Maryland: Wage Garnishment Limits

Requirements one by one

Governing law

The exemption formula, the lien's effect, priority among competing writs, and the anti-discharge rule all live in one subtitle of the Commercial Law Article, §§ 15-601 through 15-607. Child and spousal support withholding is handled separately under Family Law §§ 10-120 through 10-128, and a state income-tax wage lien runs through its own section, Tax-General § 13-811.

Maximum that can be garnished

Section 15-601.1 exempts the GREATER of 75% of your disposable wages, or 30 times Maryland's State minimum hourly wage ($15.00, so $450) multiplied by the number of weeks the wages were earned — plus any medical insurance payment your employer deducts. Flip that around and the amount actually reachable is the LESSER of 25% of disposable wages or whatever exceeds the $450-per-week floor. That's the same two-part shape used nationwide, just expressed as an exemption rather than a cap. It's also a single, uniform rule for the whole state now: an older version split the state into two zones — a flat $145-per-week floor almost everywhere, and a 30-times-the-FEDERAL-minimum-wage floor in four Eastern Shore counties (Caroline, Kent, Queen Anne's, and Worcester) — but that split doesn't appear anywhere in the current text.

State rule vs. federal floor

The percentage split is identical to federal law: 75% exempt / 25% reachable either way. The real difference is the wage-floor prong. Maryland ties it to its own state minimum hourly wage ($15.00) rather than the federal rate ($7.25), so the protected floor — $450 per week — is more than double the federal $217.50 figure. Maryland gets there without cutting the percentage the way California or Colorado did; it just uses a bigger multiplier base.

Minimum-wage protected floor

The 30-times multiplier uses Maryland's own STATE minimum hourly wage, currently $15.00 an hour, for a $450-per-week floor (double that for a biweekly pay period, and so on). It's tied specifically to the statewide rate — not the federal rate, and not any higher local minimum wage. Several Maryland counties (Montgomery, Howard, Prince George's) set their own higher minimum wages, but unlike California's rule, which uses whichever local minimum wage is higher, a Maryland employee's protected floor doesn't move just because they work in one of those counties.

Support, tax & student loan debts

Child and spousal support withholding doesn't use Maryland's ordinary formula at all — Family Law § 10-122(c) directs the withholding agency to prioritize current support "up to the limits imposed by the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act," meaning the familiar federal support tiers apply: up to 50% of disposable earnings if you're supporting another spouse or child, 60% if you're not, rising higher with significant arrears. A state income-tax wage lien is the interesting exception here — instead of taking a bigger bite the way many states let tax debt do, Tax-General § 13-811 excludes exactly "the amount exempt from attachment provided in § 15-601.1," the SAME formula as an ordinary creditor. Federal IRS levies and federal student loan collection (capped administratively at 15% of disposable pay) run on their own separate federal authority and aren't bound by Maryland's rule either way.

Head-of-household/family exemption

There isn't one. Section 15-601.1's formula applies the same way no matter how many dependents you support — no per-dependent dollar add-on, and nothing like Missouri's 10% head-of-family cut or Florida's broad exemption for a family's primary earner. It's tempting to assume Maryland's general personal-property exemptions — including the $6,000 "wildcard" any debtor can claim — might fill that gap, but they don't: the statute creating those exemptions says plainly that they "do not apply to wage attachments." A Maryland debtor supporting a large family gets the identical wage protection as one supporting no one.

Multiple garnishments at once

Maryland runs on strict first-in-time priority based on when the writ was actually served on the employer. Section 15-603 requires that competing attachments "be satisfied in the order in which they were served," and each earlier one "must be satisfied before any effect can be given to" a later one — a fully sequential line, not a shared percentage split among everyone garnishing you at the same time.

Protection from being fired

Maryland matches the federal rule — no firing over garnishment tied to a single debt within a calendar year — without extending it any further. What Maryland adds is a real criminal backstop: willfully violating the anti-discharge rule is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $1,000 fine, up to a year in jail, or both.

What trips people up

Several older, still-circulating sources — including, as of this writing, the wage-garnishment claim-package template linked from this page — describe a $145-per-week floor with a special, lower-multiplier rule for four Eastern Shore counties. That was the law before a 2020 amendment; the current statute is a single, uniform 75%/30x-state-minimum-wage rule with no county split at all, so don't rely on anything citing the old $145 figure. It's also easy to assume Maryland's $6,000 general "wildcard" exemption can be applied to garnished wages the way it can to a bank account or personal property — it explicitly cannot. And because the wage floor uses the STATE minimum wage rather than any local county minimum, working in a higher-minimum-wage county like Montgomery or Howard doesn't raise your protected floor above $450 a week.

