Wage Garnishment Laws by State
A money judgment is good on paper everywhere, but how much of a paycheck you can actually reach is decided where the debtor lives and works, not where you won. Every state starts from the same federal floor, then layers on its own caps, exempt-earning floors, head-of-household carve-outs, and in four states an outright ban on garnishing wages for ordinary consumer debts. This is the national map: the federal baseline every state must at least meet, who protects paychecks more, and how to read the by-state breakdown so you garnish at the right cap, in the right forum, against a debtor you have actually located.
The Short Version
Federal law sets the same floor everywhere: a creditor can take no more than twenty-five percent of a debtor’s disposable earnings, and nothing at all from the portion below thirty times the federal minimum wage (about two hundred seventeen dollars and fifty cents a week). States may only be more generous to the debtor, never harsher. Many are: Arizona caps at ten percent, several states cap at fifteen percent, a handful scale the rate by income, and Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina bar wage garnishment for ordinary consumer debts entirely. Support orders, taxes, and defaulted federal student loans follow their own, higher rules. Because the cap that applies is the debtor’s home rule, collection always turns on one question first: where does the debtor actually live and work? We are a public-records research firm that locates the current employer, bank, and assets so the judgment you hold becomes the dollars you collect, typically within 24 hours.
The Federal Floor Every State Builds On
One baseline, fifty variations on top of it.
Before any state rule matters, there is a national rule that none of them can undercut. Title III of the Consumer Credit Protection Act, codified at 15 U.S.C. § 1673, restricts ordinary garnishment to the lesser of two figures: twenty-five percent of the debtor’s disposable earnings for the week, or the amount by which those disposable earnings exceed thirty times the federal minimum wage. At the current federal minimum, that second figure protects roughly the first two hundred seventeen dollars and fifty cents of weekly take-home pay outright. “Disposable earnings” is what remains after legally required deductions, taxes, Social Security, Medicare, and the like, not gross pay and not the figure after voluntary deductions.
The word that does the work is lesser. A creditor never gets both calculations; they get whichever yields the smaller bite. For a low-wage worker the thirty-times floor can shrink the garnishable amount to nothing even though the percentage cap would otherwise allow more. That federal calculation is the floor under all fifty states. Each state legislature is free to protect the debtor further, and many do, but no state may let a creditor reach more than the CCPA permits. So every state rule on this page is really an answer to one question: how much more protective than the federal floor did this state choose to be?
Three things are worth fixing in mind before the map makes sense. First, the federal cap governs ordinary debts, the credit cards, medical bills, and money judgments that make up most collections. Second, a different and higher set of limits applies to support, taxes, and federal student loans, covered further down. Third, the cap that controls a given garnishment is the rule of the place the debtor earns the wages, which is exactly why locating the debtor’s actual employer is not a side task, it is the first step.
Watch: Wage Garnishment by State
The federal floor, the variations, and why locating the debtor comes first.
Watch Overview
Five Ways a State Can Beat the Federal Floor
Every variation on the map fits one of these patterns.
The fifty-state picture looks chaotic until you sort it by mechanism. There are really only five ways a state moves the line in the debtor’s favor, and once you can name them, any state’s entry on the table below tells you exactly which lever it pulled.
Lower Percentage Cap
Some states simply cap garnishment below twenty-five percent. Arizona sits at ten percent after a 2022 reform; Colorado, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and South Dakota at twenty; Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Vermont at fifteen.
Higher Exempt Floor
Others keep the twenty-five percent cap but raise the protected-earnings floor well above the federal thirty-times figure, often tying it to a higher state minimum wage. California, Washington, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia shield far more of a paycheck this way.
Income-Tiered Rate
A few states scale the rate to earnings, taking little or nothing from low incomes and more above set thresholds. Nevada, New Jersey, and New York all graduate the percentage rather than applying one flat cap.
Head-of-Household Relief
Several states sharply reduce or eliminate garnishment for a debtor supporting dependents. Florida exempts a head of family entirely; Missouri drops to ten percent and Nebraska to fifteen percent for that debtor.
Outright Ban
Four states refuse ordinary wage garnishment altogether. In Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina a consumer-debt creditor cannot touch wages at all, and must chase bank accounts and other assets instead.
Deposited-Wage Shields
About thirteen jurisdictions, including California, Florida, North Carolina, Oregon, and Puerto Rico, keep the wage exemption alive even after pay lands in a bank account, blunting the obvious end-run of levying the account instead.
