By William Waldner, Esq. — a New York bankruptcy attorney since 2008, practicing exclusively in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.
Wage garnishment is one of the most painful ways a creditor can collect: the money is gone before it ever reaches your account, right when your budget is already stretched thin. The good news is that bankruptcy can stop most garnishments almost immediately — and often reverse one that has already started. Here’s how garnishment works in New York, what a creditor can and cannot take, and how filing shuts it off.
How Wage Garnishment Works in New York
With a few exceptions, a creditor has to sue you, win a money judgment, and then serve an income execution before it can reach your paycheck. New York law caps how much can be taken. Under CPLR 5231, an income execution can take the lesser of 10% of your gross wages or 25% of your disposable earnings — and nothing at all if your disposable earnings for the week fall below 30 times the applicable minimum wage.
Two federal floors back that up. Under the Consumer Credit Protection Act, an ordinary garnishment can never exceed 25% of disposable earnings, and no garnishment is allowed on the first 30 times the federal minimum wage each week — $217.50 at the current $7.25 federal rate. Because New York’s own minimum wage is higher — $17.00 an hour in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester as of January 1, 2026 — the protected floor is larger here, about $510 a week in the city. Whichever rule shields more of your paycheck is the one that applies.
Some “Garnishments” Don’t Need a Lawsuit
A handful of debts skip the judgment step. Child and spousal support, unpaid federal taxes, and defaulted federal student loans can be collected from wages administratively, and their limits are different — support orders alone can reach 50% to 60% of disposable earnings. That difference also shapes what bankruptcy can and cannot do, which I’ll come back to below.
Filing Bankruptcy Triggers the Automatic Stay
The moment a bankruptcy case is filed, an automatic stay under Section 362 of the Bankruptcy Code goes into effect. It is a federal court order that stops almost all collection activity at once — lawsuits, frozen accounts, collection calls, and wage garnishments. Your attorney notifies the creditor, its lawyer, and the city marshal or sheriff enforcing the income execution, and the garnishment has to stop. No creditor gets to opt out, and none of them has to agree.
If wages were taken in the days just before you filed, some of that money may be recoverable — a case-by-case question, and a good one to raise at your consultation. And when a garnishment is about to hit and you cannot wait, an emergency bankruptcy filing can put the stay in place the same day.
Which Debts Bankruptcy Wipes Out — and Which Survive
Most wage garnishments come from exactly the debts bankruptcy handles best. Chapter 7 bankruptcy can erase credit card judgments, medical bills, personal loans, and old consumer debt entirely, usually in about four months. If you don’t qualify for Chapter 7, or you want to catch up on a house or car, a Chapter 13 repayment plan folds the debt into one affordable monthly payment and keeps the garnishment stopped for the life of the plan.
The exceptions are the debts that survive any bankruptcy: child and spousal support, most recent taxes, and most student loans. A garnishment for ongoing child support, for instance, is not stopped by the automatic stay. It helps to understand how priority debts are treated differently from ordinary ones before you file. For the everyday judgment creditor garnishing a paycheck over a credit card balance, though, bankruptcy is usually the fastest and most complete way to end it. For a deeper look at the state rules, see our guide to New York’s wage garnishment laws.
Ready to Keep Your Whole Paycheck Again?
If a garnishment is eating into wages you need for rent and groceries, you don’t have to wait it out. In most cases we can file quickly and have the deductions stopped within days. Get in touch with the office and we’ll look at your situation together.
Law Office of William Waldner — 469 Seventh Avenue, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10018 Call 212-244-2882 to schedule your free, confidential 20-minute consultation. We handle bankruptcy cases exclusively, in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.
