Debt Collection Laws by State: Garnishment, SOL, and Repossession Rules

A debt does not disappear because the calendar runs out on it, and a collector does not lose every tool just because a state's constitution mentions wages. Those two half-truths are the most common ways this topic gets misreported, in opposite directions, and untangling them is what this page is for. The honest version is this: the debt does not die, but the collector's power does. Time-barred debt still exists; it just cannot be sued on. A "no wage garnishment" state still has bank accounts, tax levies, and federal student-loan withholding that reach the same paycheck a different way. Neither half of that sentence means what a quick search usually implies.

Every one of the 51 pages behind the table below starts from the same process truth, because it is the fact readers get wrong most often in both directions: an ordinary consumer creditor, meaning a credit card issuer, a medical biller, or a debt buyer, cannot touch a paycheck or a bank account without first suing, winning a judgment, and getting a court-issued writ. Child support, tax debt, and federal administrative garnishment are different regimes that skip some or all of that sequence, and each state page says so explicitly. For everyone else, the sequence matters because most garnishments in America start with a default judgment entered after the person being sued never answered the complaint. Responding to a summons, even with a bare denial, is the single highest-value action on every page in this cluster, in every state, regardless of how generous or strict that state's exemptions turn out to be.

Debt Collection Laws by State: Full Comparison Table

The table below reflects each state's own dedicated page, current as of August 2026, and is computed directly from those 51 pages rather than restated from research notes. «Wage Garnishment Cap» compresses that state's actual formula for ordinary consumer debt. «Ordinary Creditors Can Garnish?» asks specifically about credit card issuers, medical billers, and debt buyers, not support, tax, or federal creditors. «Payment Restarts Clock?» answers whether making a payment on an old debt revives an expired statute of limitations; «Writing required» means only a signed acknowledgment is confirmed to do that, not a bare payment. «Writing confirmed; payment unresolved» (Arizona, Michigan, Virginia, West Virginia) means the same signed-writing route is confirmed, with one added warning: whether a bare payment alone also revives was never confirmed in that state, so it should not be assumed safe. «Unresolved» in any column means the state's own page could not confirm a clean answer against a primary source, and hedges accordingly rather than guessing. States marked † are covered in the restrictive-five callout below. Click a state's name for the full page, including exemptions, bank-account protections, and repossession rules.

Northeast states

The table below covers 9 states in the Northeast.

Midwest states

The table below covers 12 states in the Midwest.

Southern states

The table below covers 16 states in the South, plus the District of Columbia.

Western states

The table below covers 13 states in the West.

The Restrictive Five: Where Ordinary Creditors Cannot Touch Wages

Five states come the closest in the country to a real bar on wage garnishment for ordinary consumer debt: Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, and New Hampshire. None of them means what «garnishment is illegal here» implies, and each fails in a different way.

Texas protects current wages by constitutional text (Article XVI, Section 28) and statute (Civil Practice and Remedies Code 63.004), but the protection is genuinely fragile: Texas courts have held that wages lose their exempt status the moment they are deposited, direct deposit included, so a bank garnishment writ reaches money an employer-directed wage writ never could. Child support, spousal maintenance, federal student-loan garnishment, and IRS levies all still reach a Texas paycheck.

Pennsylvania bars wage attachment for ordinary judgments under 42 Pa.C.S. 8127, but the exception list is exact and narrow: divorce obligations, support, board debts of four weeks or less, a capped residential-landlord judgment, PHEAA student loans, and criminal restitution or fines. Taxes are conspicuously absent from that list, and Pennsylvania's Department of Revenue garnishes up to 10% of gross wages for state tax debt under separate authority with no court order at all. The wage protection, like Texas's, ends at the bank.

North Carolina is not a formal prohibition at all; North Carolina's own Department of Labor describes it as the absence of a wage-garnishment procedure for ordinary judgment creditors, combined with broad exemptions, rather than a statutory ban. State and local tax garnishment, and ambulance-bill collection in roughly 90 counties, both pierce it, and an out-of-state creditor suing in its own state's courts can still garnish a North Carolina paycheck from there.

