Free Wage Garnishment Tools: How Much, and How to Object
A garnishment is a deadline problem before it is a money problem. Almost everything you can do about one runs from the day you were served, not the day the deduction first appears on your pay stub — and by the time most people notice the money is gone, the window to object has closed. The three tools here deal with the amount, the objection and the clock.
All of this runs in your browser. Your pay figures, your name and your case number are never saved, logged or transmitted. There is no sign-up and no email field. These tools give general information based on federal law and the sources cited — not legal advice — and no result is a statement of what a court will do. Speak to a licensed attorney in your state, and check your court's own deadline before anything else.
1. How much they can actually take
Federal law sets a ceiling with two tests and applies whichever is lower: twenty-five per cent of your disposable earnings, or the amount by which those earnings exceed thirty times the federal minimum wage — $217.50 a week at $7.25 an hour. Below that floor nothing can be taken at all for an ordinary consumer debt.
The calculator does both tests and tells you which one binds, because that matters: at higher earnings the percentage decides, at lower earnings the floor does, and the difference changes what you should be arguing. It also handles the cases where the ordinary ceiling does not apply — child support runs to fifty or sixty per cent, a defaulted federal student loan to fifteen, and an IRS levy is not a percentage at all but whatever is left above a figure the IRS works out from your filing status.
And it checks your state first. North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas do not allow wage garnishment for ordinary consumer debt at all. If you live in one of them and a credit card judgment is reaching your paycheck, that is the finding that matters, not the arithmetic.
2. Claiming an exemption
An exemption is the usual way a garnishment is reduced or stopped, and it is decided on grounds you have to state. The builder lists only what you tick — head of household, exempt benefits, an existing support order, hardship, or that the judgment is not yours — and adds what you describe in your own words.
It also counts the days since you were served, which is the point of the exercise. Exemption deadlines are short and vary by state: some are five days, many are ten or twenty. The letter helps you state the grounds clearly, but your court almost certainly has its own form, and that form is what has to be filed.
3. The first week
Eight things to establish while the deadlines are still open. The one worth checking first is whether the underlying judgment is one you knew about: a default entered because nobody appeared can sometimes be challenged, though that is a slower route than an exemption claim.
What none of these decide
The calculator produces a federal ceiling, not an entitlement and not a prediction. Many states cap garnishment below the federal line, an exemption you claim can reduce it further, and the figure an employer actually withholds depends on the order it received. If what is being taken exceeds the ceiling, that is a question for the court that issued the order — the calculator gives you the number to put in front of it, nothing more.
The exemption builder states grounds; it does not establish them. And none of this applies to an IRS levy, which runs on its own rules — see how a federal tax levy is released, which is a different process with different deadlines.