Owe a credit card company $8,000 in Houston and it can sue you, win, and still never touch a dollar of your paycheck. Owe the same $8,000 in Minneapolis and it can take up to a quarter of every week’s pay until the judgment’s paid.
That’s not a loophole. It’s the Texas Constitution, and it’s been there since February 15, 1876, a hundred and fifty years this year. Minnesota likes to think of itself as the nice state. On your paycheck, it isn’t close.
This is round one of a series I’m calling “Minnesota vs. Texas: who actually protects the debtor?” I’m keeping score, and Minnesota wins some rounds, including one in this very article. I’m starting with the paycheck because that’s where most people actually get hurt.
Texas says hands off your paycheck, three times over
Three sentences, in three different places, all saying the same thing.
Sec. 28. GARNISHMENT OF WAGES. No current wages for personal service shall ever be subject to garnishment, except for the enforcement of court-ordered: (1) child support payments; or (2) spousal maintenance.
— Tex. Const. art. XVI, § 28 (emphasis added)
The history note on that section reads “Feb. 15, 1876. Amended Nov. 8, 1983, and Nov. 2, 1999.” The original had no exceptions at all. Justice Mauzy quoted it in a 1991 Texas Supreme Court concurrence: “No current wages for personal services shall ever be subject to garnishment”. Caulley v. Caulley, 806 S.W.2d 795, 798 n.1 (Tex. 1991) (Mauzy, J., concurring). Child support came in by amendment in 1983. Spousal maintenance came in 1999. That’s the whole list.
The Legislature wrote it into the statute books twice more. “Except as otherwise provided by state or federal law, current wages for personal service are not subject to garnishment.” Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 63.004. And the Property Code exempts “current wages for personal services, except for the enforcement of court-ordered child support payments” from seizure, outside the dollar cap that applies to everything else a Texan owns. Tex. Prop. Code § 42.001(b)(1).
So a credit card company, a debt buyer, a medical collector, a payday lender: none of them gets a Texas employer to withhold a cent.
What Texas can’t stop
Texas didn’t repeal federal law, and a few creditors don’t need state permission.
Federal student loans are the big one. The Higher Education Act lets the Department of Education garnish wages “Notwithstanding any provision of State law,” and caps it at 15 percent: “the amount deducted for any pay period may not exceed 15 percent of disposable pay,” unless the borrower consents in writing to more. 20 U.S.C. § 1095a(a)(1).
The IRS levies under its own statute, and that statute says “no property or rights to property shall be exempt from levy other than the property specifically made exempt by subsection (a).” 26 U.S.C. § 6334(c). The wage protection it does recognize is its own minimum exemption. § 6334(a)(9).
And the federal garnishment cap in the Consumer Credit Protection Act doesn’t apply to support orders, which get their own, higher cap, or to “any debt due for any State or Federal tax.” 15 U.S.C. § 1673(b)(1)(A), (C).
What makes the Texas bar legal in the first place is one sentence of that same federal act. Congress set a ceiling on garnishment in 1968, and then said the ceiling doesn’t override state laws “prohibiting garnishments or providing for more limited garnishment than are allowed under this subchapter”. 15 U.S.C. § 1677(1). Washington set a floor. Texas built a wall on top of it. Minnesota raised the floor a little.
Once the paycheck hits the bank, Texas gets stingier
Here’s the catch in the Texas rule, and it’s in the word “current”.
In 1992 a Houston appeals court took up a debtor who’d deposited his paychecks and then watched American Express garnish the account. He argued the money was still exempt wages. The court said no. Texas courts, it wrote, “have held that when wages are paid to and received by the wage-earner, they cease to be ‘current’ for purposes of the exemption laws.” Am. Express Travel Related Servs. v. Harris, 831 S.W.2d 531, 532 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 1992, no writ). Once he’d deposited them, “such wages were no longer exempt and were properly subject to garnishment by appellant.” Id. at 533.
