Wages: how much can be taken, and from whom it is protected

The federal ceiling

One rule sits under every wage garnishment in the country, and it caps the take at the smaller of two numbers.

A garnishment may reach the lesser of 25 percent of disposable earnings for a workweek, or the amount by which those earnings exceed thirty times the federal minimum hourly wage then in effect. 15 U.S.C. 1673(a)¹ sets both halves, and the smaller one wins. The federal minimum wage the second half counts from is $7.25 an hour at its last step. 29 U.S.C. 206(a)(1)². What thirty times that comes to in a week is arithmetic the statute does not perform on its face, so this page does not print it as the law's.

Disposable earnings are not gross pay. They are what is left after the amounts the law requires be withheld, and earnings reaches past the word wages: salary, commission, bonus, pension or retirement payments paid periodically all count. 15 U.S.C. 1672³. For a pay period longer than a week the floor grows with the period, a calendar month counting as four and one-third workweeks, and the 25 percent applies to the whole period's disposable earnings. 29 C.F.R. 870.10(c)⁴. What date decides the take is the date the earnings are payable, not the date a court signed the order. 29 C.F.R. 870.10(d).

Three kinds of debt step out from under the ceiling. A support order escapes it, so does a chapter 13 court order, and so does a debt due for a state or federal tax. 15 U.S.C. 1673(b)(1). Support has its own, higher ceilings, 50 or 60 percent of weekly disposable earnings depending on whether the debtor supports another spouse or child, and 55 or 65 percent to the extent the earnings enforce support for a period before the twelve-week period ending with that workweek. 15 U.S.C. 1673(b)(2). For everything else the ceiling binds hard. No federal or state court may make or enforce an order that breaks it, and neither may a state officer or agency. 15 U.S.C. 1673(c).

New York's income execution

New York stacks its own limit on top of the federal one, and the first number a creditor hears is the smaller of the two caps.

An income execution runs to the sheriff for installments of not more than 10 percent of the money the debtor receives. CPLR 5231(b)⁵. A week's take may not exceed 25 percent of disposable earnings, or the amount by which they clear thirty times the greater of the federal or the New York minimum hourly wage. CPLR 5231(b). And in a week when disposable earnings do not pass that floor, nothing comes out at all. CPLR 5231(b). The statute defines earnings and disposable earnings in its own words, which happen to track the federal wording. CPLR 5231(c).

Two kinds of debt change the arithmetic. Where support deductions already apply, the execution takes no more than the amount by which 25 percent of disposable earnings exceeds them. CPLR 5231(b). And on a judgment from a medical debt action brought by a hospital licensed under article 28 of the Public Health Law or a health care professional authorized under title 8 of the Education Law, nothing may be withheld. CPLR 5231(b)(iv). That medical rule is an outright zero, not a smaller percentage.

The execution goes to the debtor first. If the debtor does not pay for twenty days, or cannot be served within twenty, the sheriff levies by serving it on the employer. CPLR 5231(e). A levy on wages dies if the debtor resigns or is fired, unless the debtor is back within ninety days. CPLR 5231(f). Where two executions chase the same employer, they are paid in the order they reached an enforcement officer. CPLR 5231(j). Separately, the exemption statute shields 90 percent of earnings for personal services rendered within the sixty days before, and at any time after, an income execution is delivered, except any part a court finds unnecessary for the reasonable needs of the debtor and dependents. CPLR 5205(d)(2)⁶. A court can reopen that last 90 percent.

Florida's head of family

Florida asks one question first, and the answer can protect the entire paycheck.

A head of family is any natural person providing more than half the support of a child or other dependent. Fla. Stat. 222.11(1)⁷. If that person's disposable earnings are $750 a week or less, all of them are exempt from attachment or garnishment. Fla. Stat. 222.11(2). Not a share. All of it. Earnings above $750 a week are protected too, unless the person agreed otherwise in writing, and that waiver has to be a separate document in the same language as the contract, in substantially the statutory form, in at least 14-point type. Fla. Stat. 222.11(2). Even with a valid waiver, the take cannot exceed the federal ceiling. Fla. Stat. 222.11(2), 15 U.S.C. 1673.

A person who is not a head of family gets the federal ceiling and nothing more generous. Fla. Stat. 222.11(2)(c). So the whole weight of Florida's protection turns on dependents and that $750 line. Florida defines earnings as money of a sum certain for personal services, whether called wages, salary, commission or bonus. Disposable earnings are what is left after deductions the law requires. Fla. Stat. 222.11(1).

The protection follows the money into the bank. Exempt head-of-family earnings deposited in a financial institution stay exempt for six months if they can be traced as earnings, and mixing them with other funds does not by itself defeat the tracing. Fla. Stat. 222.11(3). When wages are garnished, the court issues a continuing writ to the employer for periodic payment of a portion as it comes due, until the judgment is satisfied or the court orders otherwise. Fla. Stat. 77.0305⁸. For how a writ freezes the money before it is paid, see freezing money with restraining notices and garnishment.

What this does not cover

Three statutes, a federal floor expressed as a formula, and no dollar figure for that floor stated as the law's own.

That weekly amount of thirty times the federal minimum wage is a product this page will not print as the statute's figure, because neither the garnishment law nor the wage law states the week as a dollar. The multiple is thirty and the rate is $7.25 an hour. Performing the multiplication is left off this page. New York's own minimum wage does not appear either, so the floor that uses the greater of the two is named as a rule rather than a number.

Nobody writing this is a lawyer and none of it is advice. Whether a particular person is a head of family, whether a waiver meets the Florida form, whether support deductions already eat the New York cap: those turn on facts a statute cannot see. What a page can do is narrower. It states that the federal rule takes a share, that New York stacks a tenth over a quarter, and that in Florida the right dependent turns the share to zero.