Getting paid (direct deposit / Direct Express)

Once a benefit is flowing, almost every worry about it collapses into two questions. The first is logistical and it wakes people up at 6 a.m. on the wrong day of the month: when exactly does my money come, and if I need to change where it lands — a new bank, a closed branch, a fraud scare — how do I do that without breaking anything? The second is darker, and people carry it silently: I owe money — a hospital, a credit card, an old loan — can they take my Social Security?

Both questions have unusually good answers, which is why this lesson exists as one piece. Your payment day is not random and never has been: for most beneficiaries your birth date sets your Wednesday, permanently, and you can mark every payday for the next decade with a calendar and thirty seconds. Changing where the money lands is a five-minute task inside the *my Social Security* account you met in Lesson 110 — done safely, it's routine; done through a stranger on the phone, it's the costliest scam in the program, which is why this lesson teaches the safe order step by step. And the debt fear has an actual federal statute pointed at it: Section 207 of the Social Security Act shields your benefit from most creditors — not as a courtesy, but as law older than most people reading this. A hospital, a credit-card company, a payday lender: none of them can garnish a Social Security payment — take it by court order to pay a debt — even after winning in court. The exceptions are few, specific, and federal or family — child support and alimony, federal taxes, and debts owed to the federal government itself — and you'll leave this lesson able to name all three and the dollar limits on each (2026 rules throughout).

Two people carry the lesson. Manny Reyes, 78, retired machinist in San Antonio — you know him and his daughter Anita from Lesson 110, where she helped him get his *my Social Security* account working after his stroke. This month they have two jobs: move his direct deposit to a new credit union, and deal with a collection letter about a hospital bill left over from the stroke — which makes him the right person to walk both halves of this lesson. And Luis Rivera, 70, a retired hotel worker in San Juan, Puerto Rico, who receives his retirement benefit without any bank account at all — his route is the Direct Express card, and his story answers a question mainlanders rarely think to ask: does any of this work differently in the territories? (For the payment itself: no. For SSI: that's a different story, told in Lessons 86 and 162.)

Social Security doesn't pay everyone on the same day — roughly 70 million payments landing at once would strain banks and SSA alike — so since June 1997 the agency has spread retirement, survivor, and disability payments across the month on a schedule that never changes for you once you're on it. The rule is almost embarrassingly simple: the day of the month you were born decides which Wednesday you're paid. Born on the 1st through the 10th of any month? Your benefit arrives on the second Wednesday. Born the 11th through the 20th? The third Wednesday. Born the 21st through the 31st? The fourth Wednesday. The month and year of your birth don't matter here — only the day. It's the benefit owner's birth date that controls, too: a spouse or survivor drawing on a worker's record is paid by the *worker's* birth date on some older records and their own on others — if two people in one household are paid on different Wednesdays, that's why, and it's normal.

Manny was born March 9, 1948 (the day matters for this lesson, so we're naming it here) — a 9 puts him in the 1st–10th band, so his $2,200 retirement benefit (2026; that's the $26,400-a-year figure from his tax lesson, Lesson 89, divided across twelve months) lands every second Wednesday. Luis was born July 22, 1956 — a 22 makes him a fourth-Wednesday man, and his $1,280 (an illustrative 2026 figure for this lesson — a modest benefit from a long hotel career) arrives two weeks after Manny's, every month, like clockwork. Neither of them chose this, neither can change it, and neither needs to: the point of the map is that paydays are fixed and knowable years in advance. SSA publishes the full calendar each year as a one-page schedule (publication EN-05-10031 at ssa.gov/pubs), and the *my Social Security* account shows your next payment date on the front screen.

Three groups sit outside the Wednesday map, and one calendar rule bends everything. First: SSI is paid on the 1st of the month, full stop — Supplemental Security Income (the needs-based program from Lesson 73, run by SSA but funded from general taxes) has its own payday and always has. Second: people who started receiving Social Security before May 1997 were never moved onto the Wednesday system — they're paid on the 3rd of the month, and always will be. Third: people who receive both Social Security and SSI get the split schedule — SSI on the 1st, Social Security on the 3rd — two deposits, two days apart, every month. Manny started his benefit in 2014, so the pre-1997 rule doesn't touch him; Rosa Ibarra from the SSI lessons, who gets a small retirement benefit plus an SSI top-up, is exactly the both-checks person: hers land on the 1st and the 3rd.

