Louisiana Debt Collection Laws: Prescription, Garnishment, and Repossession

If you are being pursued by a debt collector in Louisiana, the most important thing to understand is the process a private creditor must follow: sue you, win a judgment, and then obtain a writ before a single dollar can be garnished from your paycheck or bank account. The two most common beliefs about debt collection, that a collector can garnish you tomorrow, and that ignoring the problem makes it go away, are both wrong. Most garnishments in Louisiana begin with a default judgment entered because the borrower never answered the lawsuit, so responding to a citation and petition is the single highest-value step you can take.

Louisiana is also simply different from the other 49 states. As a civil-law state, it uses its own vocabulary: deadlines to sue are called liberative prescription rather than a statute of limitations, restarting the clock is called interruption, and the state's commercial laws depart from the uniform texts other states share. Those differences are not trivia. They change how long a collector has to sue you and how repossession actually works.

Wage Garnishment in Louisiana

Louisiana phrases its garnishment protection as an exemption. R.S. 13:3881(A)(1)(a) exempts 75 percent of your disposable earnings for any week from seizure, and provides that the exemption can never be less than an amount equal to 30 times the federal minimum hourly wage. At the current $7.25 federal minimum wage, that floor is $217.50 per week. Read from the creditor's side, this is the same ceiling as the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act: a judgment creditor can take the lesser of 25 percent of disposable earnings or the amount above the floor.

No separate head-of-family or head-of-household wage exemption was found in R.S. 13:3881; treat the 75 percent exemption as applying regardless of dependents unless a distinct provision is later located elsewhere in Louisiana law. Support obligations are treated differently. R.S. 13:3881 sets its own reduced exemption percentages for child support and spousal support garnishments, and federal law separately caps support withholding at 50 to 65 percent of disposable earnings depending on your circumstances. Because the arithmetic for support orders depends on the specific order, do not assume the ordinary 25 percent ceiling applies there.

Certain debts bypass the judgment requirement entirely, in Louisiana as everywhere. Defaulted federal student loans can be garnished administratively at up to 15 percent of disposable pay after 30 days' notice under federal law, IRS levies follow the federal tax code's own exemption table, and support orders are enforced through income assignment. State law cannot block any of these.

Louisiana also gives employees a distinctive job protection. Under R.S. 23:731, no one may be fired or denied employment because of a voluntary wage assignment or a single garnishment, and a wrongfully discharged employee is entitled to reinstatement plus back pay. The protection has a limit the federal rule lacks in the other direction: an employer may discharge an employee whose wages are garnished for three or more unrelated debts within a two-year period. Practically, Louisiana tolerates two garnishments where federal law alone protects only the first debt.

Bank Account Protections

Louisiana has no general dollar-amount wildcard for bank accounts. Instead, R.S. 13:3881 exempts categories of property outright, including household goods, most pensions, retirement accounts, and health savings accounts (with a carve-out allowing seizure for alimony and child support), up to $2,500 in firearms, and equity in one motor vehicle up to $15,000. Money sitting in a checking account that does not trace to an exempt source is generally reachable once a creditor holds a judgment.

Federal law supplies the most important automatic account shield. Under 31 CFR Part 212, when a bank receives a garnishment order it must review the account and protect an amount equal to the last two months of directly deposited Social Security, VA, and certain other federal benefits. That protection is automatic only for direct deposits; benefits deposited by paper check must be claimed as exempt through the court.

Prescription: Louisiana's Statute of Limitations on Debt

Louisiana's deadlines to sue are called liberative prescription, and the state does not use a single number for all debts.

Open accounts prescribe in 3 years. Civil Code article 3494 sets a 3-year prescription for actions on an open account, money lent, arrearages of rent, and compensation for services. This 3-year category covers most everyday consumer debt, including medical bills, utility balances, and other running accounts.

Promissory notes prescribe in 5 years. Under Civil Code article 3498, actions on instruments and promissory notes, negotiable or not, prescribe 5 years from the day payment is due. Louisiana did not adopt the 6-year commercial-paper period most states took from the Uniform Commercial Code.

Everything left over prescribes in 10 years. Civil Code article 3499 provides that a personal action is subject to a liberative prescription of 10 years unless legislation provides otherwise. This residual period functions as the written-contract analog, but it only applies when no more specific article governs.

Credit card debt sits in a contested spot. Louisiana courts have generally treated credit card balances as open accounts under the 3-year article, counting from the last charge or payment, while some creditors argue that a signed cardmember agreement makes the debt a personal action with a 10-year period. Because the classification can be litigated, treat the 3-year period as the usual rule rather than a guarantee, and get advice before relying on it against an actual lawsuit.

