Nevada Wage and Bank Account Protection

A Nevada judgment creditor can garnish a paycheck, but the wage exemption keeps most of the pay out of reach, and the protection follows the money into the bank. Nevada exempts a share of disposable earnings, at two rates that depend on weekly pay, and the exemption covers pay already sitting in a bank account. Nevada is one of nine states whose wage exemption survives deposit.

The account has two more protections. A wildcard exemption that names money on deposit, stocks and bonds stacks on top of the wage exemption, and a small floor stays accessible automatically when a levy arrives, whether or not the owner ever claims it. Everything above those lines can be taken, and no separate rule shelters a spouse’s account.

How Much of a Paycheck Can a Creditor Garnish in Nevada?

Nevada exempts at least three-quarters of a worker’s disposable earnings from garnishment, and a low earner keeps more. The exemption is 82 percent of disposable earnings where gross weekly pay was $770 or less, 75 percent where it was more, or fifty times the federal minimum hourly wage, whichever protects more.

The rate is set once. The statute looks at gross weekly pay on the day the latest writ was issued, so a later raise or pay cut leaves a worker at the same rate until a new writ issues. The percentage runs on disposable earnings, the pay left after the deductions the law requires, such as tax withholding.

Earnings means compensation for personal services, whatever it is called, and the statute lists income, wages, tips, salary, a commission and a bonus. The term also covers pay the worker has received and still holds, and pay that is due but not yet paid.

That list dates from 2005. A 1999 decision, In re Galvez, had read the exemption to reach only periodic pay and refused it for a real-estate agent’s one-time commission. The Legislature rewrote the definition to change that result, and a commission or a bonus has been exempt earnings since.

The garnishment statute states the same rule from the creditor’s side, as the largest share of disposable earnings a writ may take, and the two sections use the same weekly-pay threshold and the same minimum-wage floor. No Nevada decision has interpreted the garnishment statute. The Nevada Supreme Court has cited it only in passing while reading the exemption.

For a professional’s salary the exempt share is the one federal law guarantees in every state. Nevada’s own additions are the low-earner rate and a floor set at fifty times the federal minimum wage, against thirty under the federal formula.

Three kinds of debt sit outside the exemption. A support order, a bankruptcy court’s order and a state or federal tax debt each reach the paycheck under their own rules, and a support order takes a larger share. Every other judgment, whether on a credit card, a personal guarantee or a tort verdict, meets the exemption.

The same exemption applies in a Nevada bankruptcy. Nevada bars its residents from electing the federal bankruptcy exemption list, so a Nevada debtor claims the state’s wage exemption and its wildcard in bankruptcy as well as against a writ.

Are Wages Protected After They Are Deposited in Nevada?

Yes, a Nevada paycheck keeps its exempt share after it is deposited, for as long as the money can still be traced back to pay. The exemption statute’s definition of earnings reaches compensation a bank or other financial institution holds, so the share that was exempt in the employer’s hands stays exempt in the account. No time window applies.

The Nevada Supreme Court applied that definition in Christensen v. Pack (2006), answering questions a bankruptcy court had certified, and it is the leading Nevada decision on deposited wages. The exemption reaches the direct proceeds of earnings once they are deposited, and it protects every deposit, however old. It runs indefinitely, so long as the money stays on hand to support the debtor.

Two limits come with it. What the worker buys with exempt wages is not exempt in turn, so a purchase made out of a protected account is reachable. And the exemption survives commingling only so long as tracing is possible, with first-in, first-out as the method the court adopted.

Nevada’s execution statute applies the same first-in, first-out accounting when a debtor claims money above the automatic floor, and a court may require ninety days of bank statements to run it. Under that method the first money deposited is the first money withdrawn, so what remains in a mixed account is treated as the most recent money in, and the trace decides how much of that was pay.

In most states the exemption dies when the pay is deposited. Nine states carry it into the account by statute, and Nevada and Virginia are the two that set no time window, because both define earnings to include pay sitting in a bank.

The debtor proves the trace. On a levy the account holder claims the exemption for the money above the automatic floor and shows, from the statements, which deposits were pay. A worker who keeps wages in an account that receives nothing else has a trace the bank’s own records supply.

How the Wildcard Covers a Nevada Bank or Brokerage Account

Nevada’s wildcard exemption covers any personal property the debtor selects that no other exemption reaches, and the statute names money, stocks, bonds and funds on deposit with a financial institution, so a bank or brokerage account qualifies. The wildcard is $10,000, and only Tennessee protects as much plain cash.

The debtor places the wildcard where he chooses, on top of the separate exemptions for household goods, tools and a vehicle. It has no indexing clause, so the figure changes only when the Legislature amends it, as it did in 2017 when it raised the wildcard to its current level.

The wildcard also stacks on a paycheck. In Platte River Insurance Co. v. Jackson (2021) a creditor argued that earnings could never be wildcard property, because the wage exemption already dealt with them. The Nevada Supreme Court disagreed. Because the wage exemption covers only a share of each paycheck, the rest is property no other exemption covers, and the wildcard may cover it.

