Maine Wage Garnishment After Small Claims: What's Actually Available

Maine Doesn't Have Traditional Wage Garnishment for Civil Judgments

If you won a small claims judgment in Maine and expect to send a garnishment order to the debtor's employer, that's not how it works automatically. Maine does not allow continuous wage garnishment based solely on an ordinary civil money judgment.

Instead, the usual process is a court-ordered installment payment after a disclosure hearing under 14 M.R.S. § 3126-A. The order directs the debtor to pay, but if the debtor defaults on two or more payments, the court can also order the employer to make payments directly to the creditor.

How Installment Payment Orders Work

After you conduct a disclosure hearing — where the debtor testifies under oath about their income and assets — the judge calculates what the debtor can afford to pay. The court then enters an installment payment order requiring the debtor to make regular payments.

The maximum weekly payment is capped at the least of three figures:

1. 25% of the debtor's combined disposable earnings and exempt income
2. The amount by which that combined income exceeds 40 times the applicable minimum wage (federal or Maine, whichever is higher)
3. The debtor's total disposable earnings for the week

"Disposable earnings" means what's left after legally required deductions — federal and state taxes, FICA, and similar mandatory withholdings.

When No Order Can Be Entered

If the debtor's entire income comes from exempt sources — Social Security, SSI, veterans' benefits, unemployment compensation, or public assistance — the court cannot order installment payments at all. The statute explicitly prohibits it.

This doesn't mean the debtor is permanently off the hook. Circumstances change. If the debtor gets a job or acquires non-exempt income later, you can request a new disclosure hearing and ask the court to reconsider.

What Happens When the Debtor Stops Paying

If the debtor defaults on two or more installment payments, 14 M.R.S. § 3126-A(8) gives you a specific remedy. You can file an ex parte motion asking the court to order the Maine Department of Labor to disclose the debtor's current employer and wage history.

This is useful when the debtor has changed jobs or you suspect they're underreporting income. Once you have updated employment information, you can bring the debtor back for another disclosure hearing and request a modified payment order. You can also ask the court to order the employer to make payments directly to you by serving the employer with the required motion.

Willful refusal to pay when the debtor has the ability to pay can also lead to contempt proceedings — but the court won't hold someone in contempt who genuinely can't afford the ordered payments.

Other Ways to Reach Income

If the ordinary installment order does not resolve the debt, you have other options:

• Trustee process — freeze bank accounts where the debtor's paychecks are deposited
• Writ of execution — seize non-exempt personal property
• Judgment lien — record a lien against the debtor's real estate; if the property sells, the lien may be paid from proceeds according to its priority

Each approach works differently and fits different situations. The Maine judgment collection guide covers all the enforcement tools, including how to pick the right one based on what the disclosure hearing reveals about the debtor's finances.

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