Wage garnishment is a process by which a creditor can collect money directly from your wages. They can only do this by getting a court order, and then your employer is instructed to send that percentage of your wages to the creditor. This means that it is deducted prior to the time when you are paid, so you have no say in whether or not that money is used to pay off your debt.
Naturally, those who have had their wages garnished can find this to be very frustrating. They may already have been struggling to make ends meet, which is why they couldn’t pay the debt in the first place. Garnishing their wages just makes it even harder, and so they start to wonder how long this is going to last.
Until debt is paid
The general rule is that your wages are going to be garnished until the debt is paid. So the length of that garnishment depends on how much money is being taken out of every paycheck and how much you owed in total.
Remember that garnishment can only be 25% of your total wages under Tennessee law. It’s not as if the creditor can simply take all of the money that they’re owed, while you spend months or even years working for nothing. They can only take this percentage, and you can use the other money for additional bills and expenses.
But the other side of this is that it means wage garnishment can take a long time. If you’re only paying back a small percentage of your debt from every paycheck, it could take months or years before you get through all of the debt that is owed. Again, every case is unique, but this is how you determine how long you’ll have to pay.
What options do you have?
In some cases, there are options to stop wage garnishment. One of them may be declaring bankruptcy and getting a fresh start financially. Make sure you know about all of the options at your disposal.
