Chicago Child Support and
Collections
In Chicago, when a judge orders you to pay child support,
payments are usually taken directly from your paycheck. The court will send an
order to your employer, requiring them to set aside the child support ordered
from your regular wages. This process is known as garnishment, or
"withholding". Judges will determine the amount of child support from
the guidelines in the statute. The percentages
of a parent’s income that will be garnished are 20% of your net pay if you are
supporting one child, or 28% for two children. If you are supporting three or
more children, the portion of your pay that will be set aside increases
incrementally, up to 50% for six or more children. It is important to note that
these percentages are "guidelines", and judges have discretion to
increase or decrease them as they see fit, although in most circumstances
Judges stick with the guidelines amounts.
Paying Child Support in Addition to Debts
If you have any other outstanding payments that have gone to
collections, including medical, credit card, and other bills, a collector will most
likely not be able to get an order requiring your employer to garnish additional
wages if they are already taking out child support. This is because Illinois’ Income Withholding for Support Act sets a cap on wage
garnishment, valued at 15% of your gross pay, or 15% of your net pay over
$371.25 per week, whichever is less. If your take home pay is less than that
amount, your wages cannot be garnished for payments of other debts, although child
support payments could still be taken out of your wages. This 15% limit
interacts with child support minimums in such a way that debt collectors cannot
stack further garnishments on top of the 20% or more that you are already
paying to support your children.
This limitation also applies to previously existing debt. If you
are ordered to pay child support, but you already have a garnishment applied to
your paycheck for an old debt, the child support will take precedence over the
debt. In the vast majority of situations, this will prevent a creditor from
garnishing your wages. Child support payments always take first priority under
Illinois law.
There are circumstances in which a debt, incurred either before or
after you begin to pay child support, could be collected via wage garnishment
simultaneously with child support payments. One way that you could be forced to
give your wages to both types of payment is if over 25% of your gross pay is
deducted for taxes. This would result in a situation where you would be left
with relatively less net pay, when compared to your gross pay, which would
allow for 20% of your net pay to be taken for child support, with some money
left over to be garnished for a debt before the 15% of gross pay cap is
reached.