Now the bending rule, and it only ever bends in your favor: if a payment date falls on a weekend or federal holiday, you're paid on the closest earlier business day — never later. The 1st of November 2026 is a Sunday, so November's SSI arrives Friday, October 30. That produces the calendar quirk that generates thousands of panicked calls a year: an SSI recipient looks at October and sees two deposits (October 1 and October 30), then looks at November and sees none — and concludes November's payment was missed. It wasn't: the October 30 deposit *is* the November money, paid early. The same logic means January's SSI always arrives on December 31 (New Year's Day is a federal holiday every year) — which is why each January's COLA increase (2.8% for 2026) technically shows up in an SSI deposit dated the previous December.

One more piece of the clock, because it explains several things at once: Social Security pays in arrears — each payment is for the month *before* the month it arrives. Manny's September 9 deposit is his August benefit. This is why a first check after applying feels like it comes 'a month late' (it isn't — it's the prior month's benefit, right on time), and it's the mechanical root of a rule that matters to grieving families: benefits aren't due for the month a beneficiary dies, so a payment arriving after a death often must go back. That rule, and the gentle mechanics of it, are Lesson 135's territory — here, just plant the idea: the deposit is always last month's money.

Electronic payments almost never simply vanish — when a deposit seems missing, the cause is nearly always one of four boring things: the holiday rule moved it earlier and it's already there under an unexpected date; the account on file changed (did you or a helper update banking recently?); the bank posted it late in the day (many credit unions post federal deposits by 9 a.m., some banks not until afternoon); or — the one that matters — the deposit information on file was changed without your knowledge, which is a fraud problem, not a calendar problem, and Lesson 149's scam anatomy plus Lesson 152's recovery path exist for exactly that.

The order of operations when a payment is genuinely missing: wait through the end of the payment day, check the account history (not just the balance), then call your bank or card provider first — they can see an inbound federal payment pending or returned. If the bank shows nothing, call SSA at 1-800-772-1213 (weekdays 8 a.m.–7 p.m. local) or visit your field office by appointment; SSA can trace the payment, see where it was sent, and reissue a payment that went astray. Missing-payment traces are routine work for SSA — you're not accusing anyone of anything by calling, and calling *fast* matters if the cause turns out to be a rerouted deposit.

For most of the program's history, 'getting paid' meant a green Treasury check in the mailbox — and everything that came with it: theft from mailboxes, checks washed and altered, checks lost, checks a homebound person couldn't get to the bank. The government spent decades narrowing that channel. A 2013 Treasury rule made electronic payment the default and required nearly everyone to switch; a small paper population lingered for another decade; then Executive Order 14247 ended it — federal benefit checks stopped being issued after September 30, 2025, and through 2026 SSA has been completing the transition for the fewer than 1% of beneficiaries who still had paper. As of this writing (August 2026), the paper check is effectively a museum piece: new beneficiaries must choose an electronic method at application, and remaining check receivers are being moved.

The reasons are unsentimental. Treasury's own figures: a paper check is 16 times more likely to be lost, stolen, altered, or returned undeliverable than an electronic payment, and printing and mailing one costs about $3.07 — roughly 20 times the cost of a deposit. But the practical takeaway for you is the menu, and it has exactly two main items plus one narrow side door. Direct deposit — the payment lands in your own checking or savings account, at any bank or credit union you choose. Direct Express — for people without a bank account, a prepaid debit Mastercard operated for the Treasury that the benefit loads onto automatically each payday. And the side door: a Treasury waiver for the rare person who can genuinely use neither — living in a remote area without banking access, or with a mental impairment that makes electronic payments unmanageable. Waivers are requested from the Treasury (not SSA) at 1-877-874-6347, and they are granted narrowly — the realistic planning assumption for almost everyone is: your benefit will arrive electronically, so your job is choosing which rail.

Setting up direct deposit takes two numbers you already have: the bank's routing number (nine digits, identifies the institution) and your account number, both printed along the bottom of a check and shown in any banking app under 'account details.' You'll also say whether it's checking or savings. That's the entire requirement — SSA doesn't need your debit-card number, your online-banking password, or a voided check mailed anywhere. Hold that thought, because the short list of what SSA *actually* needs is one of your best scam detectors: anyone asking for more than routing number, account number, and account type is not doing a deposit setup.