South Carolina blocks wage garnishment for consumer-credit judgments specifically under 37-5-104; other, non-consumer judgment creditors are blocked by a different mechanism, the absence of a garnishment procedure under 15-39-410. The South Carolina Department of Revenue can still levy up to 25% of gross wages for state taxes and certain public debts, including public-hospital medical bills, under its own administrative authority.

New Hampshire is the closest thing to a genuine bar: RSA 512:21 provides no continuing wage garnishment mechanism at all for ordinary debt, reaching only wages already earned but unpaid at the moment a writ is served, and only on New Hampshire judgments. Collection in practice runs through a separate periodic-payment order process under RSA 524:6-a rather than a paycheck withholding.

Every one of these five still leaves bank accounts, non-wage property, and federal or tax garnishment fully exposed, and every one of them still requires a lawsuit and a judgment before anything happens at all.

How Payment Revives (or Doesn't) Time-Barred Debt: The 51-State Spectrum

Whether making a payment on an old debt restarts the statute of limitations is one of the most consequential and most inconsistently reported questions in debt collection, because the same action, a small good-faith payment, has the opposite effect depending on which of four regimes a state falls into. Computed directly from the 51 state pages behind this hub:

• Bare payment revives, no writing needed (22 states): Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming. In these states, a partial payment by itself hands the collector a fresh limitations period, sometimes even if a third party makes the payment (Utah) or the debt has already technically expired (Wyoming's text sets no cutoff).
• Only a signed writing is confirmed to revive (10 states): Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi (once the debt is already time-barred), Texas (original creditors only; debt buyers can never revive a time-barred debt in Texas under any circumstance), Virginia, and West Virginia. In Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Mississippi, and Texas, a bare payment alone is confirmed not to restart the clock. In Arizona, Michigan, Virginia, and West Virginia, only the signed-writing route is confirmed; whether a bare payment alone also revives is genuinely unresolved in each state's own statute and case law, not a confirmed no, so do not treat a payment there as safe.
• Nothing revives it once expired (7 states): California, Connecticut (for debt-buyer-purchased consumer debt specifically; whether original-creditor debt can be revived was not confirmed either way), the District of Columbia (whether the statute's scope reaches original creditors, not just third-party collectors, was not independently confirmed), Maryland, New York (for consumer credit), Washington, and Wisconsin. These states either extinguish the underlying right once the period runs (Wisconsin) or statutorily bar any revival by payment, acknowledgment, or other activity (the rest).
• Genuinely unresolved (12 states): Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Tennessee. Each state's own page could not tie a clear revival rule to a current statute or confirmed case, and says so rather than guessing. Treat a payment on old debt in any of these states as a real, unquantified risk rather than a safe move.

The practical rule that follows from all four columns is the same: before paying anything on a debt that might already be old, find out which of these four groups your state falls into. In the first group, a $20 goodwill payment can buy a collector years. In the third, it may do nothing at all. In the fourth, nobody currently knows for certain, including the state pages behind this hub, which is why they say so.

The 2024-2026 Medical-Debt Garnishment Wave: What Is Actually Law

A real legislative wave has protected medical-debt judgments since 2024, distinct from ordinary consumer-debt garnishment. Verified as enacted, current as of August 2026:

