- Before a creditor can garnish wages for an ordinary debt, they generally need a court judgment against you first.
- Ontario's Wages Act sets out how much of your pay is off-limits to a garnishing creditor, and the answer depends on what kind of debt is being enforced.
- The gap between the 20% ordinary-debt limit and the 50% support limit is intentional.
If a court has ordered you to pay a debt, or you have fallen behind on a support obligation, a creditor may ask your employer to hold back part of your paycheque and send it directly to them instead of to you. This is called wage garnishment, and it is one of the most common tools Ontario law gives a judgment creditor to collect what they are owed.
Many people assume a creditor can take whatever they like out of a paycheque once a garnishment notice arrives. That is not true. Ontario's wage garnishment limit protects a set portion of every paycheque, and the protected share is not the same for every kind of debt.
This article explains how much can legally be taken, why the rules differ for support and maintenance orders, and what to do if a garnishment notice touches income that should stay protected.
How Wage Garnishment Reaches Your Paycheque
Before a creditor can garnish wages for an ordinary debt, they generally need a court judgment against you first. Once they have one, the creditor can have a notice of garnishment — a step governed by Rule 60.08 of Ontario's Rules of Civil Procedure — served on your employer, who becomes the "garnishee" in the process.
From that point forward, your employer is legally required to hold back the garnishable portion of your pay each pay period and forward it, rather than paying it directly to you. Support and maintenance enforcement can work somewhat differently in practice, but the same basic mechanism — a notice served on whoever pays you — applies.
The Protected Portion of Your Wages
Ontario's Wages Act sets out how much of your pay is off-limits to a garnishing creditor, and the answer depends on what kind of debt is being enforced.
| Type of debt being enforced | Portion of wages protected | Portion that can be garnished |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary debt (credit card, loan, unpaid invoice, court judgment for damages, etc.) | 80% | Up to 20% |
| Support or maintenance order (child or spousal support) | 50% | Up to 50% |
In other words, for a typical consumer or business debt, at least four-fifths of your pay stays protected no matter how large the judgment against you is. For support and maintenance enforcement, the law allows a larger share to be taken, since making sure dependants are supported is treated as a higher priority. These figures reflect the Wages Act as of mid-2026 — confirm the current percentages before relying on them, since garnishment rules can be updated.
Why Support Enforcement Gets a Bigger Share
The gap between the 20% ordinary-debt limit and the 50% support limit is intentional. Support and maintenance obligations exist to meet another person's — often a child's — day-to-day needs, so Ontario law treats support enforcement differently from a commercial or personal debt. If you are behind on support and also owe an ordinary debt, expect the support garnishment to be treated as the priority claim on your pay.
What Counts as "Wages" — and What Doesn't
The Wages Act protection applies specifically to wages: pay you receive from an employer for your labour. It does not automatically extend to:
- Money already sitting in your bank account once it has been paid to you
- Payments a self-employed person receives from clients, which are not "wages" from an employer in the same sense
- Certain other forms of income, which may be governed by their own separate rules
If you do not have a traditional employer, garnishing your income works differently — and often less predictably for the creditor — than garnishing a paycheque.
If You Work for a Federally Regulated Employer
Most employment in Ontario falls under provincial law, including the Wages Act. But if you work for a federally regulated employer — a bank, airline, telecommunications company, or similar — a different federal framework may apply to how your wages can be enforced against. If you are unsure which rules apply to your job, that is worth confirming before assuming the provincial percentages above apply to you.
Frequently asked questions
Does the 20% limit also protect money already deposited in my bank account?
No. The Wages Act exemption is tied specifically to wages owed by an employer, not to funds that have already reached your bank account. Once your pay is deposited, it can potentially be reached through a separate bank account garnishment, which follows its own rules.
What happens if more than one creditor tries to garnish my wages at the same time?
Ontario's enforcement rules have mechanisms for handling multiple garnishing orders against the same pay, but exactly how competing garnishments are prioritized and shared is technical and fact-specific. If you are facing more than one garnishment at once, get legal advice promptly.
Will I be notified before my wages are garnished?
A garnishment generally follows a court judgment and a formal notice of garnishment served on your employer. In practice, many people first learn about it when their employer explains a deduction on their pay stub — often after court documents earlier in the process went unanswered.
Are self-employed people protected by the same wage garnishment limit?
Not in the same way. The Wages Act percentages apply to employment wages. Someone who is self-employed does not have "wages" from an employer to protect in the same sense, which changes how a creditor would need to approach collection against that income.
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