Wyoming Wage Garnishment Laws: How Much Can They Take?

In Wyoming, a creditor with a money judgment can garnish the lesser of 25% of your weekly disposable earnings or the amount by which those disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage. Because Wyoming's garnishment statute (Wyo. Stat. § 1-15-408 for ordinary post-judgment writs and § 1-15-511 for continuing writs) ties directly to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, the protected floor works out to $217.50 per week as of 2026. If your disposable earnings for a week are $217.50 or less, none of your wages can be taken. Wyoming does not adopt a more generous state cap and does not ban wage garnishment for ordinary debts, so the practical ceiling is the same 25% used under the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act (CCPA). That is the key number to remember: a judgment creditor in Wyoming can never reach more than a quarter of your disposable pay, and often less.

How Wyoming's Garnishment Limit Actually Works

"Disposable earnings" means what is left after legally required deductions such as federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare, and state taxes (Wyo. Stat. § 1-15-501(a)(iii)). It is not your gross pay, and it is not your take-home after voluntary deductions like a 401(k) contribution or health insurance you elected. The garnishment calculation runs on this disposable figure.

Each pay period, the law compares two amounts and lets the creditor take whichever is smaller:

• 25% of disposable earnings for that week, or
• The amount that disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage ($7.25 x 30 = $217.50 per week).

For pay periods longer than a week, the floor scales up. As a rough guide, the protected amount is about $435 for a two-week period, roughly $471.25 semi-monthly, and about $942.50 monthly, in each case calculated against the federal minimum wage in effect and using the equivalent multiple prescribed by the administrator of the Wyoming Uniform Consumer Credit Code (Wyo. Stat. § 1-15-511(a)(ii); § 40-14-505(b)(iii)). Because the federal minimum wage can change, confirm the current figure with the official source before relying on an exact dollar amount.

A quick example: if your disposable earnings are $400 in a week, 25% is $100, and the amount over $217.50 is $182.50. The creditor takes the lesser figure, $100. If your disposable earnings are only $250, then 25% is $62.50 while the amount over $217.50 is $32.50, so the creditor can take only $32.50 that week. The closer your pay is to the $217.50 floor, the more the second prong protects you.

Wyoming's 90-Day Continuing Writ

Wyoming uses a "continuing" writ of garnishment, codified at Wyo. Stat. §§ 1-15-501 through 1-15-511. Instead of capturing a single paycheck and expiring, a continuing writ acts as a lien on your earnings for up to 90 days from the date it is served on your employer, or until the judgment is paid in full, the judgment is vacated or modified, the writ is dismissed, or your employment ends, whichever comes first (§ 1-15-502(b)). During that 90-day window, the employer withholds the allowed portion from each paycheck and pays it to the clerk of the court that issued the writ (§ 1-15-505(c)). A creditor may serve only one continuing writ on the same employer for the same debtor in any 90-day period (§ 1-15-504(a)), so a creditor who has not been paid in full must obtain and serve a new writ to keep garnishing.

When more than one garnishment is served, Wyoming follows a priority rule: the writ served first is satisfied first, and a later writ takes effect only when the earlier liens terminate (§§ 1-15-408(a), 1-15-504(a)). There is one major exception. An income-withholding order for child support under Wyo. Stat. §§ 20-6-201 through 20-6-222 takes priority over any other garnishment, even one served earlier; while it runs, the continuing writ's 90-day clock is tolled (§ 1-15-504(c)).

What Income Is Exempt in Wyoming

Several categories of income are protected beyond the 25% wage cap, and some cannot be garnished at all by ordinary creditors. Wyo. Stat. § 1-17-102(b) lists the exemptions the court must print on the notice attached to every money judgment:

• Social Security and SSI (42 U.S.C. § 407) and most federal benefits, and banks must automatically shield recently deposited Social Security in your account.
• Veterans' benefits, black lung benefits, unemployment compensation, and worker's compensation benefits.
• Federal civil service and state retirement system benefits, and retirement plans generally: Wyo. Stat. § 1-20-110 makes both a person's interest in a retirement plan and money payable to them from it exempt from "execution, attachment, garnishment or any other legal process."
• POWER (public assistance) payments, and the homestead and personal-property exemptions in §§ 1-20-101 through 1-20-111.

Your Wages Stay Protected in the Bank

This is the protection Wyoming debtors most often miss. Wyoming has an express bank-account exemption for wages, not just for federal benefits. Under Wyo. Stat. § 1-15-408(a) (repeated word for word for consumer-credit debts at § 40-14-505(d)), your disposable earnings stay exempt to the same 25% / 30x extent after they are deposited if the earnings landed in your account within 20 calendar days before the account writ was served, on the day of service, or within 10 business days after service.

And there is a stronger rule. A creditor is allowed to hit your employer and your bank at the same time, but if the creditor has already garnished the earnings shown on a pay advice, the remaining proceeds from that pay advice, once deposited in a financial institution, are entirely exempt from execution. In plain terms: pay that has already been run through an employer garnishment cannot be garnished a second time in your bank account. You still have to raise the exemption, so keep the pay stub and the deposit record that match. Keeping exempt income such as Social Security in a separate account remains the easiest way to prove which dollars are which.

Higher Limits for Some Debts and No Limit for Others

The 25% cap is the rule for ordinary consumer and commercial debts, including credit cards, medical bills, personal loans, and most judgments from debt buyers. Some obligations follow different and often harsher rules:

• Child and spousal support: Under federal CCPA rules, support orders can reach up to 50% of disposable earnings if you support another spouse or child, and up to 60% if you do not, with an extra 5% allowed when payments are more than 12 weeks in arrears.
• Federal student loans: The U.S. Department of Education can administratively garnish up to 15% of disposable pay without first suing you.
• Unpaid federal taxes: The IRS uses its own exemption tables rather than the 25% rule, and the amount left to you depends on filing status and dependents.