• Rhode Island: Public Law 2025, Chapter 300, effective January 1, 2026, categorically bans wage garnishment on medical-debt judgments. The codified version of R.I. Gen. Laws 10-5-8 lags behind the session law online; cite the session law directly where the two differ.
• New Jersey: the Louisa Carman Act, effective July 22, 2025, protects patients under 600% of the federal poverty level and caps medical-debt interest at 3%.
• New Mexico: the Patient Debt Collection Protection Act bars medical-debt collection entirely for patients at or below 200% of the federal poverty level.
• New York: CPLR 5231 limits garnishment on judgments held by hospitals and health professionals.
• Virginia: the Medical Debt Protection Act (59.1-612) protects charity-care-qualified patients specifically; it is not a blanket medical-debt garnishment ban, and Virginia's separate 3-year medical-debt statute of limitations (8.01-246(B)) runs alongside it.
• Maryland: HG 19-214.2 protects patients who qualify for a hospital's free or reduced-care program.
• North Carolina: the Hospital Assistance and Support Program has applied to participating hospitals since July 2025.
• Louisiana: Act 897, enacted June 9, 2026; the substantive dollar figures were not independently confirmed as of this hub's last update.
• Maine: LD 2129 (chapter 649), signed April 6, 2026; text not independently confirmed as of this hub's last update.

Just as important is what did not become law, because several of these get reported as if they had. Vermont's widely cited medical-debt garnishment ban traces to an unenacted bill (S.83); the law Vermont actually passed, Act 21, addresses medical-debt credit reporting only, not garnishment. Ohio's House Bill 257 remains pending, not enacted. Indiana's SB 85, which would have capped medical-debt garnishment, passed the Senate and died in the House. Washington's SB 6105 died in committee; the state's enacted SB 5480 addresses credit reporting, not garnishment. Missouri's H.B. 1870 exemption increases take effect January 1, 2027, not before, no matter how the current statute text is served online. None of these five states currently has a medical-debt-specific garnishment law on the books; medical debt in each is collected like any other consumer judgment until and unless that changes.

The Federal Floor Under Every State

Every state formula above sits on top of the same federal minimum, and no state may go below it. The Consumer Credit Protection Act's Title III, 15 U.S.C. 1673, caps wage garnishment nationwide at the lesser of 25% of disposable earnings for the week, or the amount by which those earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum hourly wage, currently $217.50 a week at the $7.25 federal floor. Disposable earnings means what remains after legally required deductions like taxes and Social Security; voluntary deductions such as insurance premiums or 401(k) contributions do not reduce the figure. A state may protect more than this floor (many of the states above do, especially states that multiply a higher state minimum wage), but the floor itself is mandatory: 15 U.S.C. 1673(c) provides that no court of the United States or any State, and no State or officer or agency of one, may make, execute, or enforce any order or process in violation of the section. A separate provision, 15 U.S.C. 1677, preserves state laws that prohibit garnishment outright or limit it more strictly than federal law does.

The federal floor does not apply to everything. Support orders run on a separate scale, up to 50-65% of disposable earnings depending on remarriage status and arrears. Federal and state tax levies are expressly carved out of the CCPA cap; the IRS instead levies everything above a statutory exempt amount, the inverse of the CCPA's structure. And federal administrative wage garnishment, the tool behind defaulted federal student loans, reaches up to 15% of disposable pay with a 30-day notice and no court judgment at all, operating, per the U.S. Department of Labor, without regard to state garnishment law. That last point is the specific mechanism behind every "no wage garnishment" state still garnishing wages for a defaulted federal loan.

Two federal consumer-protection rules apply regardless of which state page you are reading. First, 42 U.S.C. 407 shields Social Security and most other federal benefits from commercial creditors, and a companion rule, 31 CFR Part 212, automatically shields the last two months of directly deposited federal benefits in a bank account without the account holder having to claim anything, though only for direct deposits, not paper checks. Second, under Regulation F, 12 CFR 1006.26, a debt collector must not sue or threaten to sue on a debt once the statute of limitations has run, in every state, regardless of that state's own SOL rules; the text of the rule carries no requirement that the collector know the debt is time-barred. Collecting by phone or letter on an old debt stays legal everywhere; suing on it does not.

