Colorado Garnishment Statute: Formula, Caps, and Job Protection

Colorado wage garnishment limits are stricter than the federal floor: for an ordinary consumer debt, a creditor can take the lesser of 20% of your disposable earnings or the amount by which your weekly disposable earnings exceed 40 times the state minimum wage. With Colorado’s 2026 minimum wage at $15.16 per hour, that protected weekly floor is $606.40, and anyone earning at or below that amount in disposable pay has nothing available to garnish.¹²

Before any of this applies, a creditor has to sue you and win a judgment. Colorado law bars garnishment of earnings until a court has confirmed the debt.³ Child support orders and state tax debts are the exceptions and move directly to withholding without a lawsuit.

How the 20% / 40x Formula Works

The calculation starts from your disposable earnings, not your take-home pay. Disposable earnings means gross wages minus legally required deductions: federal, state, and local taxes, Social Security, Medicare, and state unemployment insurance. Voluntary deductions stay in: health insurance premiums, retirement contributions you elected, union dues, and charitable giving are all counted as part of your disposable earnings even though they never hit your bank account.⁴ Your disposable earnings figure will almost always be higher than what lands in your account on payday.

Once you know that number, apply both limits and the creditor gets whichever is smaller:

20% of your disposable earnings for the pay period, or
The amount by which your weekly disposable earnings exceed $606.40 (40 times the 2026 Colorado minimum wage of $15.16).¹

A worked example: if your disposable earnings are $750 per week, 20% is $150, and the excess over $606.40 is $143.60. The creditor takes $143.60. If your disposable earnings are $606.40 or less, the excess calculation produces zero and nothing can be garnished at all, regardless of what the 20% figure would be.

Federal law under the Consumer Credit Protection Act allows up to 25% of disposable earnings or the amount over $217.50 per week, so Colorado’s lower percentage and much higher floor leave considerably more money in your paycheck than the federal baseline would.⁴

Income a Creditor Cannot Reach

Several categories of income are off-limits to consumer creditors entirely, no matter how much you receive. Social Security benefits, workers’ compensation, unemployment benefits, and certain pension payments are exempt under Colorado law.⁵ If this is the money a creditor is trying to garnish, the formula above never comes into play — you can claim the exemption and the garnishment should stop.

One carve-out: child support debts and debts tied to theft or embezzlement of public property can reach some income that is otherwise exempt, including workers’ compensation and pension payments.⁶

Child Support and Tax Debts Have Higher Caps

The 20% consumer limit does not apply to child support or taxes. For child support withholding, Colorado requires employers to take 50% of disposable income when arrears are less than 12 weeks old, and 55% when arrears are older than 12 weeks.⁷ Federal law sets the outer ceiling at 50% for an employee supporting another spouse or child, 60% if not, with an extra 5% allowed when payments are more than 12 weeks behind.⁴

Tax garnishments from the Colorado Department of Revenue and the IRS run on their own tables rather than the 20%/40x consumer formula, and these agencies can start withholding without a lawsuit.

When More Than One Creditor Is Chasing You

Multiple garnishments do not stack on top of each other. The total still cannot exceed the applicable cap for your pay period. Priority matters: child support and alimony come first, federal tax levies come next, and consumer judgments wait in line behind them.⁸

In practical terms, if 50% of your disposable earnings is already going to a child support order, a credit card creditor with a valid judgment may collect nothing at all from your paycheck. Their writ does not disappear; it waits until the higher-priority obligation ends or until room opens up under the overall cap.

How to Challenge or Reduce a Garnishment

You can push back by filing a written objection or claim of exemption with the court that issued the writ.⁹ Once you file, withheld money goes to the court rather than to the creditor, and it sits there until a judge rules on your objection.¹⁰

Grounds that commonly succeed include:

The income is exempt — Social Security, disability, unemployment, workers’ compensation.
The employer is withholding more than Colorado’s cap allows.
The garnishment causes genuine financial hardship, which can support a request for a larger exemption.

A judge can reduce the withholding amount or terminate the writ entirely. The deadline to file an objection is short and will be printed on the garnishment paperwork you receive, along with the forms you need. Missing it can waive your right to contest the garnishment, so treat anything that arrives from the court as time-sensitive even if you are still working out whether you have a valid objection.

Your Job Is Protected While You Are Being Garnished

Colorado law bars an employer from firing you because your wages have been garnished, and that protection applies regardless of how many times a single creditor comes back to collect on the same debt.¹¹ If you are fired in violation of this rule, you have 91 days to file a civil lawsuit for reinstatement, up to six weeks of lost wages, plus costs and attorney fees.

Colorado’s protection is broader than the federal version. The CCPA shields you only from being fired over garnishment for a single debt, so an employee facing writs from several creditors could lose that federal shield. Colorado’s statute still covers you.⁴

1
Colorado General Assembly. HB19-1189 Wage Garnishment Reform
2
Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. INFO 1: 2026 COMPS and PAYCALC Orders
3
Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 5 5-5-105 – No Garnishment Before Judgment
4
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 30: Wage Garnishment Protections of the Consumer Credit Protection Act
5
Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 13 13-54-104 – Property Exempt
6
Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 13 13-54.5-101 – Definitions
7
Colorado Child Support Services. Income Withholding
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 3205 – Garnishment
9
Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 13 13-54.5-108 – Judgment Debtor to File Written Objection or Claim of Exemption
10
Colorado Judicial Branch. Garnishment of Wages
11
Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 13 13-54.5-110 – No Discharge From Employment for Any Garnishment