Quick Reference: Wage Garnishment by Jurisdiction
The headline cap and the distinctive feature for each state. Open a state’s page for the full statutory detail.
| Jurisdiction | Ordinary-Debt Cap | Protected Floor | Distinctive Feature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 25% | 30x federal min | Continuing garnishment until the debt is paid |
| Alaska | 25% | Weekly dollar floor | CPI-indexed weekly exemption amount |
| Arizona | 10% | 60x state min | 2022 reform cut the cap to ten percent |
| Arkansas | 25% | 30x federal min | Exemption-election fork; laborer protection |
| California | 25% | 40x state min | Lesser of cap or excess over a high state-min floor |
| Colorado | 20% | 40x state min | Reform reduced the cap; high homestead |
| Connecticut | 25% | 40x state min | Installment option; first-served priority |
| Delaware | 15% | 85% exempt | Low cap; no homestead exemption |
| Florida | 25% | 30x federal min | Head-of-family total exemption; unlimited homestead |
| Georgia | 25% | 30x federal min | Federal baseline, applied per garnishment |
| Hawaii | 5-20% | Monthly brackets | Graduated monthly rate; continuing |
| Idaho | 25% | 30x federal min | Continuing until paid; high homestead |
| Illinois | 15% | 45x state min | Fifteen percent of gross over a high floor |
| Indiana | 25% | 30x federal min | Collected via proceedings supplemental |
| Iowa | 25% | 40x federal min | Annual aggregate cap by income tier |
| Kansas | 25% | 30x federal min | Monthly re-issue; unlimited homestead |
| Kentucky | 25% | 30x federal min | First-served priority; low homestead |
| Louisiana | 25% | 30x federal min | Civil-law wage seizure |
| Maine | 25% | 40x state min | Floor rises with the state minimum each year |
| Maryland | 25% | Weekly dollar floor | County-specific weekly exemption |
| Massachusetts | 15% | 50x state min | Trustee process; very high state-min floor |
| Michigan | 25% | 30x federal min | Continuing writ; periodic re-issue |
| Minnesota | 25% | 40x federal min | Automatic bank exemption; high homestead |
| Mississippi | 25% | 30x federal min | Thirty-day grace before first garnishment |
| Missouri | 25% | 30x federal min | Head-of-family reduced to ten percent |
| Montana | 25% | 30x federal min | No continuous writ; escalating homestead |
| Nebraska | 25% | 30x federal min | Head-of-family reduced to fifteen percent |
| Nevada | 18-25% | 50x federal min | Income-tiered rate; very high homestead |
| New Hampshire | Rare | 50x federal min | No routine wage garnishment for most debts |
| New Jersey | 10-25% | 250% poverty | Income-tiered; ten percent below the poverty line |
| New Mexico | 25% | 40x state min | Floor tied to the local minimum wage |
| New York | 10-25% | 30x state min | Lesser of the cap or ten percent of gross |
| North Carolina | None | All wages exempt | No wage garnishment for ordinary debts |
| North Dakota | 25% | 40x federal min | Per-dependent reduction with a sworn list |
| Ohio | 25% | 30x federal min | Federal baseline; one garnishment at a time |
| Oklahoma | 25% | 30x federal min | 180-day continuous writ; unlimited homestead |
| Oregon | 25% | Weekly dollar floor | 90-day writ; deposited wages stay exempt |
| Pennsylvania | None | All wages exempt | No wage garnishment for ordinary consumer debts |
| Puerto Rico | 25% | 30x federal min | Civil-law embargo; unlimited Hogar Seguro |
| Rhode Island | 25% | 30x federal min | Supplementary process; very high homestead |
| South Carolina | None | All wages exempt | No wage garnishment for consumer debts |
| South Dakota | 20% | 40x federal min | Per-dependent reduction; unlimited homestead |
| Tennessee | 25% | 30x federal min | Per-dependent reduction; slow-pay motion |
| Texas | None | All wages exempt | No wage garnishment; unlimited homestead |
| Utah | 25% | 30x federal min | One-year continuing writ |
| Vermont | 15% | 40x federal min | Trustee process; consumer cap of fifteen percent |
| Virginia | 25% | 40x federal min | Floor set at forty times federal minimum |
| Washington | 25% | 35x state min | Tiered; very high state-min floor |
| District of Columbia | to 25% | Highest floor | Graduated rate with a hardship pause |
| West Virginia | 20% | 30x federal min | Low twenty percent cap |
| Wisconsin | 20% | Poverty test | Twenty percent cap; poverty-income exemption |
| Wyoming | 25% | 30x federal min | 90-day continuing writ; first-served priority |
Read the table by column, not by row. The cap column tells you the most a creditor can ever take; the protected-floor column tells you how much of the bottom of the paycheck is off-limits before that percentage even applies; and the distinctive-feature column flags the local quirk, a head-of-family carve-out, a continuing-writ duration, an unlimited homestead, that decides whether wage garnishment is even the right tool here. The four “None” entries are the loud signal: in those states do not file a wage garnishment at all, pivot straight to bank and asset collection.
