Are your supervisors familiar with wage garnishment and family support withholding? Do they know the difference between the two and how they impact an employee's paycheck? Below is some information to convey to your supervisors.
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Get Your Report Now!Even if you are not directly responsible for handling wage garnishment and family support withholding, they affect your employees; therefore, you should understand what they are and how they should be handled. You should be able to:
- Understand the meaning of wage garnishment and family support withholding.
- Recognize the requirements of relevant laws.
- Identify the organization's responsibilities for handling these orders properly.
- Provide affected employees with accurate information about withholding procedures.
What is wage garnishment?
- Garnishment is an order from a court or government agency.
- A garnishment order requires an employer to withhold a certain sum of money from an employee's weekly paycheck.
- The amount withheld is used to repay a debt the employee owes to a creditor -- a debt the employee failed to pay in the normal way. Debts may be for such things as consumer goods, taxes, student loans, or child support.
Although people frequently use the term "garnishment" to refer to child support and alimony withholding, garnishment and family support are technically two separate things, even though the procedures for handling both are much the same.
- Unlike garnishment, family support withholding can only be ordered by a court, not a government agency.
- Like garnishment, however, a child support and/or alimony order requires an employer to withhold a certain sum of money from an employee's weekly paycheck.
- Usually -- but not always -- a family support order is activated only if an employee is behind in his or her support payments for more than 30 days or for an amount more than that due during a one-month period.
- Family support withholding orders may apply to both regular and temporary employees.
The above information comes from BLR's presentation "Wage Garnishment and Family Support Withholding: What Supervisors Need to Know." For more information on all the training courses BLR has to offer, go to our Employee and Manager Training page.