Arizona wage garnishment laws cap most paycheck garnishments at 10% of your disposable earnings, one of the more protective limits in the country. Before a private creditor can take anything, they need a court judgment against you. Once they have one, Arizona Revised Statutes Title 12 and Title 33 control how much can be withheld, what’s off-limits entirely, and how you can push back.
How Much of Your Paycheck Can Be Garnished
For ordinary consumer debts like credit cards, medical bills, and personal loans, Arizona lets a creditor take the lesser of two numbers each week:
- 10% of your disposable earnings for that week, or
- The amount by which your disposable earnings exceed 60 times the highest applicable minimum wage.
Disposable earnings means what’s left after legally required deductions like federal and state taxes, Social Security, and Medicare. Arizona’s minimum wage is $15.15 per hour as of January 1, 2026, which puts the second-formula floor at $909 per week. If your local jurisdiction sets a higher minimum wage, that higher rate applies.1Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 33-1131 – Definition; Wages; Salary; Compensation
Here’s what that looks like in practice. If your weekly disposable earnings are $1,000, 10% is $100 and the amount over $909 is $91. The creditor gets the smaller number, so $91 comes out. If your disposable earnings are $900, nothing can be taken at all because you’re below the floor.
Federal law under the Consumer Credit Protection Act allows creditors to take up to 25% of disposable earnings, but when state and federal limits conflict, the employer uses whichever produces the smaller garnishment.2U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #30: Wage Garnishment Protections of the Consumer Credit Protection Act (CCPA) Arizona workers get the benefit of the tighter state cap.
Irregular pay counts too. Bonuses, commissions, and sign-on payments are treated as earnings for the pay period in which they’re paid, and the same percentage limits apply. A creditor cannot take a bonus in full just because it’s extra income.2U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #30: Wage Garnishment Protections of the Consumer Credit Protection Act (CCPA)
Asking the Court for a Hardship Reduction
Even 10% is too much for some households. If you can show clear and convincing evidence that the standard withholding would cause extreme economic hardship, the court can lower the amount to as little as 15% of what would otherwise be garnished.3Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 12-1598.10 – Continuing Lien on Earnings; Order You have to request a hearing and bring documentation of your household income and expenses. It isn’t automatic.
When Higher Limits Apply
The 10% cap only covers ordinary consumer debts. Three common categories of obligations follow different rules and let a creditor take much more.
Child Support and Spousal Maintenance
Arizona exempts only half of disposable earnings for support obligations, so up to 50% can be garnished.1Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 33-1131 – Definition; Wages; Salary; Compensation Federal law adds detail: if you’re supporting another spouse or child, the cap stays at 50%; if you aren’t, it rises to 60%. When payments are more than 12 weeks overdue, an additional 5% comes off the top of either figure.4Administration for Children & Families. Is There a Limit to the Amount of Money That Can Be Taken From My Paycheck for Child Support? Support garnishments also jump ahead of consumer-debt garnishments in priority regardless of when they were filed.
IRS Wage Levies
The IRS ignores the percentage system entirely. Instead, the agency calculates an exempt amount based on your filing status, standard deduction, and dependents, then can take everything above that floor.5Internal Revenue Service. Information About Wage Levies Your employer will hand you a form to declare your status and dependents. If you don’t return it within three days, the exempt amount defaults to married-filing-separately with zero dependents, the lowest possible protection. If you have other income sources, the IRS can allocate the exemption to those and levy 100% of your wages from a particular employer.
Federal Student Loans and Other Federal Debts
Defaulted federal student loans and other federal debts can be collected through administrative wage garnishment with no court judgment required. The agency has to give you at least 30 days’ written notice before withholding starts.6eCFR. 31 CFR 285.11 – Administrative Wage Garnishment The maximum is 15% of disposable earnings.2U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #30: Wage Garnishment Protections of the Consumer Credit Protection Act (CCPA) These federal garnishments are governed by the CCPA’s disposable-earnings floor, not by Arizona’s more protective 10% cap.
Bank Account Garnishment
Creditors can also go after money in your bank account, and this works differently from wage garnishment. It’s typically a one-time event: the bank freezes whatever you had in the account at the moment the garnishment order was served. The creditor doesn’t get a continuing claim on future deposits.7Arizona Judicial Branch. Garnishment
Arizona protects a base amount of $5,000 held in a single account at any one financial institution. That number adjusts each January 1 based on the consumer price index, so the 2026 figure may be slightly higher.8Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 33-1126 – Money Benefits or Proceeds; Exception This exemption applies regardless of where the money in the account came from.
