Arizona: Wage Garnishment Limits

The short answer

If an ordinary creditor — a credit card company, a hospital, a personal-loan
lender — wins a lawsuit against you in Arizona and gets a money judgment, it
can garnish your paycheck, but only up to a limit, and Arizona's limit is one
of the tightest in the country. Since voters approved Proposition 209 in
2022, an employer can withhold no more than the lesser of 10% of your weekly
disposable earnings, or the amount your earnings exceed 60 times the highest
applicable minimum wage (federal, state, or local, whichever is greatest).
If that garnishment would cause your family extreme economic hardship, a
court can cut the 10% down to as low as 5%. Support orders, tax debts, and
bankruptcy-court orders follow completely different, less protective rules.

Requirements one by one

Governing law

Arizona's wage-garnishment cap is set out in A.R.S. § 33-1131, in the
Property title. The court procedure for actually obtaining and enforcing a
garnishment lives separately in Title 12, §§ 12-1598 through 12-1598.17.
Both were substantially rewritten by Proposition 209, the Predatory Debt
Collection Protection Act, approved by voters in November 2022 and
effective December 5, 2022.

Maximum that can be garnished

Under § 33-1131(B), the most that can be withheld from your paycheck in any
workweek is the lesser of two numbers: 10% of your disposable earnings for
that week, or the amount your disposable earnings exceed 60 times the
highest applicable minimum hourly wage. Before Proposition 209, this formula
was 25% and 30 times the minimum wage — the 2022 measure cut the percentage
by more than half and doubled the wage-floor multiplier. A judgment debtor
can also ask a court to reduce the 10% further, down to as low as 5%, on
clear and convincing evidence that the garnishment would cause extreme
economic hardship to the debtor or their family (§ 12-1598.10(F)).

State rule vs. federal floor

Federal law (15 U.S.C. § 1673) caps ordinary garnishment at the lesser of
25% of disposable earnings, or the amount earnings exceed 30 times the
federal minimum wage. Arizona beats that floor decisively on both counts: a
10% ceiling instead of 25%, and a 60-times multiplier (double the federal
30x) applied to whichever of the federal, state, or local minimum wage is
highest — not just the federal rate. Since Proposition 209, Arizona is
widely regarded as one of the most debtor-protective states in the country
on this specific measure.

Minimum-wage protected floor

The 60-times multiplier in § 33-1131(B) uses the HIGHEST minimum hourly wage
that applies where you work: the federal rate ($7.25), Arizona's own state
minimum wage ($15.15 an hour in 2026), or a local minimum wage if the city
where you work sets one — both Flagstaff and Tucson currently set their own,
higher local minimum wage. At the statewide rate, that works out to $909.00
of weekly disposable earnings fully protected; the floor is higher for
someone working in Flagstaff or Tucson.

Support, tax & student loan debts

A different set of rules applies once the debt isn't an ordinary judgment.
A support order isn't limited by the 10%/60x formula at all — instead,
§ 33-1131(C) exempts only half of disposable earnings, meaning up to 50%
can be withheld for support. A bankruptcy-court order and any state or
federal tax debt are carved out of § 33-1131's protections entirely
(§ 33-1131(D)) — there's no percentage ceiling under this section for those
debts. Federal student loan collections proceed through their own separate
federal administrative process (15% cap, 20 U.S.C. § 1095a), independent of
this chapter.

Head-of-household/family exemption

Arizona doesn't add an extra percentage or dollar protection to the wage-
garnishment formula itself for supporting a family. Proposition 209 did
substantially raise Arizona's separate personal-property and bank-account
exemption amounts (for example, the exemption for funds in a single bank
account rose from $300 to $5,000), but those are general asset exemptions a
debtor claims independently of the wage-garnishment calculation, and
personal-property exemption schedules are outside this survey's scope.

Multiple garnishments at once

Arizona generally runs on first-in-time priority among garnishments and
levies (§ 12-1598.14(A)). The exception: a wage assignment, garnishment, or
levy for the support of a person always outranks one that isn't for support,
no matter which was served first (§ 12-1598.14(B)). If the priority rules
leave a junior garnishment with nothing collected for two consecutive
paydays, that junior lien becomes invalid and the garnishee (employer) must
notify the junior creditor (§ 12-1598.14(C)).

Protection from being fired

No distinct Arizona statute specific to discharge over an ordinary wage
garnishment turned up in this research, despite several consumer-facing
summaries describing it as settled "Arizona law." Absent an independent
state provision, the federal anti-retaliation floor applies: 15 U.S.C.
§ 1674 bars discharging an employee over a single garnishment, but not over
a second or later one.

