How to File an Arkansas Garnishment Exemption Form

To file an Arkansas garnishment exemption form, get the claim of exemption form from the clerk of the court that issued the writ of garnishment, complete it with the specific legal basis for each exemption you’re claiming, attach documents proving the source of the protected money, and file it back with that same clerk. Within five days of filing, you must also notify the judgment creditor of your claim by fax and by concurrent mailing. Do this as soon as you receive the writ, because there is no statutory deadline that helps you and every day of delay is a day your money can move to the creditor.

Where to Get the Form

Arkansas does not use a single statewide exemption form. The clerk’s office at the court that issued the writ of garnishment is the right place to ask. The form is usually called a “Claim of Exemption” or “Exemption Claim.” Some courts include it in a self-help packet with instructions. Using a generic template pulled from the internet can cause processing problems, so start with the clerk.

You should already have a copy of the writ along with a statutory notice titled “Notice to Defendant of Your Right to Keep Wages, Money, and Other Property from Being Garnished.” Arkansas Code 16-110-402 requires that notice to be served with every writ, and it spells out your right to claim exemptions and request a hearing.¹ Bring that paperwork with you to the clerk. The case number, court name, and party names you need for the form are all on it.

What to Put on the Form

The header information is straightforward: case number, parties, and issuing court, copied from the writ. The part that matters is the legal basis for your exemption. Writing “exempt” and leaving it at that is not enough. Identify the specific exemption, and show the court how it applies to your money.

Federal Wage Cap

For an ordinary consumer debt, a creditor can take the lesser of 25% of your weekly disposable earnings or the amount by which those earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage.² At a federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, that floor is $217.50 per week. If your weekly disposable earnings are at or below $217.50, none of your wages can be garnished.³

Disposable earnings are what remain after legally required deductions like federal and state income taxes, Social Security, and Medicare. Voluntary deductions such as health insurance premiums or retirement contributions don’t count, so your disposable earnings are higher than your take-home pay. If you’re claiming this exemption, do the math on the form and attach recent pay stubs that show gross pay, deductions, and net pay.

Arkansas Laborer and Mechanic Exemption

Arkansas Code 16-66-208 exempts up to 60 days of wages for laborers and mechanics, but only if you file a sworn statement that your wages plus your other personal property fall within the state’s constitutional limits.⁴ Those limits are $500 for a married person or head of household and $200 for a single person, and they have not been adjusted for inflation.⁵ If you’re claiming this one, the sworn statement has to go in with the form.

Income That Can’t Be Touched at All

Certain income is fully protected from garnishment for consumer debts. The Notice to Defendant that came with your writ lists these categories:¹

Social Security and SSI⁶
Veterans’ benefits⁷
Unemployment compensation
Workers’ compensation
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)

These protections follow the money into your bank account, but you have to prove where the funds came from. Identify each deposit by source, date, and amount on the form, and attach bank statements that show the direct deposits.

Documents to Attach

Every claim on the form needs a paper trail behind it. For a wage exemption, that means pay stubs. For a bank account garnishment, that means statements highlighting each protected deposit. The goal is a straight line from the exempt source to the money the creditor is trying to take. If exempt and non-exempt income share the same account, you have to trace which dollars are which, and that’s much harder to do cleanly. A separate account for benefit deposits is the simplest fix.

Filing and the Five-Day Creditor Notice

File the completed form with the clerk of the court that issued the writ. Arkansas Code 16-110-402 doesn’t set a hard deadline for filing, but waiting only helps the creditor. File the day you can.¹

Filing with the clerk is only half the job. Within five days of filing, you or your attorney must notify the judgment creditor or their attorney of the exemption claim. The statute requires the notice to be sent by fax transmission and by concurrent mailing.¹ Both methods, not one. Doing only the mailing, or only the fax, can invalidate your claim. Keep the fax confirmation page and the mailing receipt. Office supply and shipping stores offer fax service if you don’t have access to a machine.

What Happens After You File

Once you’ve filed and properly notified the creditor, the creditor has ten days to file a written contest. If they don’t, the court will issue a writ of supersedeas suspending the garnishment.¹ In practice, your employer or bank should hold the garnished funds during that window rather than turning them over. If the ten days pass without a contest, the held money comes back to you.

If the creditor does contest, the court sets a hearing. You’ll need to prove that the money or property is actually exempt. Bring originals of everything you attached: pay stubs, bank statements, benefit award letters, and any other documentation showing where the funds came from. The judge decides whether the exemption is valid in full, in part, or not at all.

Bank Accounts With Federal Benefits

If a garnishment order hits a bank account that receives federal benefit deposits, a separate protection applies before you file anything. Under 31 CFR Part 212, your bank must automatically review the account for federal benefit direct deposits during the two-month period before the order arrived, and protect the lesser of those deposits or the current balance.⁸ You keep access to that protected amount without filing a claim.

Covered deposits include Social Security, SSI, veterans’ benefits, federal railroad retirement, civil service retirement, and federal employee retirement.⁹ This is a floor. If your account holds more than two months of benefits, or holds state benefits like workers’ compensation or unemployment that the federal rule doesn’t cover, you still need to file the exemption claim to protect the rest.

Mistakes That Cost People Their Exemption

Not filing at all is the most common failure. The paperwork looks intimidating, people set it aside, and by the time they act the money is gone. File the day you receive the writ if you can.

The second common failure is skipping half of the creditor notice. Fax and concurrent mailing, within five days. A letter alone or a fax alone doesn’t satisfy the statute.

The third is commingled funds. When Social Security and freelance income go into the same account, and the account gets garnished, the burden of proving which dollars are protected falls on you. A dedicated account for exempt income makes the tracing easy and the claim much harder for the creditor to contest.

Debts This Form Won’t Help You Reduce

The 25% wage cap applies only to ordinary consumer debts. A standard exemption claim doesn’t stop or reduce garnishment for a few other categories.

For child support and alimony, federal law allows up to 50% of disposable earnings if you’re supporting another family and up to 60% if you’re not, with an additional 5 percentage points added when payments are more than 12 weeks behind.²

Federal tax levies follow their own rules. The IRS takes everything above an exempt amount tied to filing status and dependents, published each year in IRS Publication 1494.¹⁰ A state-court exemption claim will not stop a federal tax levy; you handle that with the IRS directly or through a Collection Due Process hearing.

Defaulted federal student loans allow the Department of Education to garnish up to 15% of disposable income administratively, without a court judgment. The $217.50 weekly floor still applies.

1
Justia. Arkansas Code 16-110-402 – Procedure in Issuing Writs of Garnishment
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 US Code 1673 – Restriction on Garnishment
3
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 30 – Wage Garnishment Protections of the Consumer Credit Protection Act
4
Justia. Arkansas Code 16-66-208 – Exemptions – Wages – Penalty
5
Justia. Arkansas Code 16-66-218 – Exemptions from Execution – Bankruptcy Proceedings
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 407 – Assignment of Benefits
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 38 USC 5301 – Nonassignability and Exempt Status of Benefits
8
eCFR. 31 CFR Part 212 – Garnishment of Accounts Containing Federal Benefit Payments
9
National Credit Union Administration. Garnishment of Accounts Containing Federal Benefit Payments
10
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 1494 – Tables for Figuring Amount Exempt from Levy on Wages, Salary, and Other Income