Texas: Wage Garnishment Limits

The short answer

Texas is one of a handful of states where an ordinary creditor simply
cannot garnish your paycheck. The Texas Constitution flatly bars
garnishment of "current wages for personal service," with only two named
exceptions: court-ordered child support and spousal maintenance. A credit
card company, hospital, or personal-loan lender that sues you and wins can
still collect — just not by going after your employer. Federal debts like
unpaid taxes and defaulted federal student loans are a separate story:
federal law overrides the Texas bar, so those can still reach your check.

Requirements one by one

Governing law

The bar itself is constitutional, not just statutory: Tex. Const. art.
XVI, § 28. Two ordinary statutes restate the same rule for the courts
that actually process garnishment cases — Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §
63.004 (in the general garnishment chapter) and Tex. Prop. Code §
42.001(b)(1) (in the property-exemption chapter). The two exceptions run
through the Family Code: chapter 158 for child support, chapter 8 for
spousal maintenance.

Maximum that can be garnished

For an ordinary judgment creditor, the answer is zero. Under § 63.004,
"current wages for personal service are not subject to garnishment," and
any garnishee (typically the employer) holding those wages "shall be
discharged from the garnishment" as to that debt. This isn't a low cap —
it's a complete bar, subject only to the child-support and
spousal-maintenance exceptions.

State rule vs. federal floor

Federal law alone would allow a judgment creditor to take up to 25% of
disposable earnings. Texas is far more protective than that floor: it
doesn't just lower the percentage, it eliminates ordinary wage garnishment
altogether. Only Texas's own constitutional exceptions (support) or a
separate federal statute (taxes, federal student loans) can reach a
Texas paycheck.

Minimum-wage protected floor

Not applicable here. States that allow garnishment up to a formula (a
percentage of earnings above some multiple of the minimum wage) need a
protected floor to calculate that formula. Texas has no such formula for
ordinary debts because there's nothing to calculate — the whole paycheck
is off-limits.

Support, tax & student loan debts

Child support withholding is capped at 50% of disposable earnings (Fam.
Code § 158.009) — one of the highest caps nationally, reflecting how much
priority Texas gives support obligations given how narrow the rest of its
garnishment law is. Spousal maintenance withholding works through the same
kind of order under Fam. Code § 8.101 and can be combined with a child
support order in a single withholding order. Federal tax debts and
federally-backed student loans in default can be collected by
administrative wage garnishment — up to 15% for defaulted federal student
loans, no court judgment required — because those come from federal
statutes that expressly override state law, not because Texas carved out
an exception of its own.

Head-of-household/family exemption

There's nothing to layer this exemption on top of. Other states use a
head-of-household or family-support exemption to protect MORE than their
ordinary percentage cap already protects. Texas's ordinary cap already
protects 100% of current wages, so a separate family-support test would
be redundant.

Multiple garnishments at once

When a single withholding order combines child support and spousal
maintenance, § 8.101(d) sets the payout order: current child support
first, then current spousal maintenance, then child support arrears, then
spousal maintenance arrears. When more than one child-support order
applies to the same paycheck, § 158.207 splits the available withholding
capacity among them rather than letting the first order in time take
everything up to the cap.

Protection from being fired

Texas doesn't have its own statute protecting an employee from being
fired over a garnishment. It relies on the federal rule alone: 15 U.S.C.
§ 1674 bars discharging an employee because their earnings were garnished
for a single debt, and criminalizes a willful violation. Because Texas
bars ordinary garnishment in the first place, this federal protection
mostly matters for the support and federal-debt garnishments Texas does
allow.

What trips people up

The protection follows the WAGES, not the person or the bank account.
The moment a paycheck is deposited, it's no longer "current wages" and
Texas courts have held it can be garnished from the bank account like any
other asset — so a creditor who can't touch your paycheck directly can
still freeze the account it lands in. And an out-of-state creditor with a
judgment from another state can sometimes still reach a Texas employee's
wages if there's enough connection to that other state, so "Texas bars
wage garnishment" isn't an absolute shield against every out-of-state
order.

Common questions

Can a credit card company garnish my wages in Texas if they sue me and
win?
No. Even with a valid Texas judgment, an ordinary creditor cannot garnish
your paycheck — only child support, spousal maintenance, taxes, and
certain federal debts can.

If I'm behind on both child support and a federal tax debt, which comes
first?
Texas law doesn't set that priority for you — federal law does, and it
generally gives child support and other support obligations priority over
non-support federal garnishments like a Treasury administrative
garnishment.

Does it matter if I work for a company based outside Texas?
It can. If your employer or the underlying judgment has significant
connections to another state, that state's (less protective) garnishment
rules might still reach your Texas paycheck through that state's courts.

Statutes and sources

• Tex. Const. art. XVI, § 28 — "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." —
  https://tlc.texas.gov/docs/legref/TxConst.pdf (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 63.004 — "Except as otherwise provided by
  state or federal law, current wages for personal service are not
  subject to garnishment. The garnishee shall be discharged from the
  garnishment as to any debt to the defendant for current wages." —
  https://law.justia.com/codes/texas/civil-practice-and-remedies-code/title-3/chapter-63/section-63-004/
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Tex. Fam. Code § 158.009 — "An order or writ of withholding shall direct
  that any employer of the obligor withhold from the obligor's disposable
  earnings the amount specified up to a maximum amount of 50 percent of
  the obligor's disposable earnings." —
  https://law.justia.com/codes/texas/family-code/title-5/subtitle-b/chapter-158/subchapter-a/section-158-009/
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Tex. Fam. Code § 8.101 — "In a proceeding in which periodic payments of
  spousal maintenance are ordered, modified, or enforced, the court may
  order that income be withheld from the disposable earnings of the
  obligor as provided by this chapter. ... subject to the maximum
  withholding allowed under Section 8.106, order that withheld income be
  applied in the following order of priority: (A) current child support;
  (B) current spousal maintenance; (C) child support arrearages; and (D)
  spousal maintenance arrearages." —
  https://law.justia.com/codes/texas/family-code/title-1/subtitle-c/chapter-8/subchapter-c/section-8-101/
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• 15 U.S.C. § 1674 — "No employer may discharge any employee by reason of
  the fact that his earnings have been subjected to garnishment for any
  one indebtedness." —
  https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2024-title15/html/USCODE-2024-title15-chap41-subchapII-sec1674.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)