- Wage garnishment is used to satisfy bad debt and judgments.Justice image by MVit from Fotolia.com
Garnishment is a process by which federal and state courts can force a person to pay a percentage of income earned from a job to a third party, normally for satisfying a bad debt or legal judgment. A garnishment requires that the person's employer send a prescribed amount of earnings directly to a specified party. Since the employee has no control over the garnished money, it is an especially effective means to collect money owed. Wages can also be garnished for student loans, child support, and alimony. - Federal laws on garnishments supersede those enacted on the state level. Federal law protects employees by limiting the amount of earnings that may be garnished in any workweek or pay period to the lesser of 25 percent of disposable earnings or the amount by which disposable earnings are greater than 30 times the federal minimum hourly wage of $7.25 (as of July 2009). This limit applies regardless of how many garnishment orders an employer receives, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Federal law permits a greater amount of an employee's wages to be garnished for child support, bankruptcy, or federal or state tax payments. It allows up to 50 percent of an employee's disposable earnings to be garnished for child support if the employee is supporting a current spouse or child who is not the subject of the support order. The garnishment goes to 60 percent if the employee is not supporting a current spouse or child. An additional 5 percent may be garnished for support payments more than 12 weeks in arrears, the Department of Labor says. - The state of Kansas has passed no laws differing from that of the federal garnishment procedure, which means the federal provisions apply in garnishment actions within the state. Several statute of limitations apply in Kansas, though, depending upon the type of garnishment action sought. Credit card debt cannot be garnished after three years; written contract debt must be garnished within five years; both foreign and domestic judgments expire after five years but can be renewed through court order.
Kansas law specifies that bad check garnishments are allowed to be collected for the amount of the check plus up to three times the check amount in damages. The total of the damages can't exceed $500, however. Attorney fees for pursuing the bad debt can be collected over and above the $500 cap. - In Kansas, wage garnishment is a legal action (lawsuit) that must be filed by the plaintiff to the clerk of the court. Rules require that the plaintiff furnish proof that a debt is owed, which can include contracts, bills, invoices or monthly statements by a bank. If successful, a garnishment order must be served by the court to the garnishee along with a form for the answer. The maximum interest rate that can be charged if garnishment is levied by judgment is 12 percent.
- For garnishment purposes, an employee's "disposable earnings" is the amount of earnings left after legally required deductions for federal, state and local taxes; Social Security; unemployment insurance; and state employee retirement systems. Union dues, health and life insurance, and charitable contributions are not subtracted from gross earnings when the amount of disposable earnings for garnishment purposes is calculated, according to the Department of Labor.
Also, restrictions on the amount of wages that can be garnished do not apply to certain bankruptcy court orders and debts due for federal and state taxes. Nor do they affect voluntary wage assignments in which workers voluntarily agree that their employers may turn over a specified amount of their earnings to a creditor or creditors.
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