Bank Account and Salary Garnishment in Romania

I know what it’s like: you open your banking app and the account is frozen, or your payslip comes in a third lower and nobody warned you. Garnishment is the form of enforcement (executare silită) creditors turn to first, because it’s quick and catches you off guard. The good news is that the law sets clear limits on what can be taken, gives you the right to see the documents and a deadline to challenge it, and many garnishments have flaws you can spot on the first page of the file.

Here I explain how garnishment works, how much can be taken from a salary, pension or account, which amounts can’t be touched, how to check where it comes from and how to stop or reduce it. For the bailiff’s (executor judecătoresc) summons to pay (somație), seizure of assets and debt recovery, have a look at my enforcement page.

How garnishment works and who the three parties are

Garnishment is governed by art. 781-794 of the Code of Civil Procedure (Codul de procedură civilă, CPC). There are three parties: the creditor, who has an enforceable title (titlu executoriu); you, the garnished debtor; and the garnishee (terț poprit), meaning the person who owes you money or holds it for you, usually the bank or your employer (art. 781(1)). The bailiff doesn’t send you a summons to pay first: on the basis of the court’s ruling approving enforcement (încheierea de încuviințare a executării), the bailiff sends the bank or employer a garnishment notice (adresă de înființare a popririi) and sends you a copy of it, together with the approval and the title, if you haven’t already received them (art. 783(1)).

From the moment the bank or employer receives the notice, the money is frozen: the garnishee can no longer pay you and can’t carry out any operation that would reduce the garnished amounts until the debt is paid in full (art. 784(1)); for a salary, the freeze also covers future payments (art. 784(2)). Within 5 days of receiving the notice, the garnishee deposits the amount at the bailiff’s disposal or, for maintenance and child allowances, pays it directly to the creditor (art. 787(1)). If it doesn’t, the creditor, you or the bailiff can ask the court to validate the garnishment, within one month (art. 790(1)), and the validation judgment becomes an enforceable title against the garnishee (art. 792(1)).

When the debt is paid or the reason for the garnishment no longer exists, the bailiff orders the garnishment to be lifted by a notice to the garnishee, on the bailiff’s own initiative or at your request (art. 794(1)). You can also end the freeze by depositing the full amount being enforced, with accessories and costs, at the bailiff’s disposal (art. 784(6) and art. 721).

How much of your salary or pension can be taken

Here the law is kinder than people think. Salaries, pensions and any other amounts paid to you periodically to live on can be garnished within the limits of art. 729 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The table below shows what can be garnished and how much.

A simple example: on a net salary of 4,500 lei, for an unpaid loan your employer can withhold at most 1,500 lei a month; for child maintenance, at most 2,250 lei. If your net income is below the national net minimum wage, only what’s above half of that minimum can be taken. The minimum wage changes by government decision, so for “garnishment on the minimum wage” the exact answer depends on the month of the deduction; we’ll work it out from your payslip. If you’re on sick leave, your sick pay can be garnished only for maintenance and compensation for injuries (art. 729(4)), not for loans.

Which money in your account can’t be garnished

A bank account garnishment catches the balance and future payments in, but only the amounts that can legally be seized (art. 781(2)). Child allowance, child-raising allowance, maternity benefit and the other amounts in art. 729(7) stay yours even if they go into the same account as your salary, as do earmarked funds and non-repayable grants (art. 781(5)(a) and (b)). The bank, though, only sees a balance, not where the money came from, so it freezes everything. The answer is proof: the statement showing who paid the money (the social benefits agency, the pension office) and a request to the bailiff to lift the garnishment on those amounts; if the bailiff refuses, a challenge to enforcement (contestație la executare).

A common situation: your employer withholds a third of your salary, and the rest is paid into the garnished account and frozen there too. The law says future payments in are enforced against “within the limits set in art. 729, where applicable”, but banks rarely apply that limit of their own accord. If this happens to you, it’s worth checking the file; the difference between a lawful deduction and a double one comes down to the paperwork.

Several garnishments at the same time

Once a garnishment is in place, any other creditor can garnish the same claim until the money is released or distributed (art. 783(8)). On a salary, the overall ceiling stays at half of net income, whatever the debts (art. 729(2)). When the amounts demanded exceed the part that can be garnished, the employer withholds only that part, deposits it and notifies all the bailiffs, and the competent bailiff distributes it according to the order of preference in art. 865 (art. 789 and art. 787(2)). Usually each bailiff asks the employer for a third without knowing about the others, so the first step is to check what the employer withheld each month against the ceiling.

Garnishment without notice: what you should receive and when

“My account was garnished without notice” is something I hear often, and I understand why. The law allows a garnishment to be set up without a prior summons to pay, so the bank finds out before you do (art. 783(1)). But enforcement itself starts with you being served the approval, the enforceable title and, where the law requires it, the summons to pay; otherwise the enforcement is void (art. 667). And along with the garnishment, you’re entitled to a copy of the garnishment notice, with the approval and the title attached if you haven’t had them before (art. 783(1)).

If you’ve received nothing, the garnishment isn’t automatically void, but the deadline for a challenge only starts running from when you actually found out, and for a salary at the latest from the first deduction (art. 715(1) point 2); the failure to serve you is a flaw we raise in the challenge. Keep the envelope, if one came, and write down the day you saw the first deduction.

How to check whether you have a garnishment

• At the bank: ask for a copy of the garnishment notice. It contains the bailiff’s name, the file number and the enforceable title (art. 783(3)). Banks show it in the app or at the counter, sometimes only if you ask in writing.
• At your employer: the payroll department has the notice and knows who it’s from; you’re entitled to see it.
• At the bailiff’s office: with the file number, you ask for copies of the approval, the title, the summons to pay and the enforcement costs. From the file we can see whether the title is valid, whether the amount is correct and whether the creditor’s right has become time-barred.
• With ANAF, the tax authority: tax garnishments show up in the Virtual Private Space (Spațiul Privat Virtual, SPV), with the summons to pay, the enforceable title and the garnishment notice. There’s no public register of garnishments for private individuals; “checking for a garnishment online” means your banking app or SPV.

