| Alabama | Alaska | Arizona |
| Arkansas | California | Colorado |
| Connecticut | Delaware | District of Columbia |
| Florida | Georgia | Hawaii |
| Idaho | Illinois | Indiana |
| Iowa | Kansas | Kentucky |
| Louisiana | Maine | Maryland |
| Massachusetts | Michigan | Minnesota |
| Mississippi | Missouri | Montana |
| Nebraska | Nevada | New Hampshire |
| New Jersey | New Mexico | New York |
| North Carolina | North Dakota | Ohio |
| Oklahoma | Oregon | Pennsylvania |
| Rhode Island | South Carolina | South Dakota |
| Tennessee | Texas | Utah |
| Vermont | Virginia | Washington |
| West Virginia | Wisconsin | Wyoming |
If you are getting constant phone calls from creditors who are demanding payment, but you have nothing to give to them, then they can withhold a portion of your paycheck to pay your debts. No one can garnish your wages without first filing a lawsuit against you, and winning it. If a lawsuit is filed against you and you do not show up to court, you lose the opportunity to fight that wage garnishment.
There are garnishment limits as a way to prevent creditors from taking excessive amounts of money to speed up debt repayment. The maximum amount that can be garnished from your paycheck is the lesser of the following:
- 25% of the individual’s disposable income
- any amount greater than 30 times the federal minimum wage
Usually the types of wages that can be garnished are wages, salaries, commissions, bonuses, pension, or retirement income. Tips are not garnished since the wage garnishment law does not consider them to be income.
Most of the states have their own laws that regulate wage garnishment. If the state wage garnishment law is different from the federal law, the law that results in the least amount of money garnished should be the one that is used. This leaves the individual some money from their paycheck, but also is paying off their debt without letting the creditor take too much. However, four states that prohibit wage garnishment for debts from creditors are North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
If you find yourself in this position, go see the Human Resources department in your company. If it is a small company, go see the payroll person. You aren’t getting fired so do not panic. But just make sure you get as much information as you can about the garnishment. If this visit is of no help, then the next step would be to see a garnishment lawyer.
Never skip a court date. It is important to always fight any case against you. You don’t want the first time you hearing about this case to be when you see a big chunk of money missing from your paycheck, and you’re left wondering what is going on.