Earnings are personal property under the statute’s definition, and the wildcard’s list opens with the words “without limitation,” which answered the creditor’s point that earnings were not on it. So the attachable share of a paycheck can itself be claimed under the wildcard, up to its limit.

The wildcard is one per debtor. In Weinstein v. Fox (2013) the Nevada Supreme Court held that a judgment debtor may not claim the wildcard, or the vehicle exemption, for a spouse who is not a debtor. Each exemption belongs to the judgment debtor personally, so a couple facing a judgment against one spouse has one wildcard to place. Platte River and Weinstein fix what the wildcard covers and who may claim it, and both sit with Christensen in the Nevada asset protection case law library.

What a Bank Levy Takes From a Nevada Account

A Nevada bank levy reaches the balance in the account, less a floor the bank leaves accessible without being asked, and the debtor claims everything else by exemption. The floor comes in two sizes. Where money identifiable as exempt federal benefits was deposited electronically in the 45 days before the writ was served, $2,000 stays accessible, or the entire balance where the account holds less; otherwise $400 stays accessible.

For that purpose, exempt federal benefits means money the United States Treasury deposits. The statute lists fourteen sources, Social Security, veterans benefits, railroad retirement, federal employee retirement, military retirement pay and federal student loan payments among them, and closes the list with benefits under any other federal law.

The two floors differ in one more way. The $400 floor gives way to a writ for the support of any person; the $2,000 floor carries no support exception.

Both floors belong to a personal bank account. The statute names the judgment debtor’s personal account and no other kind, and a debtor with several accounts at one bank gets one floor across them, never one per account. A bank that makes a reasonable effort to identify exempt money is immune from civil liability for getting it wrong, and it need not revise its call except on a court order.

Everything above the floor answers the writ unless the debtor claims an exemption for it, and the claim goes to the court under the execution statute. Where the money above the floor mixes exempt and nonexempt dollars, the creditor must apply first-in, first-out to sort them, and the court may order the debtor to produce ninety days of statements.

A spouse’s account is no shelter of its own. Wages either spouse earns during the marriage are community property, and a debt of the marriage is collected from it. No tenancy by the entirety exists in Nevada, so a joint account answers for one owner’s judgment. For a married couple, asset protection in Nevada runs on the community-property rules, whatever name is on the account.

Federal Benefits and Other Exempt Deposits in a Nevada Account

Federal benefits get the strongest protection inside a Nevada account, and several Nevada exemptions follow money from its source into the bank as well. When a garnishment order reaches the bank, federal law makes the bank leave accessible the direct-deposited benefits of four programs: Social Security, veterans, railroad retirement and federal civilian retirement. The protected amount is up to two months’ worth, or the balance where the account holds less, and no claim by the account holder is needed.

The federal rule covers those four programs only and direct deposits only, and it stops at garnishment orders. An IRS levy is not one, and neither is an order from a federal agency or a state child-support agency that arrives with a notice of the right to garnish federal benefits.

Nevada’s automatic floor is the second layer. It reaches every Treasury deposit where the federal rule reaches four programs, and it protects a fixed sum where the federal rule protects up to two months of benefit deposits. Above both, the money is protected only by a claim of exemption that traces it.

Nevada exempts several kinds of income by their source, and the exemption travels with the money if the debtor can trace it. Child support and alimony the debtor receives under a court order are exempt in full. So are Social Security payments, unemployment compensation, workers’ compensation, public employee retirement benefits, the proceeds of a private disability insurance plan, and a tax refund from the earned income credit.

Retirement money is exempt while it stays in the retirement account, and a withdrawal ends the exemption. Nevada exempts money held in an IRA or a qualified plan up to a cap. In In re Gagow (2018) a bankruptcy court found that money the debtor had taken out of an IRA before filing was not exempt. The statute exempts money held in the arrangement, and a withdrawal gets none of the sixty-day grace federal bankruptcy law gives a rollover. The wildcard was still available for the money he had taken out.

Every one of those exemptions turns on tracing once the money is in the bank, and the federal two-month amount is the only protection that needs none. With wages in one account and benefits in another, the bank statements are the proof, and an exempt bank account is built that way in every state.

What a Judgment Creditor Leaves a Nevada Wage Earner

A Nevada wage earner keeps most of each paycheck in the employer’s hands, and keeps the same share after deposit for as long as the statements can trace it. The wildcard adds a further sum the debtor may place on the attachable share of a paycheck or on a brokerage account, and the automatic floor stays accessible without any claim. Asset protection in Nevada for liquid money rests on those three rules.

The exposure is everything above them. Cash and brokerage balances beyond the wildcard and the floor are reachable in full, and a business account has no floor. A support order or a tax debt reaches the paycheck itself, and retirement money loses its exemption the day it is withdrawn.

A Nevadan with liquid balances well above those exemptions moves them into an offshore trust administered by a licensed trustee abroad, who holds the accounts outside the United States. A Nevada writ cannot be served on a foreign bank with no office here.