Interruption is Louisiana's version of the revival trap. Under Civil Code article 3464, prescription is interrupted when the debtor acknowledges the creditor's right, and an interruption restarts the full prescriptive period from zero. Louisiana courts have treated conduct such as a partial payment as an acknowledgment in many circumstances. A small payment on a 2-year-old open account can therefore hand the collector a fresh 3 years to sue.

Two more points keep this honest. First, prescribed debt is not erased debt: a collector may still ask you to pay, and the debt can appear on your credit report for up to 7 years under the Fair Credit Reporting Act's entirely separate clock. Second, suing or threatening to sue on a time-barred consumer debt violates federal Regulation F (12 CFR 1006.26), which flatly prohibits a debt collector from bringing or threatening a legal action on debt whose limitations period has expired.

Debt Collector Rules

Third-party collectors working Louisiana accounts are governed by the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and Regulation F: no calls before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. local time, no harassment or false threats, no misrepresenting the amount or legal status of a debt, and mandatory validation information when collection starts. You can dispute a debt in writing and demand verification, and you can tell a collector to stop contacting you. Louisiana borrowers also benefited from a wave of recent attention to medical debt: the Louisiana Medical Debt Protection Act (Act No. 897 of the 2026 Regular Session, effective June 9, 2026) added state-law protections for patients with medical debt, including limits on aggressive collection of medical bills. The act is new, and its detailed thresholds are best confirmed against the enrolled text or a lawyer before you rely on a specific figure.

Car Repossession in Louisiana

Louisiana repossession law is structurally different from the rest of the country, and summaries written for other states will mislead you here.

Most states enacted UCC section 9-609, which lets any secured lender repossess without a court order so long as there is no breach of the peace. Louisiana's version, R.S. 10:9-609, deliberately omits that general self-help right. Under the statute a secured party may take possession only after the debtor abandons or surrenders the collateral, with the debtor's post-default consent, through judicial process, or where another law expressly allows it.

That other law is the Additional Default Remedies Act, R.S. 6:965 through 6:966.1, and it comes with real conditions:

• Who may use it. Only banks, credit unions, lenders regulated by the Office of Financial Institutions, and lenders regulated by the Louisiana Motor Vehicle Commission may repossess without judicial process. Repossession agents must be licensed, and tow operators need a Public Service Commission certificate.
• What counts as default. For monthly payment schedules, default means nonpayment of two consecutive payments on the date due. A single missed payment does not open the self-help door.
• Breach of the peace is defined by statute. R.S. 6:965 specifies that unauthorized entry into a closed dwelling is a breach of the peace, and so is your oral protest to the repossessor before the collateral is seized. If you object out loud at the scene before the truck hooks the car, the repossession must stop.
• Paper trail. Within 3 business days of taking the vehicle, the lender must file a notice of repossession with the parish recorder of mortgages and the sheriff or constable, identifying the debtor and the collateral.
• Your belongings. You have 10 days to reclaim personal property left in a repossessed vehicle; property is deemed abandoned after 30 days.

After the sale, whether the lender can pursue you for a deficiency, the gap between what you owed and what the vehicle brought, depends on Louisiana's commercial-sale rules, which require a commercially reasonable disposition. If you receive a deficiency demand or lawsuit, have a lawyer review whether the repossession and sale complied with the statute, because compliance failures can limit what the lender may collect.

Servicemembers get one more layer: for a vehicle financed before military service, the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (50 U.S.C. 3952) requires a court order before repossession.

If You Are Being Garnished or Sued in Louisiana

Move in this order. First, if you have been served with a lawsuit, answer it before the deadline, even with a simple general denial; a default judgment forfeits every defense you had, including prescription. Second, if a garnishment is already running, check the math against the 75 percent exemption and check whether the funds being taken are exempt, such as Social Security or retirement income. Third, raise prescription if the debt is old; the court will not raise it for you. Fourth, consider whether the debt is simply not yours or the amount is inflated, and demand validation. Finally, if the debt picture as a whole is unmanageable, bankruptcy's automatic stay stops most garnishments and collection lawsuits while the case is pending, and a consultation costs nothing.

Information last verified on 2026-08-12. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

Related Resources

• Debt Collection Laws by State
• Statute of Limitations on Debt
• How to Stop Wage Garnishment
• Car Repossession Laws
• Can Social Security Be Garnished?
• Louisiana Bankruptcy

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Last updated: 2026-08-12.