A legal order requiring an employer to withhold part of someone's pay and send it to a creditor.
Wage garnishment is enforcement of a debt directly against earnings: the employer is ordered to withhold a portion of the employee's pay and remit it to a creditor. For most ordinary consumer debts a creditor has to sue and obtain a judgment first, so a garnishment usually means a court case has already concluded - occasionally one the debtor did not realise had been filed.
Some debts do not follow that route. Child support, defaulted federal student loans and certain federal tax debts can be collected through administrative processes with different rules and different limits.
Federal law caps how much of a person's pay can be taken and protects the employee from being fired because of a single debt garnishment; states may protect more, and the more protective rule applies. Limits for support obligations are set separately and are higher.
Two things are worth checking promptly: whether the underlying judgment was validly obtained and served, and whether the amount being withheld exceeds what the law permits once state protections are applied. Both have limited windows in which they can be challenged.
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