You should avoid having more than one wage garnishment at the same time – you should even avoid having one!
Video Transcript
Can you have more than one wage garnishment at the same time?
Hi, I’m Darrell Castle and I’m an attorney licensed to practice law in the state of Tennessee and the answer to that question is YES. You can have more than one at the same time, but hopefully that won’t happen to you.
But no matter how many you have, it can only take 25% of your disposable income. So they have to split it if there’s more than one. But we’ll talk about why that shouldn’t happen.
25% of your disposable income – how do you get “disposable income?” Well that’s the income that’s left after your employer deducts what he is required by law to deduct. The rest of it is disposable income.
They can only take 25% so you can earn a living and pay your living expense. So let’s say the creditor comes along and take 25% and another creditor comes along, then they’ll probably have to split it because they can’t take more than 25%.
Now that is under state Tennessee law. You become a judgement creditor by filing a lawsuit for your debt, by winning that suit in court and by getting the court to issue an order of garnishment.
Income such as Social Security and federal welfare payments, disability payments and things like that in Tennessee is pretty generous. You can pretty much assume that those are not subject to garnishment.
But your wages – your income from your work – YES.
Now why should you never permit having more than one garnishment? Well, first of all, you should never permit having ONE. If you have ONE, then you’re protected by federal law for employment. Your employer cannot fire you or discharge you under federal law because you have a wage garnishment. TWO, the law is lifted from your employer. If he doesn’t want to put up with your second then he doesn’t have to.
So don’t permit that to happen folks. You need to see someone and have that stopped.
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