Texas does protect the deposited paycheck in one way. A creditor who goes after the debtor himself with a turnover order hits Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 31.002(f), which bars any order “that requires the turnover of the proceeds of, or the disbursement of, property exempt under any statute”. The Texas Supreme Court read that in 1991 to protect paychecks: “By prohibiting the turnover of the proceeds of property exempt under any statute, this section necessarily prohibits the turnover of the proceeds of current wages.” Caulley, 806 S.W.2d at 798. There, a trial court had ordered a man to hand over $2,500 of his $2,700 net monthly pay. Id. at 796. Reversed.
But the bank account is a different animal. In 2011 the same Houston court said the 1989 turnover amendment had “implicitly overrul[ed]” the old rule for turnover orders, and in the same opinion repeated that it “has declined to apply section 31.002(f) of the turnover statute to garnishment actions”, citing Harris. Marrs v. Marrs, 401 S.W.3d 122, 125, 127 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2011). So under the Houston court’s cases, the paycheck is untouchable at the employer’s desk and fair game at the bank.
Minnesota wins this round. Its exempt earnings follow you to the bank:
The disposable earnings exempt from garnishment are exempt as a matter of right, whether claimed or not by the person to whom due. The exemptions may not be waived. The exempt disposable earnings are payable by the employer when due. The exempt disposable earnings shall also be exempt for 20 days after deposit in any financial institution, whether in a single or joint account.
— Minn. Stat. § 550.37, subd. 13 (emphasis added)
Twenty days. The money is traced first-in, first-out, and “[t]he burden of establishing that funds are exempt rests upon the debtor.” Id. So keep your records. But a Minnesotan’s protected wages don’t lose their protection the moment the direct deposit lands. A Texan’s do.
How much of my paycheck can a Minnesota creditor take?
Up to 25 percent of what’s left after the required withholdings. Less if you earn less. And on my reading, a lot of people with older judgments are still under the old rule, which is the part almost nobody knows.
“Disposable earnings” means “that part of the earnings of an individual remaining after the deduction from those earnings of amounts required by law to be withheld.” Minn. Stat. § 571.921(b). Taxes and FICA come out. Voluntary deductions, like a 401(k) contribution, generally aren’t required by law, so they don’t. Then the cap:
(a) Unless the judgment is for child support, the maximum part of the aggregate disposable earnings of an individual for any pay period subjected to garnishment may not exceed the lesser of:
(1) 25 percent of the debtor’s disposable earnings, if the debtor’s weekly income exceeds 80 times the greater of the hourly wage described in paragraph (b);
(2) 15 percent of the debtor’s disposable earnings, if the debtor’s weekly income exceeds 60 times, but is less than or equal to 80 times, the greater of the hourly wages described in paragraph (b); or
(3) ten percent of the debtor’s disposable earnings, if the debtor’s weekly income exceeds 40 times, but is less than or equal to 60 times, the greater of the hourly wages described in paragraph (b).
(b) The amount by which the debtor’s disposable earnings exceed the greater of:
— Minn. Stat. § 571.922
Paragraph (b) then names two numbers: 40 times the Minnesota minimum wage under § 177.24, or 40 times the federal minimum wage, whichever is greater. The state rate, which § 177.24 raises each January 1 by inflation or five percent, whichever is less, is the bigger one: the Department of Labor and Industry puts it at $11.41 an hour as of January 1, 2026. The federal rate is still $7.25. 29 U.S.C. § 206(a)(1)(C).
So on a weekly paycheck in 2026, the lines fall at $456.40 (40 times), $684.60 (60 times), and $912.80 (80 times).
$1,000 a week, take-home. That’s over the 80-times line, so the percentage cap is 25 percent, or $250. Paragraph (b) would allow $543.60, the amount over $456.40. The lesser number wins. The creditor gets $250 a week. That’s $13,000 a year.
$600 a week, take-home. Between the 40-times and 60-times lines, so 10 percent, or $60. Paragraph (b) would allow $143.60. The creditor gets $60 a week.
In Texas, both numbers are zero.
