Nobody here adopts a false identity, and nobody pretends to be the debtor, a relative, a co-worker, or a government officer to get a payroll answer out of an HR line or a bank. And we decline the request outright, without a workaround, where the subject appears to have left because of abuse, is fleeing an abuser, is protected by a Virginia protective order, or is enrolled in the Commonwealth’s address confidentiality program. A money judgment is not a reason to expose where someone went for their safety, and a garnishment can wait for a court to weigh that. Learn more about that specific service on our pages covering finding an employer for wage garnishment and how to find someone’s current employer.
Who We Help in Virginia
We supply the employer locate; you run the garnishment.
Virginia Collection Counsel
Current garnishee before each summons
Circuit Court Judgment Holders
Live payroll for a renewed window
Debt Buyers in Virginia
Verified employer to name and serve
Support Enforcement
Obligor employer located
Post-Eviction Money Judgments
Unpaid rent balances pursued
Small-Business Creditors
Unpaid invoices collected
Whatever your role, the choke point is the same in every Virginia file: the summons must name the payroll that signs the debtor’s check this month. We locate that employer through lawful skip tracing and public-records research, then hand you a current, verifiable result. The work pairs naturally with our companion Virginia guides on collecting a Virginia judgment, the property a debtor can shield under Virginia asset exemptions for creditors, and how long you have to act under the Virginia debt collection statute of limitations. We do not file your garnishment for you; we make sure it lands on a paycheck that exists, typically within 24 hours of your request.
Our Commitment
We confirm the debtor’s current Virginia employer so your garnishment summons reaches a live payroll instead of a former one, with a verifiable, documented result. Lawful, court-ready employer and asset locating for collection attorneys, agencies, and judgment creditors since 2004.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much of my wages can be garnished in Virginia?
For an ordinary judgment, the creditor can take the lesser of twenty-five percent of your disposable earnings for the week, or the amount by which those earnings exceed forty times the federal or Virginia minimum hourly wage, whichever is greater, under Virginia Code section 34-29. Virginia’s minimum wage is $12.77 per hour for 2026 under section 40.1-28.10, so the protected weekly floor is $510.80, not the $290 that forty times the federal $7.25 would give. Disposable earnings are what remains after legally required withholding such as taxes and Social Security, not after voluntary deductions.
Does Virginia have a per-child wage exemption?
Yes. Under Virginia Code section 34-4.2, a parent supporting a dependent minor child at home can exempt an additional $34 per week for one child, $52 for two, and $66 for three or more. It is unavailable if household gross income exceeds $1,750 per month, and it must be affirmatively claimed.
What is a homestead deed and why does the deadline matter?
A homestead deed is a recorded writing in which a householder claims the Virginia homestead exemption and sets apart the protected property. To shield extra cash from a garnishment, the debtor must file the claim and record the deed by the garnishment return date. Missing that deadline forfeits the additional protection the exemption would have provided.
How much can be garnished for child or spousal support?
Support orders escape the twenty-five-percent cap. Garnishment for support can reach up to sixty percent of disposable earnings, or fifty percent if the worker supports another spouse or dependent child. Virginia Code section 34-29(C) does not add five points to those figures; it substitutes, saying the fifty percent shall be fifty-five and the sixty percent shall be sixty-five ‘if and to the extent that’ the earnings are subject to garnishment to enforce support for a period more than twelve weeks before the beginning of that workweek. The higher ceiling reaches only the portion attributable to that earlier period.
How long does a Virginia garnishment summons last?
A Virginia wage garnishment summons runs for its return period and then expires; it is not a permanent order. A creditor collecting a larger balance files a fresh summons for each new cycle, which is why confirming the debtor’s current employer before every renewal is essential.
Do bank account and tax debts work the same way?
No. A bank garnishment captures the account balance at a point in time and follows its own summons rather than the ongoing wage rules, and since 2026 Virginia Code sections 34-4.3 and 34-4.4 require the bank itself to hold a minimum protected account balance and a protected amount exempt automatically, with no exemption claim and no hearing from the debtor. State and federal tax debts and bankruptcy-court orders are carved out of the section 34-29 cap and follow their own collection limits, though from July 1, 2027 the tax carve-out covers federal tax only and a Virginia state tax debt falls back inside the ordinary restrictions.
How long is a Virginia judgment enforceable?
It depends on the judgment’s date, because Virginia Code section 8.01-251 splits on July 1, 2021. A judgment dated, extended, or renewed before that date runs twenty years; a judgment dated on or after it runs ten years from the date of the judgment or its domestication. A judgment created by nonpayment of child support keeps the twenty-year life. Either period can be extended by recording the statutory certificate before it expires, and docketing the judgment creates a lien on the debtor’s real estate.
Do you file the garnishment or locate the employer?
We locate and verify the debtor’s current employer and assets so your summons names the right garnishee; your attorney or agency files and serves the garnishment. As a public-records research firm we work lawfully and for permissible purposes only, and a verified employer locate typically comes back within 24 hours.
Garnishing Wages in Virginia?
A garnishment summons is only as good as the employer it names. We confirm the debtor’s current Virginia payroll so your summons reaches a live paycheck, usually within 24 hours. Contact us to get started.
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