Wyoming's Uniform Consumer Credit Code applies the same lesser-of 25% / 30x cap to judgments arising from consumer credit sales, leases and loans (§ 40-14-505(b)), adds that "no court may make, execute, or enforce an order or process in violation of this section" (§ 40-14-505(c)), and flatly bars any garnishment of your wages before judgment on such a debt (§ 40-14-504).

How to Object, and the Deadlines That Actually Apply

Wyoming gives you notice and a hearing, but which clock you are on depends on the type of writ. (Note that Wyo. Stat. § 1-15-107, the notice-and-hearing section often cited for garnishment, is the prejudgment procedure. Its own subsection (e) says that for a post-judgment writ, notice and hearing on a claim of exemptions are governed by §§ 1-15-501 through 1-15-511 or § 1-17-102.)

Continuing wage garnishment (§§ 1-15-506 to 1-15-508). Your employer must hand you a copy of the writ plus a calculation of your exempt earnings when you are paid for the first affected pay period, and a fresh calculation every pay period after that. If you think the calculation is wrong, you have 5 days, not counting Saturdays, Sundays or legal holidays, from receipt of that calculation to try to resolve it with the employer, who must hold the money in the meantime. If it is not resolved, the employer pays the withheld earnings to the clerk of court, and you then have 5 days, excluding weekends and holidays, from the date the clerk receives the money to file a written objection with the clerk and mail a copy to the creditor (§ 1-15-507(a)). Filing an objection stays any payout until the court rules (§ 1-15-507(b)), and the court must set a hearing within 10 days, excluding weekends and holidays (§ 1-15-508(a)).

You are not necessarily out of luck if you miss that window. Wyo. Stat. § 1-15-507(c) says that a judgment debtor who failed to make a written objection may, at any time within 90 days from receipt of a calculation of exempt earnings, and for good cause shown, move the court that entered the judgment to hear an objection that earnings were miscalculated. If the court finds a miscalculation, it must order a refund: from the clerk if the money is still there (§ 1-15-508(c)), and from the creditor itself if the judgment has already been satisfied out of your wages (§ 1-15-508(d)). So if you were over-garnished and blew the 5-day deadline, do not assume the money is gone.

Execution or other seizure of property, funds or wages (§ 1-17-102). Here you file a written request for a hearing with the clerk of court within 10 days after the seizure, and the court must hold the hearing within 5 days, excluding weekends and holidays, after it receives your request. The statutory notice warns that if you do not ask within 10 days you may waive the exemptions. If you were served with a continuing garnishment, § 1-17-102(e) sends you to the §§ 1-15-507/508 objection process instead.

Practical points either way: use the objection / request-for-hearing form the Wyoming courts serve with the writ; identify the income you say is protected (Social Security, the 75% wage exemption, wages already below the floor, the 20-day bank-deposit exemption); and bring pay stubs showing disposable earnings, bank statements tracing exempt deposits, and benefit award letters. Watch for garnishments that attach to the wrong person, run past the 90-day limit, or take more than the law allows; each is grounds to object. If the judgment itself is wrong, for example because you were never properly served, the debt is not yours, or the statute of limitations had run, you may be able to move to set aside the judgment rather than just limiting the garnishment.

Your Employer Cannot Fire You Over a Garnishment, and You Can Sue

Federal law is the weaker protection here. The CCPA (15 U.S.C. § 1674) only bars firing for a garnishment on a single indebtedness, and it is enforced by the U.S. Secretary of Labor rather than by the worker.

Wyoming law is broader and gives you your own lawsuit. Wyo. Stat. § 1-15-509(a) says no employer shall discharge an employee because a creditor has subjected or attempted to subject the employee's unpaid earnings to any continuing garnishment, with no "single debt" limit. And § 1-15-509(b) says that if you are fired in violation of that rule, you may within 120 days bring a civil action for lost wages and for an order reinstating you; recoverable damages are lost wages up to 30 working days, plus costs and reasonable attorney fees. A parallel ban covers garnishments on consumer credit sales, leases and loans (§ 40-14-506). If you were fired over a garnishment, the 120-day clock is short, so get advice quickly.

The federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) separately prohibits debt collectors from threatening illegal garnishment, lying about how much they can take, or otherwise harassing you, and the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) governs how a resulting judgment or collection is reported.

Where to Verify and Get Help

The Wyoming Legislative Service Office publishes the complete current statutes free: Title 1 (civil procedure, including garnishment and exemptions) and Title 40 (the Uniform Consumer Credit Code). The Wyoming Judicial Branch publishes free garnishment information, instructions and forms, including the calculation of exempt earnings and the notice of right to hearing / objection form. For deceptive collection practices, contact the Wyoming Attorney General's Consumer Protection and Antitrust Unit at ag.consumer@wyo.gov. Because the protected floor moves with the federal minimum wage, confirm the current figure before relying on an exact dollar amount. Because wage garnishment can affect your housing, transportation, and ability to meet basic needs, consider consulting a Wyoming-licensed attorney or Legal Aid of Wyoming if a meaningful portion of your pay is at stake.

Official Wyoming Sources

This page is based on Wyoming law. Limits and deadlines change — verify the current details directly with the official Wyoming sources below. This is general legal information, not legal advice.

• Wyoming Attorney General - Consumer Protection and Antitrust Unit — official Wyoming agency.
• Wyoming Attorney General - Consumer Complaints (file a complaint)
• Wyoming Statutes Title 40, Chapter 12 - Consumer Protection (Wyoming Consumer Protection Act)

Federal law also applies. Federal laws like the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and Fair Credit Reporting Act protect you nationwide, on top of Wyoming’s own rules.