ANAF garnishment: what’s different

For taxes, contributions and fines, enforcement is carried out by the tax office under the Fiscal Procedure Code (Codul de procedură fiscală, Law no. 207/2015). Enforcement starts with a summons to pay; if within 15 days of receiving it you don’t pay and don’t say you want the mediation procedure, the enforcement measures go ahead (art. 230(1) and art. 230^1). The garnishment is set up by a notice to the bank or employer, and you’re informed (art. 236(5)); it counts as set up from the date and time the notice is received (art. 236(8)) and doesn’t need validation (art. 236(6)). The garnishee pays the tax office within 3 working days (art. 236(9)(a) and (13)).

On salaries and pensions, ANAF is bound by the same limits as any creditor: income from work, pensions and special-purpose allowances can be enforced against only under the conditions of the Code of Civil Procedure (art. 236(4)), so the one-third and one-half limits apply. On an account, the bank freezes the balance and daily payments in up to the amount in the notice and stops processing payments out of the account, with a few exceptions, including the salaries a company has to pay (art. 236(13) and (14)).

When you pay, enforcement ends and the tax office lifts the garnishment by decision within two days (art. 234(1)(a) and (2)), including for amounts frozen above the debt (art. 234(4)). If enforcement is suspended, ANAF immediately tells the bank to stop the freeze (art. 236(17)), and future payments in are no longer frozen (art. 233(4)). A challenge to enforcement is filed at the district court, within 15 days of the date you learned of the act you’re challenging (art. 260 and art. 261(1)). ANAF’s right to request enforcement is time-barred 5 years from 1 January of the year after the one in which it arose (art. 215(1)), fines included (art. 215(2)).

How to stop or reduce a garnishment

A challenge to enforcement. It’s the main remedy against an unlawful garnishment, an inflated amount or a title that isn’t enforceable (art. 712 of the Code of Civil Procedure). The deadline is 15 days from receiving notice that the garnishment was set up, and for a salary at the latest from the first deduction (art. 715(1) point 2); it’s filed at the district court for your domicile (art. 714(1) and art. 651). When the title is a contract rather than a judgment, you can also raise defences on the merits (art. 713(2)). I’ve written a guide to the challenge to enforcement (in Romanian), and you can work out the last day of the deadline with the court deadline calculator. You can estimate the court stamp duty (taxă judiciară de timbru) with the stamp duty calculator.

Suspending enforcement. Until the challenge is decided, the court can suspend the garnishment, for good reasons and in return for security (cauțiune) calculated on the amount challenged: 10% up to 10,000 lei, 1,000 lei plus 5% of anything above 10,000 lei, 5,500 lei plus 1% of anything above 100,000 lei (art. 719(1) and (2)); 1,000 lei if the subject matter can’t be valued in money (art. 719(3)). Suspension is mandatory and needs no security when the document isn’t enforceable under the law or when you have a deferral from the creditor proven by an authenticated document (art. 719(4)). In an emergency you can also ask for provisional suspension, without the parties being summoned (art. 719(7)).

The limitation period. The right to obtain enforcement is time-barred after 3 years, or 10 years for titles concerning real rights; the period runs from when the right arises, and for judgments from when they become final (art. 706). A garnishment started after the period has run out can be challenged on that ground. Be careful: a garnishment also interrupts the limitation period for the claim being enforced (art. 784(5)), so don’t count on time running out once enforcement has started.

Money withheld wrongly. When the employer withholds more than the ceiling or the bank freezes protected amounts, we ask the bailiff to lift or reduce the garnishment (art. 794), and if the bailiff refuses, we file a challenge and ask for the money back. You can estimate interest on amounts owed or withheld in excess with the statutory interest calculator.

An agreement with the creditor. If the debt is genuine and the title is in order, what often really helps is a payment plan negotiated with the creditor, with the garnishment on your account lifted in exchange for monthly payments. The creditor can ask the bailiff to suspend enforcement (art. 701(2)). I think it’s the option to consider when there are no serious grounds for a challenge.

Is there a minimum amount for a garnishment?

“What’s the minimum amount for enforcement?” is a question I get often, and the honest answer is that the Code of Civil Procedure has no such threshold: any claim under an enforceable title, however small, can be enforced by garnishment, and the enforcement costs are charged to you (art. 670(2)). The only value threshold in the code concerns property: for claims of up to 10,000 lei, your home can’t be sold if you have other assets or income that can be seized (art. 813(5)). For debts to the state, amounts under 40 lei still outstanding on 31 December are cancelled (art. 266(5) of the Fiscal Procedure Code), and the head of the enforcement body can cancel amounts smaller than the enforcement costs (art. 266(1)). For anything else, garnishment is possible, which is exactly why, with a small debt, it’s worth paying or negotiating before the costs double it.

What to send me so I can tell you where you stand

• the garnishment notice, from the bank or your employer;
• the envelope from the bailiff, if you received it: the approval, the summons to pay, the enforceable title;
• your payslips or bank statements for the months with deductions;
• for ANAF, the summons to pay and the title from SPV;
• any proof that you’ve already paid or that you have an agreement with the creditor.

The consolidated text of the Code of Civil Procedure is on legislatie.just.ro, and that of the Fiscal Procedure Code is here. If you have a garnishment on your salary or account in Cluj, write to me or call me. Send me the documents, even photos, and I’ll tell you whether you’re still within the deadline and what options you have.