What A Creditor Cannot Take
CPLR 5205 — property a money judgment cannot reach, and CPLR 5231's limits on taking wages
Exempt from a money judgment, among other things, unless the judgment is for the purchase price of the item itself:
- Clothing, household furniture, a refrigerator, a radio, a television, a computer, a cellphone, tableware and cooking utensils the debtor and family need, and all prescribed health aids.
- Stoves and home heating equipment with fuel for one hundred twenty days, and the household's food for one hundred twenty days.
- Religious texts, family pictures and school books, and other books worth up to $500.
- A wedding ring, and a watch, jewelry and art worth up to $1,000.
- Tools of the trade the debtor needs for work, worth up to $3,000.
- One motor vehicle worth up to $4,000 above liens, or $10,000 if equipped for a disabled debtor, except against a support debt or a judgment held by the state or a municipality.
- If no homestead exemption is claimed, $1,000 in personal property, a bank account or cash.
The amounts are adjusted. Every three years the exemption amounts the section provides are adjusted for inflation, and the superintendent of financial services publishes the current figures, so the amount in effect can be higher than the one written in the text.
Ninety percent of earnings. Ninety percent of the debtor's earnings for the sixty days before, and any time after, an income execution is delivered or a motion is made to reach them are exempt, except what a court finds unnecessary for the reasonable needs of the debtor and dependents.
Limits on an income execution. An income execution takes no more than ten percent of income. Nothing is withheld for a week in which disposable earnings are not more than thirty times the federal or state minimum hourly wage, whichever is greater, and the amount withheld may not exceed twenty-five percent of disposable earnings or the amount above that thirty times figure, whichever is less.
A security deposit on the debtor's home or utilities, the retirement accounts and plans the section names, and service dogs and medical equipment are exempt too. Where exempt payments such as social security, public assistance, unemployment insurance or a pension were deposited electronically into a bank account in the forty-five days before a restraining notice or execution was served, $2,500 in that account is exempt.