Common questions

Does a bigger family mean a bigger wage exemption in Maryland?
No — the 75%/30x-state-minimum-wage formula is the same regardless of how many dependents you support; Maryland has no head-of-household add-on for wages.

Can I use my $6,000 general property exemption to protect more of my garnished paycheck?
No — Maryland's statute says its general property exemptions, including the $6,000 wildcard, don't apply to wage attachments at all; that exemption is for other property and bank accounts.

If the Comptroller puts a lien on my wages for unpaid state taxes, does it take more than an ordinary creditor?
No — a state tax wage lien excludes exactly the same amount exempt under § 15-601.1 as an ordinary judgment creditor; it doesn't get a bigger share the way federal tax and student loan collection can.

Statutes and sources

• Md. Code, Com. Law § 15-601.1 — "The following are exempt from attachment: (1) The greater of: (i) 75 percent of the disposable wages due; or (ii) 30 times the State minimum hourly wage in effect at the time the wages are due, multiplied by the number of weeks during which the wages due were earned; and (2) Any medical insurance payment deducted from an employee's wages by the employer." — https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gcl&section=15-601.1 (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Md. Code, Com. Law § 15-601 — "'Employee' includes an employee whether he is a resident or nonresident of the State. 'Wages' means all monetary remuneration paid to any employee for his employment." — https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gcl&section=15-601 (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Md. Code, Com. Law § 15-603 — "If the employer/garnishee is served with more than one attachment against the same judgment debtor, then the attachments shall be satisfied in the order in which they were served, and each prior attachment must be satisfied before any effect can be given to a subsequent attachment." — https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gcl&section=15-603 (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Md. Code, Com. Law § 15-606 — "An employer may not discharge his employee because the employee's wages are subjected to attachment for any one indebtedness within a calendar year. Any employer who willfully violates the provisions of this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction is subject to a fine not exceeding $1,000 or imprisonment not exceeding one year or both." — https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gcl&section=15-606 (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 11-504(e) — "The exemptions in this section do not apply to wage attachments." — https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gcj&section=11-504 (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 11-504(b)(6) — "Cash or property of any kind equivalent in value to $6,000 is exempt, if within 30 days from the date of the attachment or the levy by the sheriff, the debtor elects to exempt cash or selected items of property in an amount not to exceed a cumulative value of $6,000." — https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gcj&section=11-504 (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Md. Code, Tax-Gen. § 13-811(e) — "The amount excluded... from amounts paid to the delinquent taxpayer is the amount exempt from attachment provided in § 15-601.1 of the Commercial Law Article." — https://govt.westlaw.com/mdc/Document/N6C95A9E0A64A11DBB5DDAC3692B918BC (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Md. Code, Family Law § 10-122(c) — "If there is more than one earnings withholding order or earnings withholding notice against a single obligor, the Administration shall allocate amounts available for withholding, giving priority to current support, up to the limits imposed by the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act." — https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gfl&section=10-122 (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Md. Code, Lab. & Empl. § 3-413(c)(1) — "the State minimum wage rate is: ... beginning January 1, 2024, $15.00 per hour." — https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gle&section=3-413 (accessed 2026-07-05)
• 15 U.S.C. § 1673(a) — "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... whichever is less." — https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCODE-2011-title15/USCODE-2011-title15-chap41-subchapII-sec1673 (accessed 2026-07-05)
• 15 U.S.C. § 1673(b) — "The maximum part of the aggregate disposable earnings of an individual for any workweek which is subject to garnishment to enforce any order for the support of any person shall not exceed— (A)... 50 per centum... and (B)... 60 per centum." — https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCODE-2011-title15/USCODE-2011-title15-chap41-subchapII-sec1673 (accessed 2026-07-05)
• 20 U.S.C. § 1095a(a)(1) — "the amount deducted for any pay period may not exceed 15 percent of disposable pay, except that a greater percentage may be deducted with the written consent of the individual involved." — https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title20-section1095a&num=0&edition=prelim (accessed 2026-07-05)