Two wrinkles in that formula, and both are real. The tiers turn on the debtor’s “weekly income”, while the percentage applies to “disposable earnings”, and § 571.921 defines the second term and not the first. If “weekly income” means gross pay, the $600-a-week worker who grosses $720 sits above the 60-times line, and the cap becomes 15 percent, $90. I couldn’t find a Minnesota appellate decision reading the phrase. And the tiers have cliffs. At exactly $912.80 the cap is 15 percent, $136.92. At $920 it’s 25 percent, $230. A $7.20 raise hands the creditor another $93.08 a week.
The tiers don’t reach every judgment
This one surprised me. The Legislature enacted the tiers in 2024 Minn. Laws ch. 114, art. 3, § 101, signed May 21, 2024, and wrote its own effective-date clause: “This section is effective April 1, 2025, and applies to causes of action commenced on or after that date.” Then, five weeks after that date had come and gone, it pushed the start back two months. A 2025 act signed May 8, 2025 struck “April” and wrote in “June”, and made the change “effective retroactively from March 1, 2025.” 2025 Minn. Laws ch. 18, § 21. So the tiers apply to causes of action commenced on or after June 1, 2025.
Before that, the cap was the lesser of “25 percent of the debtor’s disposable earnings” or the amount over 40 times the minimum wage. No tiers. Under the old rule, the $600-a-week worker loses $143.60 a week, not $60.
A garnishment in Minnesota is “an ancillary proceeding to a civil action for the recovery of money”. Minn. Stat. § 571.71. So on the words, I read the effective-date clause to leave every garnishment on a lawsuit commenced before June 1, 2025 under the old rule, however many years it takes to collect. I couldn’t find a Minnesota appellate decision on the point.
Compare how the Legislature handled the last change, in 2020, when it raised the protected floor from 40 times the federal minimum to the greater of the state or federal rate. That act said it applied “to all earnings garnished or levied, or all attorney’s summary execution upon earnings, on or after that date”, August 1, 2020. 2020 Minn. Laws ch. 86, art. 4, §§ 20, 22. In 2020, the fix reached every paycheck going forward. In 2024, it skipped every lawsuit already commenced. On my reading, a credit card judgment from a lawsuit served in 2023 still collects at the old rate.
I covered the rest of that 2024 package, and its effective dates, at /news/minnesota-medical-debt-fairness-act/.
Minnesota will garnish before there’s a judgment
On an ordinary debt, Texas won’t garnish your wages even after a judgment. Minnesota will garnish them before one.
Section 571.71 lists three times a creditor may issue a garnishment summons. One is after a money judgment. One is before judgment on a court order under § 571.93. The third needs no judge:
at any time 45 days or more after service of the summons and complaint upon the debtor in the civil action when a judgment by default could have, but has not, been entered pursuant to Rule 55.01(a) of the Minnesota Rules of Civil Procedure for the District Courts.
— Minn. Stat. § 571.71(2)
The creditor has to serve a Notice of Intent to Garnish and an exemption form at least 20 days after the summons and complaint, and then go 25 days after that notice without receiving an Answer. And then: “No filing of a pleading or other documents by the creditor is required to issue a garnishment summons under this clause”. Id.
The Legislature even wrote the warning the debtor gets, and it’s remarkably blunt. The statutory form tells you “There may not be a case filed in court,” and that “There will be NO COURT HEARING or any further notice to you prior to a garnishment if you do nothing.” Minn. Stat. § 571.72, subd. 11.
That isn’t a typo in the form. In Minnesota, a civil action is generally commenced “when the summons is served upon that defendant”, not when anybody files it, and the rule itself notes that Rule 5.04 requires filing within one year after commencement in a non-family case. Minn. R. Civ. P. 3.01 (citing Rule 5.04). So a debt buyer can serve you at your kitchen table and start garnishing your paycheck without filing a thing. Your employer may see the garnishment summons before any court sees the lawsuit.
If you’ve been served and haven’t answered, the clock in your hand is short. And if a judgment already got entered by default, check whether it should have been. I wrote about what Minnesota requires a debt buyer to prove before it gets one at /news/minnesota-debt-buyer-judgments-548-101/.
Minnesota’s consolation prizes, starting with your job
Some real protections. Just not the paycheck.