Once served, the bank has 10 days to file a written answer with the court disclosing what it held, what it withheld, and why any amount wasn’t withheld.10Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 12-1579 – Answer of Garnishee
Income and Property That Can’t Be Garnished at All
Certain funds are exempt from garnishment entirely, no matter what the debt is. Arizona’s exemption statute protects:9Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 33-1126 – Money Benefits or Proceeds; Exception
- Social Security benefits
- Veterans’ benefits
- Workers’ compensation benefits
- Child support and spousal maintenance payments you receive
- Health, accident, and disability insurance proceeds
- Retirement accounts, including 401(k), 403(b), traditional and Roth IRAs, 457 plans, and ERISA-qualified pension plans
- Life insurance cash surrender value where the policy has been owned for at least two years and names a family member as beneficiary
- 529 college savings plan interests, except for contributions made within two years before a bankruptcy filing
- Federal and state earned income tax credits and child tax credits
Exempt money doesn’t lose its protected status just because it lands in a regular bank account. Social Security deposited alongside your paycheck is still Social Security. The challenge is proving which dollars in a mixed account are protected.
Federal Benefits in Bank Accounts: The Automatic Bank Review
Federal regulations require your bank to do something before it freezes your account. Under 31 CFR Part 212, when a bank receives a garnishment order it has to look back two months from the day before the review and identify direct-deposited federal benefit payments, including Social Security, VA benefits, Railroad Retirement, and Office of Personnel Management benefits.11eCFR. 31 CFR Part 212 – Garnishment of Accounts Containing Federal Benefit Payments
The bank then calculates a protected amount: the lesser of the total federal benefit deposits during those two months or the current balance. That amount is conclusively exempt.11eCFR. 31 CFR Part 212 – Garnishment of Accounts Containing Federal Benefit Payments Only funds above that number can be frozen. You don’t have to file anything to trigger the review; it’s automatic.
One boundary: this automatic protection only covers benefits arriving by direct deposit from a federal agency. If you get a paper check and deposit it yourself, you’ll need to claim the exemption manually through the court.
How to Fight a Garnishment
After the bank or employer files its answer, you have 10 days to file a written objection and request a hearing.12Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 12-1598.07 – Objection to Garnishment, Answer or Nonexempt Earnings Statement; Hearing The court can extend the deadline for good cause, but missing it without a strong reason usually means losing your chance.
The most common objection is a claim of exemption: you identify which funds are protected and under which law, whether that’s Social Security under federal law, retirement account funds, the $5,000 bank exemption, or another category from ARS 33-1126. The court schedules a hearing and you bring evidence. Useful documentation includes bank statements showing direct-deposited benefits, retirement account statements, and pay stubs showing the garnishment exceeds the legal cap.
Errors in calculating disposable earnings or applying exemptions are common, so it’s worth reviewing the answer even if you think the amount looks right. If you don’t respond at all, the court can let the garnishment proceed based on what the garnishee filed.
Can Your Employer Fire You Over a Garnishment?
Federal law prohibits your employer from firing you because your wages are being garnished for any one debt, no matter how many orders or proceedings arise from that single debt.2U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #30: Wage Garnishment Protections of the Consumer Credit Protection Act (CCPA) Title III of the Consumer Credit Protection Act enforces this through the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. An employer who willfully terminates someone over a single garnishment can face reinstatement of the employee with back pay, plus criminal fines and up to one year in jail.13U.S. Department of Labor. Wage Garnishment
The limit: this shield applies only to a single debt. Once garnishments from two or more separate creditors hit your paycheck, the federal protection no longer applies. Arizona does not have a state-level anti-retaliation statute that adds coverage beyond the federal floor.
What Bankruptcy Does to an Active Garnishment
Filing for bankruptcy triggers an automatic stay that immediately halts most collection actions, including active wage garnishments and bank levies.14Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 362 – Automatic Stay Once a creditor learns of the filing, the garnishment has to stop even before the employer receives formal court notification. Continuing to garnish after a bankruptcy filing violates the stay.
The stay doesn’t cover everything. Domestic support obligations like child support and alimony can keep being withheld during bankruptcy, and so can employer-sponsored retirement plan loan repayments.14Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 362 – Automatic Stay
You may also be able to recover recently garnished wages. If a creditor took more than $600 from your wages during the 90 days before you filed, you can potentially claw that money back as a preferential transfer through a separate action in bankruptcy court. You need to be able to protect the recovered amount with an applicable exemption for this to work.