The federal ceiling on what a garnishment can take, and why your state may allow less.
Open the Wage Garnishment Limits tool →A garnishment order arrives with a number on it, and nothing that tells you whether the number is allowed. Federal law caps ordinary garnishment at whichever is smaller: a quarter of your disposable earnings, or the amount by which those earnings exceed thirty times the federal minimum hourly wage. That minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009, which makes the protected floor $217.50 a week — and the two tests cross at $290 a week, so below that figure the floor is what protects you and above it the quarter-share is.
Disposable earnings means pay after legally required deductions: taxes, Social Security and Medicare, required retirement contributions. Voluntary deductions like health premiums and elective savings are not subtracted first.
Three things sit outside that ceiling. Child support and alimony orders are exempt from it and carry higher caps of their own — 50% of disposable earnings if you support another spouse or child, 60% if you do not, each rising five points where the order answers support more than twelve weeks overdue. State and federal tax debts, and chapter 13 bankruptcy orders, have no Title III ceiling at all; tax levies protect a different amount under their own rules, which this does not model.
One protection worth knowing: an employer may not fire you because your wages were garnished for any one debt.
What this page gives you is the federal ceiling, which is a floor on your protection and not the answer. Several states bar wage garnishment for ordinary consumer debt entirely, and many protect a larger share than federal law does. Where a state protects more, the state rule governs. So the number here is the most that could be taken anywhere in the country for your situation, and your own state may allow much less.
This is information about published federal law applied to figures you entered. It is not legal or financial advice, and it is not a defense to an order — only a lawyer who knows your state and your case can tell you that.
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