Your job. “An employer shall not discharge or otherwise discipline an employee or independent contractor as a result of an earnings garnishment authorized by this chapter.” Minn. Stat. § 571.927, subd. 1. A court may order reinstatement, the worker may sue within 90 days, and a worker who already had the job “shall recover twice the earnings lost as a result of this violation.” Id., subd. 2. The right can’t be waived by contract. Id., subd. 3. That’s better than federal law, which only bars firing someone over garnishment “for any one indebtedness.” 15 U.S.C. § 1674(a). Minnesota protects the job through the second and third garnishment too.
Notice before the money moves. On an earnings garnishment, the earnings exemption notice must be served ten or more days before the first garnishment summons. Minn. Stat. § 571.72, subd. 8. The exemption list itself, and how to claim it, is at /news/minnesota-garnishment-exemptions-judgment/.
Minnesota rules for Minnesota workers. In lawsuits commenced on or after August 1, 2024, the § 550.37 exemptions apply to a garnished Minnesota resident who works in Minnesota “regardless of where the employer is domiciled.” Minn. Stat. § 571.92; 2024 Minn. Laws ch. 114, art. 3, § 99. An out-of-state payroll company doesn’t get to apply some other state’s rules.
A full exemption for people on need-based assistance. Public assistance based on need, and the earnings of a person receiving it, are exempt from creditors, and the earnings stay exempt for six months after the person goes back to work and the assistance ends. Minn. Stat. § 550.37, subd. 14.
What Minnesota doesn’t have is any break for supporting a family on an ordinary debt. The only paragraph of § 571.922 that asks whether you’re “supporting a spouse or dependent child” is the child-support paragraph. For a credit card judgment, a single person and a parent of four get the same formula.
And don’t confuse any of this with an employer taking money out of your check for its own reasons. That’s a different statute with different rules, and I covered it at /news/minnesota-wage-deductions-181-79/.
Has the Legislature ever tried to go further?
Not to Texas. But it had better offers on the table in 2024 than the one it passed.
Senate File 4602, introduced March 4, 2024, would have cut the cap from 25 percent to 10 percent and raised the protected floor from 40 times the minimum wage to 80 times. In 2026 terms, that protects the first $912.80 of a weekly paycheck. Senate File 4065, introduced February 22, 2024, would have run the tiers at 5 percent between 40 and 80 times the minimum wage, 15 percent between 80 and 120 times, and 25 percent only above 120 times. What passed was 10, 15, and 25 percent at 40, 60, and 80 times, the most creditor-friendly of the three, and only for lawsuits commenced on or after June 1, 2025.
I couldn’t find a bill that would have barred wage garnishment for consumer debt. I searched the Revisor’s bill index for every House and Senate file from 2019 through 2026, regular and first special sessions, that cites §§ 571.922, 571.921, 571.71, or 550.37, and read the ones that touch earnings. None proposes a ban.
So is Texas the easier place to owe money?
For the paycheck, yes, and by a mile. That’s not the whole scorecard.
A Texas creditor with a judgment doesn’t give up. It goes after the bank account, which Harris says it can reach once wages are deposited, and after anything else the debtor owns that isn’t exempt. A Minnesotan with a modest paycheck and a frozen account may be better off than a Texan with a fat account and an untouchable paycheck. The rest of this series takes those pieces one at a time.
And Texas isn’t alone. Pennsylvania exempts “[t]he wages, salaries and commissions of individuals” from attachment and execution “while in the hands of the employer”, except in a short list of proceedings: divorce, support, board for four weeks or less, certain residential landlord judgments (capped at the lesser of 10 percent of net wages or what keeps the tenant above the federal poverty guidelines), the state’s higher-education agency, and criminal-court orders for restitution, costs, fines, or bail judgments. 42 Pa.C.S. § 8127(a). South Carolina’s consumer code is shorter still. On a consumer credit sale, consumer lease, consumer loan, or consumer rental-purchase agreement, “the creditor may not attach unpaid earnings of the debtor by garnishment or like proceedings.” S.C. Code Ann. § 37-5-104. North Carolina’s protection, at least the statute I pulled, is narrower: in supplementary proceedings, earnings from the 60 days before the order “cannot be so applied when it appears, by the debtor’s affidavit or otherwise, that these earnings are necessary for the use of a family supported wholly or partly by his labor.” N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-362.