If You Are Being Garnished or Sued

The order of operations is the same in every state on this hub, restrictive-five or not. First, answer any lawsuit before the deadline in the summons, even with a simple denial. A default judgment gives the creditor every tool state law allows and forfeits defenses you would otherwise have, including an expired statute of limitations, which a court will not raise on your own behalf. Second, if a garnishment has already started, check the math against your state's actual formula in the table above; errors happen, and exemptions like a head-of-household or head-of-family carve-out often have to be claimed affirmatively within a short deadline rather than applying automatically. Third, if the debt looks old, find out which of the four revival regimes above your state falls into before paying anything or signing anything, because the same payment that means nothing in one state can hand a collector a fresh multi-year window in another. Fourth, if a default judgment already exists and you were never properly served or notified, ask about a motion to vacate; it is often the only way back into a case after the fact.

Finally, when judgments and garnishments have stacked up faster than any one of these steps can handle, a bankruptcy filing's automatic stay stops garnishment and collection activity immediately while the underlying debts get resolved. Whether that trade is the right one depends on the full financial picture, not any single debt, and it is worth a professional's assessment rather than a guess.

Information last verified on 2026-08-12, extracted directly from the 51 individual state pages linked in the table above. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

Related Resources

• Statute of Limitations on Debt: The 50-State Payment-Revival Table: the full state-by-state SOL and revival breakdown behind the spectrum above, plus the credit-report-7-years conflation corrective.
• How to Stop Wage Garnishment: the step-by-step path: claiming exemptions, requesting a hearing, vacating a default judgment, and the bankruptcy stay.
• Car Repossession Laws: breach of the peace, deficiency judgments, voluntary repossession, and servicemember protections in full.
• Can Social Security Be Garnished?: what Section 407 actually protects, the two-month bank rule, and exactly what pierces it.

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Last updated: 2026-08-12.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a debt collector garnish my wages without suing me first?

Not for ordinary consumer debt like a credit card, medical bill, or personal loan. A collector must sue you, win a judgment, and get a court-issued writ before any wage or bank garnishment starts. Child support, tax debt, and federal administrative garnishment for defaulted student loans are different regimes that skip some or all of that process.

Is wage garnishment illegal in Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, or New Hampshire?

Not exactly, and the popular framing is wrong in a specific way for each. All five block or nearly block ordinary consumer-creditor wage garnishment, but child support, tax levies, and federal administrative garnishment for student loans still reach paychecks in every one of them, and in Texas the protection disappears once a paycheck is deposited into a bank account.

Does making a payment restart the clock on an old debt?

It depends entirely on the state, and the answer splits into four groups nationally. In 22 states a bare payment revives an expired debt with no writing required. In 10 states only a signed writing does that. In 7 states nothing revives a debt once it is fully time-barred. In 12 states the rule is genuinely unresolved in the available statutes and case law. Check your state's column in the table above before paying anything on an old account.

If a debt is past the statute of limitations, can I still be sued?

You can still be sued, but the lawsuit is improper. Federal Regulation F, 12 CFR 1006.26, prohibits a debt collector from suing or threatening to sue on a time-barred debt everywhere in the country, with no exception for a collector who claims not to have known the debt was old. The statute of limitations is a defense you have to raise yourself; a court will not raise it for you if you do not answer the lawsuit.

Can Social Security or other federal benefits be garnished for a credit card debt?

No. Section 407 of the Social Security Act shields Social Security and most other federal benefits from commercial creditors, and a companion federal rule automatically protects the last two months of directly deposited federal benefits in a bank account. That protection does not extend to child support, federal tax debt, or federal student loan offsets, which reach benefits through separate federal authority.

Which states actually have a medical-debt garnishment ban right now?

As of August 2026, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Maine have enacted medical-debt-specific protections, though they vary in scope from a full ban to income-qualified relief. Widely reported bans in Vermont, Ohio, Indiana, and Washington describe bills that did not become law; medical debt in those states is collected like any other consumer judgment.

Does a car lender have to warn me before repossessing my car?

In most states, no. Self-help repossession is allowed nationwide once a loan is in default, as long as it happens without a breach of the peace, and most states impose no advance-notice or right-to-cure requirement. A minority of states do give a statutory right to cure the default before repossession; check your state's dedicated page for whether yours is one of them.