Stopping a Georgia garnishment: no deadline to claim, and a hearing within ten days as of right
Georgia procedure · Last verified August 17, 2026
Georgia's garnishment law is unusually forgiving on timing and unusually strong on effect. There is no five-day or fourteen-day window to miss. A defendant may come into the garnishment at any time before the money is disbursed.
And filing the claim does two things at once: it entitles you to a hearing within ten days, and it freezes the money until that hearing happens.
A note on sources
Georgia's garnishment procedure is Chapter 4 of Title 18 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated — Debtor and Creditor. This site's Georgia corpus publishes Title 9, Civil Practice, so Title 18 sits outside it. This page therefore describes the procedure and cites it precisely rather than reproducing the text.
The official code is published by the Georgia Code Revision Commission; a freely accessible copy is at Justia's Georgia Code.
Becoming a party, and when
Under O.C.G.A. § 18-4-15, a defendant becomes a party to the garnishment by filing a claim with the clerk of court. The timing provision is the important part: the claim may be filed at any time before a judgment is entered, an order to disburse funds is issued, or the money or other property subject to garnishment is distributed by the court.
That is not a deadline in the ordinary sense — it is a point of no return. Up to it, you are in time. After the money is disbursed, the remedy has gone.
The practical consequence: if a garnishment has just started and money is being held by the court, you have not missed anything. File.
What filing achieves
Section 18-4-15 attaches three consequences to filing the claim:
- A hearing must be ordered by a judge of the court in which the garnishment is pending, to be held not more than ten days from the date the claim is filed.
- The hearing is available to the defendant as a matter of right — the court has no discretion to refuse one.
- Nothing moves in the meantime. No further summons of garnishment shall issue, and no money or property already paid into court may be disbursed, until the hearing is held.
That freeze is the most valuable feature of the Georgia scheme, and it happens on filing rather than on any ruling.
| Step | Timing |
|---|---|
| Defendant files a claim with the clerk | any time before judgment, a disbursement order, or distribution |
| Court orders a hearing | not more than 10 days from filing |
| Hearing available as of right | yes |
| Further summonses and disbursement | suspended until the hearing |
| Plaintiff's traverse of the garnishee's answer | within 20 days of service of that answer |
What the claim must say
The claim asserts the basis on which the money or property is exempt from garnishment, and it must be served on the plaintiff and the garnishee as well as filed.
The grounds recognized are broad, and they are not limited to classic exemptions. They include:
- the statutory limitations on how much of a debtor's earnings may be reached;
- the exemptions themselves;
- that the plaintiff does not have a judgment against the defendant;
- that the amount claimed due is erroneous; and
- other legal or statutory defenses.
The third and fourth of those are worth noticing. A defendant can use the garnishment hearing to say the creditor has no judgment against them at all, or that the balance claimed is simply wrong — neither of which is an "exemption" in the ordinary sense.
Exemptions
O.C.G.A. § 18-4-6 sets out property exempt from garnishment. Among the categories it protects are funds or benefits from an individual retirement account or from a pension or retirement program, which are exempt until paid or distributed.
Federal benefits — Social Security and similar payments — carry their own protections under federal law, independently of the Georgia exemptions, and keep that character when deposited if the deposits can be traced.
The amount of earnings that can be reached is capped by the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act floor: the lesser of 25% of disposable earnings or the amount by which disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum hourly wage.
Defects in the paperwork
O.C.G.A. § 18-4-7(d) provides that failure to file the correct affidavit and summons causes the garnishment to be invalid, and relieves the garnishee of liability. Checking that the right documents were filed and served is therefore a real line of attack, separate from any exemption argument.
If the underlying judgment is the problem
A garnishment claim does not reopen the judgment. If a default judgment should never have been entered — because you were not served, for instance — the route is O.C.G.A. § 9-11-60, which is in Title 9 and on this site. See opening a Georgia default for the distinction between opening a default under § 9-11-55 and setting aside a judgment under § 9-11-60.
Running both at once is often sensible: the garnishment claim freezes the money now, and the § 9-11-60 motion attacks the judgment behind it.
How Georgia compares
| Georgia | Ohio | Michigan | Illinois | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deadline to object | none — any time before disbursement | 5 business days | 14 days | on or before the return date |
| Hearing as of right | yes | on request | on the form | on request |
| Hearing within | 10 days of filing | 12 days of the request | on notice | promptly |
| Filing freezes disbursement | yes | no | no | no |
| "No judgment" as a ground | yes | — | — | — |
| Maximum taken | 25% of disposable (federal floor) | 25% | 25% | 15% of gross or the 45× excess |
A short checklist
- File the claim with the clerk as soon as you learn of the garnishment. There is no fixed deadline, but disbursement ends the opportunity.
- Serve the claim on the plaintiff and the garnishee, not just the court.
- State the basis for exemption — and remember the grounds include an erroneous amount and the absence of a judgment.
- Expect a hearing within ten days, and treat it as a right rather than a request.
- Note that filing freezes things — no further summons and no disbursement until the hearing.
- Identify retirement and pension funds under § 18-4-6; they are exempt until paid or distributed.
- Trace federal benefit deposits if the garnishment has reached a bank account.
- Check the affidavit and summons. Under § 18-4-7(d) the wrong documents make the garnishment invalid.
- If the judgment itself is defective, file separately under § 9-11-60. The garnishment hearing cannot undo it.
Where these rules live
- O.C.G.A. § 9-11-60 — Relief from judgments
- O.C.G.A. § 9-11-69 — Execution
- O.C.G.A. § 9-11-62 — Stay of proceedings to enforce a judgment
- Official statutory text: O.C.G.A. Title 18, Chapter 4 (Garnishment Proceedings).
This page explains how the procedure works. It isn't legal advice. Title 18 is outside this site's Georgia corpus, which covers Title 9, so its text is not reproduced here; check §§ 18-4-6, 18-4-7 and 18-4-15 against the official code before relying on the description above.