South Carolina did it in one sentence. Congress already said Minnesota may. It hasn’t.
Madgett Law, LLC
Madgett Law, LLC handles garnishment and exemption fights and defends Minnesotans sued on consumer and medical debt, including the debt-buyer suits that end in default judgments and wage garnishments. We also help people look at settlement and negotiated alternatives before a judgment narrows the options; more on that is on our bankruptcy avoidance and distressed asset protection pages. If a garnishment summons or a Notice of Intent to Garnish just showed up, don’t wait out the 20 days. Send us a message.
Sources: Tex. Const. art. XVI, § 28 and history note (Texas Constitution and Statutes, Texas Legislative Council); Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 31.002(f) (turnover of proceeds of exempt property), § 63.004 (current wages exempt from garnishment); Tex. Prop. Code § 42.001(b)(1) (current wages exempt from seizure); Caulley v. Caulley, 806 S.W.2d 795, 796–98 (Tex. 1991), and id. at 798 n.1 (Mauzy, J., concurring) (original text of art. XVI, § 28); Am. Express Travel Related Servs. v. Harris, 831 S.W.2d 531, 532–33 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 1992, no writ); Marrs v. Marrs, 401 S.W.3d 122, 125, 127 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2011). 15 U.S.C. § 1673(a), (b)(1)(A), (C) (federal garnishment cap; support and tax exceptions); § 1674(a) (discharge for one indebtedness); § 1677(1) (more protective state laws); 20 U.S.C. § 1095a(a)(1) (student-loan administrative wage garnishment, 15 percent); 26 U.S.C. § 6334(a)(9), (c) (federal tax levy exemptions); 29 U.S.C. § 206(a)(1)(C) (federal minimum wage) (United States Code, 2024 ed., govinfo). Minn. Stat. § 550.37, subd. 13 (earnings exempt as of right; 20 days after deposit; tracing; burden), subd. 14 (need-based assistance and recipients’ earnings); § 571.71(1)–(3) (when garnishment authorized); § 571.72, subd. 8 (exemption notice timing), subd. 11 (Notice of Intent to Garnish form); § 571.92 (Minnesota exemptions for Minnesota residents working in Minnesota); § 571.921(b) (disposable earnings); § 571.922(a)–(c) (limitation on wage garnishment); § 571.927, subds. 1–3 (retaliation prohibited; remedy; nonwaiver); § 177.24, subd. 1(a)(4), (c) (Minnesota minimum wage, annual inflation adjustment). 2024 Minn. Laws ch. 114, art. 3, § 101 (tiered limits), § 99 (amending § 571.92), § 102 (amending § 571.927); 2025 Minn. Laws ch. 18, § 21 (moving the § 101 effective date to June 1, 2025, for causes of action commenced on or after that date; effective retroactively from March 1, 2025); 2024 Minn. Laws ch. 110, art. 6, § 5, and 2025 Minn. Laws 1st Spec. Sess. ch. 4, art. 7, § 34 (revisor’s cross-reference corrections to § 571.922(b)(i)); 2020 Minn. Laws ch. 86, art. 4, §§ 20, 22 (state-or-federal minimum-wage floor; effective August 1, 2020, for all earnings garnished on or after that date). Minn. R. Civ. P. 3.01 (commencement of action). Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, Minimum wage in Minnesota ($11.41 per hour as of January 1, 2026). S.F. 4602, 93d Leg. (Minn. 2024) (introduction); S.F. 4065, 93d Leg. (Minn. 2024) (1st engrossment); Revisor of Statutes bill status search by statute citation, 2019–2026. 42 Pa.C.S. § 8127(a) (Pennsylvania General Assembly); S.C. Code Ann. § 37-5-104 (South Carolina Legislature); N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-362 (North Carolina General Assembly). This article is general information about Minnesota law, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and no outcome is promised or implied.