Federal Floor vs. the More Protective States
The same paycheck, four very different outcomes.
| Profile | Wage Cap on Ordinary Debt | What It Means for a Creditor |
|---|---|---|
| Federal baseline state (e.g. Ohio, Georgia) | Twenty-five percent of disposable earnings, nothing below thirty times federal minimum wage | Standard garnishment is available and effective against a steady paycheck. |
| Lower-cap state (e.g. Arizona, Illinois) | Ten to fifteen percent, often over a higher floor | Garnishment still works but recovers far less per pay period; expect a longer collection horizon. |
| High-floor or tiered state (e.g. California, New York) | Twenty-five percent, but only above a much higher protected floor | Lower earners may yield little or nothing; the floor, not the percentage, controls. |
| No-garnishment state (Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina) | Zero on ordinary consumer debt | Wages are untouchable here; collection must come from bank accounts, receivables, and non-exempt assets. |
The bottom row is the one that quietly sinks out-of-state creditors. A judgment that would have been routinely collectible through payroll in a baseline state is, against a debtor who has since moved to one of the four banned states, simply not collectible from wages at all. The judgment is still good, but the strategy has to change the moment you learn where the debtor now works, which is, again, why the locate comes first.
Special Debts That Override the Caps
Three categories play by their own, higher rules.
The twenty-five percent ceiling and the state caps stacked above it all describe ordinary debt. Three categories of obligation are carved out of that scheme entirely and reach much deeper into a paycheck, regardless of which state the debtor lives in.
Child and Spousal Support
Support orders can reach up to fifty percent of disposable earnings when the debtor is supporting another spouse or child, and up to sixty percent when they are not, with an additional five percent available when payments are more than twelve weeks in arrears. These limits flow from the same federal statute as the consumer cap but sit far above it, and they apply even in the four states that otherwise ban wage garnishment.
Defaulted Federal Student Loans
The U.S. Department of Education and its guaranty agencies can administratively garnish up to fifteen percent of disposable earnings for a defaulted federal student loan, without first going to court for a judgment. That administrative power runs in every state, and the consumer-debt bans do not stop it.
Unpaid Federal and State Taxes
Tax levies follow their own procedures and are not bound by the twenty-five percent ceiling at all. The amount left to the worker is governed by exemption tables rather than the CCPA percentage, which is why a tax levy can feel far heavier than an ordinary garnishment on the very same wages.
The practical takeaway: when you size up a debtor’s exposure, sort the debt first. A support arrearage or a defaulted student loan changes the math in your favor even in a debtor-friendly state, while an ordinary judgment lives or dies by the local cap.
Where Multi-State Collections Go Wrong
The avoidable mistakes that waste a good judgment.
Applying the Wrong Forum’s Rule
Creditors assume the rule of the court where they won controls. It does not; the cap is the rule of the place the debtor now earns wages.
Assuming Twenty-Five Percent Everywhere
Budgeting the recovery at the federal cap overstates it badly in low-cap and high-floor states, and assumes any recovery at all in the four banned states.
Ignoring the Protected Floor
In a high-minimum-wage state the floor, not the percentage, often controls, and a low earner can yield nothing despite a generous-looking cap.
Overlooking Special-Debt Overrides
Treating a support arrearage or defaulted student loan like ordinary debt leaves real recovery, the fifty-to-sixty percent reach, sitting on the table.
Chasing an Exempt Homestead
In unlimited-homestead states like Florida and Texas, a lien on the residence collects nothing; effort belongs on wages, accounts, and other assets.
Skipping the Locate
The single most common failure: garnishing the last known employer. If the debtor changed jobs or moved states, the writ lands nowhere and the cap you researched was for the wrong place.
Why Collection Always Turns on Locating the Debtor
The map is useless until you know which square the debtor is standing on.
Every choice on this page, which cap applies, whether wages are reachable at all, whether to pivot to a bank levy, depends on one fact you do not control and often do not have: where the debtor currently lives and works. A garnishment is served on an employer, not on the debtor, so a stale payroll record is worse than no record, it consumes a writ, tips the debtor off, and recovers nothing. Establishing the current employer is the act that makes the rest of the analysis real.
