Rule 90.15.Garnishment of Wages--Notice of Wage Exemption Statute Required.

Missouri law caps how much of a debtor’s wages can be garnished, and Rule 90.15 makes sure that cap is not just a background statute nobody sees. No notice, summons, or writ of wage garnishment issued or served under the statutes governing garnishment of earnings may attach, or even purport to attach, wages beyond the amounts those statutes — or any applicable federal law — allow.

To make that limit visible to the people it protects, the rule requires every such notice, summons, or writ to clearly and legibly reproduce the specific statutory provisions describing the wage-garnishment limits and related protections. Instead of trusting a debtor to look up the statute independently, the document that starts the garnishment has to carry the relevant text on its face.

This rule works as a companion to Rule 90.14’s attachment-related wage protections and to the exemption procedure in Rule 90.035 — together they make sure a debtor whose wages are garnished sees, right on the paperwork, both the fact that limits exist and the specific legal language that defines them, instead of having to track that information down elsewhere.