Claiming an exemption from garnishment: the deadline is short, and it is not the same in any two states

Applies across jurisdictions · Last verified August 17, 2026

Most people assume that money the law protects is protected by itself. Usually it is not. In most states, an exemption is a claim you have to make, on a prescribed form, inside a window that can be as short as five business days.

Miss it and money the law says is yours goes to the creditor anyway.

The deadline is the whole problem

There is no national rule. The variation between neighboring states is enormous, and the shape of the procedure differs too — some states send your claim to the court, one sends it to your employer, and one gives you no deadline at all.

State	Deadline to claim	Where the claim goes
Ohio	5 business days from receiving the notice	the clerk of court, in writing
Minnesota	10 days from the exemption notice	the creditor
Michigan	14 days from service of the writ	the court, on form MC 49
Colorado	21 days from service on the employer	the clerk and the employer, on Form 28
Illinois	on or before the return date	the clerk of court
Georgia	any time before disbursement	the clerk, served on plaintiff and garnishee
Wisconsin	no deadline — before or during the garnishment	the employer
Virginia	the hearing date on the summons	the court, on the attached claim form

Two lessons from that table.

Never assume the deadline from another state. A Michigan practitioner who assumes fourteen days in Ohio is nine days late.

Check where the claim goes. Filing a Wisconsin-style claim with the court, or a Colorado-style claim only with the clerk and not the employer, can mean the money moves anyway.

Automatic protection exists, but it is narrow

Some protection does operate without a claim.

Federal benefits in a bank account. Federal rules require account-review protection for certain directly deposited federal benefit payments, and Virginia's statutory notice says financial institutions "are required by law to exempt certain funds, federal benefit payments, and state benefit payments automatically in certain garnishment cases."

But the same notice warns, in terms, that this is not a guarantee: "just because you receive one or more of the listed federal and state benefit payments does not mean that these funds will be automatically exempted."

Illinois protects $1,000 in an account automatically through the end of the citation hearing, as part of its personal-property exemption — see the Illinois citation to discover assets.

Wisconsin makes the claim binding on the employer. Under Wis. Stat. § 812.37(3) the garnishee "shall accept as true and binding any exemption claimed in the debtor's answer" unless a court orders otherwise — the closest thing to automatic protection any of these systems offers.

Everything else generally requires a claim.

What is usually exempt

The categories recur across states, even though the amounts do not:

Government benefits — Social Security and SSI, veterans' benefits, unemployment compensation, workers' compensation, public assistance.
Retirement money — pensions, IRAs and ERISA-governed plans. Illinois exempts these outright under 735 ILCS 5/12-804; Georgia exempts retirement funds "until paid or distributed" under O.C.G.A. § 18-4-6.
A wildcard or personal property allowance, often with a separate motor-vehicle and tools-of-trade figure.
Homestead protection for a residence.
A wage floor, expressed either as a percentage or as a multiple of the minimum wage.

The wage ceiling, and the state variations

Federal law sets a floor of protection that no state may go below: the amount garnishable is the lesser of 25% of disposable earnings or the amount by which disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum hourly wage.

Several states protect more:

State	Maximum reachable from wages
Wisconsin	20% of disposable — and nothing below the poverty line
Illinois	the lesser of 15% of gross, or the excess over 45× the applicable minimum wage
Texas	current wages generally not garnishable for ordinary debts
Most others	the federal 25% ceiling

"Disposable earnings" means gross pay less legally required deductions — tax and the like. It does not mean what is left after rent.

Tracing, and why it matters

Exempt money usually keeps its character when it lands in a bank account — but you have to be able to show it. That means:

statements showing the source of the deposits;
benefit award letters; and
ideally, an account that does not mix exempt with non-exempt funds.

Commingling is the single biggest practical obstacle to a bank-account exemption claim. If benefit income lands in the same account as other money, expect to have to trace it.

A claim is not an attack on the judgment

This trips people up constantly. An exemption claim says this money is protected. It does not say the judgment was wrong.

If the judgment itself should never have been entered — because you were never served, for instance — that is a separate motion in the case that produced it, and it has its own, usually short, deadline:

Colorado — 182 days
Nevada — 6 months, non-extendable
Georgia — 15 days as of right, then before final judgment
Pennsylvania — a 10-day fast lane
Alabama — 30 days, or 14 in district court, 7 for evictions
Kentucky — CR 60.02
New Jersey — with the answer and filing fee attached

Running both at once is usually right: the exemption claim protects the money now, and the motion attacks the judgment behind it.

A short checklist

Find the date on the paperwork the day it arrives. Every one of these deadlines is short, and several run from service on your employer rather than on you.
Work out where the claim goes — the court, the creditor, or the employer. It is not the same everywhere.
Use the prescribed form if there is one. Several states supply it with the garnishment papers and require the employer to hand it over.
Claim every category that applies, not just the obvious one.
Gather tracing proof for bank accounts — statements and award letters showing the source.
Do not rely on automatic protection. It exists, but it is narrower than most people assume.
Check the arithmetic against your state's ceiling, which may be lower than the federal 25%.
Keep proof of what you filed and when.
Attack the judgment separately if it should not have been entered. The exemption claim does not reach it.

Where these rules live

This page explains the shape these procedures take across jurisdictions. It isn't legal advice. The exemption statutes themselves — and the dollar figures in them, which are adjusted periodically — sit outside this site's corpora in most states, and should be checked directly.

How this guide is sourced. Every procedural statement here is drawn from the text of the rules named above, each of which is reproduced verbatim on its own page on this site. Quoted rule language appears in quotation marks or block quotes; everything else is original writing. Last verified August 17, 2026.

This page explains what the rules say. It is legal information, not legal advice, and it cannot tell you how a rule applies to your situation. Deadlines are often short and some are not extendable — if the outcome matters, talk to a lawyer or your court’s self-help center.