This is the work we do as a public-records research firm. Send us what you have, a name, last known address, date of birth, prior employer, and we develop the debtor’s current employer, the bank where wages are deposited, and the non-exempt assets that matter most in a no-garnishment state. We do not give legal advice or file your writ; we deliver the verified facts your enforcement turns on. For a legitimate judgment-enforcement purpose, a locate typically comes back within 24 hours. Our deeper guides cover exactly this collection chokepoint: how to find a debtor’s employer for wage garnishment and the broader methods for finding someone’s current employer, both feeding the full skip tracing service that ties a cold judgment to a collectible paycheck.
From Judgment to Collected Dollars
The enforcement sequence the map supports.
Identify the Forum
Determine where the debtor actually lives and works, because that location, not your courthouse, fixes the cap, the floor, and whether wages are reachable.
Locate Employer, Bank, Assets
We develop the current employer, the deposit bank, and non-exempt property, the facts a writ is actually served on.
Apply the State Limit
Garnish at the correct cap where wages are reachable; in a banned or high-floor state, pivot to bank and asset collection instead.
Collect and Renew
Re-issue continuing writs at expiration and renew the judgment before it lapses, so the collection clock never runs out on you.
Who We Help Collect
We supply the locate; you run the enforcement.
Judgment Creditors
Debtors and paychecks located
Collection Attorneys
Current employer and bank developed
Collection Agencies
Skips traced across state lines
Support Enforcement
Obligors located for higher caps
Small-Claims Winners
Self-represented and on a clock
Landlords
Money-judgment debtors traced
Our Commitment
We turn a paper judgment into a collectible one, the debtor’s current employer, deposit bank, and non-exempt assets, so you can apply the right state rule against a target you can actually reach. A public-records research firm working lawfully for permissible judgment-enforcement purposes since 2004, typically within 24 hours.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much of a paycheck can a creditor garnish?
Under federal law the limit is the lesser of twenty-five percent of disposable earnings or the amount above thirty times the federal minimum wage, which protects roughly the first two hundred seventeen dollars and fifty cents of weekly take-home pay. Many states cap lower, raise the protected floor, or bar garnishment entirely, so the controlling figure is the rule of the state where the debtor works.
Which states prohibit wage garnishment for ordinary debts?
Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina do not allow wage garnishment for ordinary consumer debts. Support orders, taxes, and defaulted federal student loans can still reach wages in those states; only the ordinary-debt garnishment is off the table.
Why does the debtor’s state matter more than mine?
A wage garnishment is enforced where the debtor earns the wages, so the cap, the protected floor, and the head-of-household rules of that state control, not the rules of the court where you obtained the judgment. A judgment that is routinely collectible at home can be uncollectible from wages once the debtor relocates.
Do child support, taxes, and student loans follow these limits?
No. Support orders can reach fifty to sixty percent of disposable earnings, defaulted federal student loans up to fifteen percent through administrative garnishment without a court judgment, and tax levies follow their own exemption tables rather than the consumer cap. All three override the ordinary-debt limits in every state.
Are wages still protected after they hit a bank account?
In about thirteen jurisdictions, including California, Florida, North Carolina, Oregon, and Puerto Rico, the wage exemption continues after deposit, so a creditor cannot simply levy the account to get around the wage cap. The debtor usually has to identify and prove the protected portion.
Which states protect a debtor’s wages the most?
The four no-garnishment states give the strongest protection, followed by low-cap states such as Arizona at ten percent and the fifteen-percent group, and the high-minimum-wage states like California, Washington, and the District of Columbia whose protected floors sit well above the federal figure.
How long can a creditor keep collecting on a judgment?
Judgment lifespans vary by state, commonly from about five to twenty years or more, and most can be renewed before they lapse to extend the collection window. Continuing wage-garnishment writs also expire and must be re-issued on the state’s schedule.
How do I find the debtor’s employer, bank, or assets?
A professional skip trace and asset search develop the current employer, deposit accounts, and non-exempt property in any jurisdiction. As a public-records research firm we work from what you have and, for a legitimate judgment-enforcement purpose, typically return a verified locate within 24 hours.
Hold a Judgment You Can’t Collect?
Knowing the state’s cap is only half the job, you still have to find the paycheck. We locate the debtor’s current employer, bank, and assets so you can apply the right rule against a real target, typically within 24 hours. Contact us to get started.
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