What trips people up

Arizona's official code site serves two different versions of § 12-1598.10
at two different URLs — one still showing the pre-2022 "twenty-five
percent... fifteen percent" hardship-reduction language, and a separate
"Version 1" page carrying the current, Proposition-209-amended "ten
percent... five percent" text. Anyone calculating a garnishment today
should make sure they're reading the current 10%/5% figures, not the
superseded 25%/15% ones. Also, the 60x multiplier isn't just about the
federal minimum wage — Arizona law requires using whichever of the federal,
state, or local minimum wage is highest, so a debtor working in a city with
its own higher minimum wage gets a bigger protected floor than the statewide
number alone would suggest.

Common questions

Can a creditor garnish more than 10% if I have a lot of debt?
No — for an ordinary judgment, 10% (or the 60x-minimum-wage alternative, if
lower) is the ceiling no matter how large the debt, though a support order
or tax debt follows different, higher limits.

How do I ask for the hardship reduction to 5%?
You request a hearing and must show, by clear and convincing evidence, that
the garnishment would cause you or your family extreme economic hardship;
it isn't automatic just because you're struggling financially.

Does it matter how often I'm paid?
Yes — the 60x weekly multiplier is scaled up for other pay periods (for
example, doubled for biweekly pay under the post-2022 formula), so the
dollar floor differs by how often you're paid even though the underlying
rule is the same.

Statutes and sources

• A.R.S. § 33-1131(A) — "For the purposes of this section, 'disposable
  earnings' means that remaining portion of a debtor's wages, salary or
  compensation for his personal services, including bonuses and
  commissions, or otherwise, and includes payments pursuant to a pension or
  retirement program or deferred compensation plan, after deducting from
  such earnings those amounts required by law to be withheld." —
  https://www.azleg.gov/ars/33/01131.htm (accessed 2026-07-05)
• A.R.S. § 33-1131(B) — "Except as provided in subsection C, the maximum
  part of the disposable earnings of a debtor for any workweek that is
  subject to process may not exceed ten percent of disposable earnings for
  that week or the amount by which disposable earnings for that week
  exceed sixty times the applicable minimum hourly wage in effect at the
  time the earnings are payable, whichever is less. The applicable minimum
  hourly wage is the minimum wage required by federal, state or local law,
  whichever is highest." —
  https://www.azleg.gov/ars/33/01131.htm (accessed 2026-07-05)
• A.R.S. § 33-1131(C) — "The exemptions provided in subsection B do not
  apply in the case of any order for the support of any person. In such
  case, one-half of the disposable earnings of a debtor for any pay period
  is exempt from process." —
  https://www.azleg.gov/ars/33/01131.htm (accessed 2026-07-05)
• A.R.S. § 33-1131(D) — "The exemptions provided in this section do not
  apply in the case of any order of any court of bankruptcy under chapter
  XIII of the federal bankruptcy act or any debt due for any state or
  federal tax." —
  https://www.azleg.gov/ars/33/01131.htm (accessed 2026-07-05)
• A.R.S. § 12-1598.10(F) — "If at the hearing the court determines that
  the judgment debtor is subject to the ten percent maximum disposable
  earnings provision under section 33-1131, subsection B and based on
  clear and convincing evidence that the judgment debtor or the judgment
  debtor's family would suffer extreme economic hardship as a result of
  the garnishment, the court may reduce the amount of nonexempt earnings
  withheld under a continuing lien ordered pursuant to this section from
  the ten percent to not less than five percent." —
  https://www.azleg.gov/ars/12/01598-10.01.htm (accessed 2026-07-05)
• A.R.S. § 12-1598.14 — "A. Except as provided in subsections B and C,
  conflicting wage garnishments and levies rank according to priority in
  time of service. B. Garnishments, levies and wage assignments which are
  not for the support of a person are inferior to wage assignments for the
  support of a person. Garnishments which are not for the support of a
  person and levies are inferior to garnishments for the support of a
  person. C. If a judgment debtor's earnings become subject to more than
  one writ of garnishment pursuant to this article, and because of the
  application of the priorities set forth in subsections A and B a
  judgment creditor recovers no nonexempt earnings for two consecutive
  paydays, the lien on earnings of such judgment creditor is invalid and
  of no force and effect, and the garnishee shall notify the judgment
  creditor accordingly." —
  https://www.azleg.gov/ars/12/01598-14.htm (accessed 2026-07-05)
• 15 U.S.C. § 1673 — "Except as provided in subsection (b) and in section
  1675 of this title, the maximum part of the aggregate disposable
  earnings of an individual for any workweek which is subjected to
  garnishment may not exceed (1) 25 per centum of his disposable earnings
  for that week, or (2) the amount by which his disposable earnings for
  that week exceed thirty times the Federal minimum hourly wage prescribed
  by section 206(a)(1) of title 29 in effect at the time the earnings are
  payable, whichever is less." —
  https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCODE-2011-title15/USCODE-2011-title15-chap41-subchapII-sec1673
  (accessed 2026-07-05)