Why garnish wages for child support

In many states, the arrears need not be made into a judgment to be collected through wage garnishment. To garnish your wages, the custodial parent obtains authorization from the court in a document usually called a writ of execution.

Under this authorization, the custodial parent directs the sheriff to seize a portion of your wages. The sheriff in turn notifies you and your employer.

The amount garnished is a percentage of your paycheck. What you were once ordered to pay is irrelevant. The court simply wants to take money out of each of your paychecks—and leave you with a minimum to live on—until the unpaid support is made up. To put a wage garnishment order into effect, the court, custodial parent, state agency, or county attorney must notify your employer. Once your employer is told to garnish your wages, your employer tells you of the garnishment. You can request a court hearing, which will take place shortly after the garnishment has begun.

At the hearing, you can make only a few objections:. If the wage garnishment doesn't cover the amount you owe, or you don't have wages or other income to be garnished, the custodial parent may try to get the unpaid support by going after other items of your property. Examples of the type of property that might be vulnerable include:.

In some cases, even spendthrift trusts and your interest in a partnership may be used for payment. However, many cases now require the use of automatic income withholding orders in North Carolina.

This should prevent the need for getting a wage garnishment order unless an exception to automatic income withholding applies. North Carolina child support orders that were entered on or after January 1, , generally require automatic income withholding. The only exceptions to this rule are for cases were a good cause is shown for not requiring automatic income withholding, or if the parties have a written agreement that provides an alternative method of payment.

Even if you lose your job, you will be responsible for the full amount of child support until the child support order is changed by the court. After the court decides the amount of child and spousal support, the wage assignment tells the employer how much to deduct from each paycheck and instructs the employer to send the money to the State Disbursement Unit, which will send the money to the parent owed the support. With a wage assignment, if you are regularly employed, the employer will take support payments directly out of your paycheck.

Most support is paid this way, and federal and state law requires it in almost all child support cases. If you have other wage assignments in place, child support is deducted first, before other withholding orders. Spousal or partner support assignments come after child support wage assignments. Once the wage assignment is served on the employer, the employer has 10 days to start taking the money out from your next paycheck. The employer must deduct the support from your wages and send it to the State Disbursement Unit within 10 days.

Child support payments will come to the other parent from the State Disbursement Unit and not directly from your employer. You have 10 days from when you receive this form to ask for a hearing on the wage assignment. John's legal specialties were tax law and bankruptcy law. Before starting his own firm, John worked for law offices, accounting firms, and one of America's largest banks. John handled almost 1, bankruptcy cases in the eig Take our screener or read our bankruptcy F.

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