Four legitimate channels, in rough order of convenience. The *my Social Security* account (Lesson 110's dashboard — sign in with Login.gov or ID.me): the direct-deposit tile lets you enter or change bank information in about five minutes, and it's the channel SSA itself steers people toward. Your own bank or credit union can start a Social Security direct-deposit enrollment for you — useful if you're opening the account anyway. The phone: 1-800-772-1213, where a representative makes the change after identity verification. A field office, by appointment (offices have been appointment-based since January 2025 — Lesson 4). If you're enrolling at application time, the deposit details are simply a screen inside the application itself — Lessons 106–109 all pass through it.

Timing, because it prevents the classic self-inflicted wound: a deposit change entered today does not move today's pending payment — depending on where you are in the payment cycle, the next payment may still go to the old account, with the one after landing in the new one. The rule that makes this harmless is the one Anita will follow with Manny below: never close the old account until you've seen a benefit payment actually arrive in the new one.

Luis Rivera has never kept a bank account — a working life of cash wages and money orders, and in his San Juan neighborhood the nearest branch has closed twice in a decade. Millions of beneficiaries are in some version of his position, and Direct Express is the program built for them: a prepaid debit Mastercard, operated for the U.S. Treasury by a contracted bank, onto which the benefit loads automatically on the normal payday — for Luis, his fourth Wednesday, the same day a bank deposit would land. No bank account is needed, no credit check is run, there's no sign-up fee and no monthly fee, and the card can't overdraft — you can only spend what's loaded.

Day to day, the card works like any debit Mastercard: groceries, the pharmacy, online bills, cash back at the register, cash at ATMs, and a phone and web portal to check the balance. A few services carry small fees (extra ATM withdrawals beyond the free allowance, paper statements, some replacement scenarios) — the current fee table lives on the card's official site, and the practical habit that keeps most cardholders at $0 in monthly fees is simple: take cash back at the register instead of the ATM, and use the free balance check before withdrawing. Enrollment is one call — 1-800-333-1795 (the Treasury's Go Direct line) — or at godirect.gov, or SSA can start it during any contact; the card arrives by mail and the benefit switches onto it.

The territory point, stated plainly because Luis lives it: the payment machinery is identical in Puerto Rico — same Wednesdays, same Direct Express, same direct-deposit rules, because retirement, survivor, and disability benefits are fully federal everywhere the flag flies. What differs in the territories is SSI — it doesn't operate in Puerto Rico at all (the *Vaello Madero* story from Lesson 86), which is why Luis, whose income would qualify him on the mainland, has no 1st-of-the-month deposit to go with his fourth-Wednesday one. The full territory map is Lessons 162–163.

Manny's bank was bought last year; the branch he'd used since the 1980s is now a smoothie shop, and the new owner's fees annoy him. Anita found him a credit union near her office. Moving his $2,200 monthly benefit there is genuinely easy — and it is also the exact operation that deposit-rerouting thieves perform, which is why the safe order matters more than the speed. Here is the whole procedure, the way Anita ran it.

They made the change through Manny's own *my Social Security* account — his Login.gov credential, his phone for the code, Lesson 110's setup paying off — though the phone line or a field-office appointment would have been equally safe. Why the paranoia about who initiates? Because a direct-deposit change is the single most valuable thing a scammer can do with your identity — one successful change and every future payment flows to their account until someone notices. SSA will never call, text, or email you to 'update' or 'verify' your banking; deposit changes happen only in channels you start. If a payment ever fails to arrive and the dashboard shows bank details you don't recognize, that's a compromised account: Lesson 152 walks the recovery (the money is traceable and SSA reissues), and the Scam Watch below gives you the reporting numbers. The one-line version to keep: you change your deposit; nobody changes it for you.

Two neighboring situations, so they don't get confused with a bank change. Helping a parent move a deposit — Anita's role here — is fine and ordinary; but if the day comes when a beneficiary can't manage the money at all, that's the representative-payee conversation, and it has its own lesson (113) and its own safeguards. And life changes that affect the *benefit itself* — moving, marriage, going back to work — carry their own reporting duties, which are Lesson 112's whole subject.

The scam this lesson exists to inoculate against is the most expensive one in the Social Security world: not tricking you out of one payment, but redirecting the pipe so every payment flows to a thief. It arrives as a helpful-sounding call, text, email, or lookalike website; it needs only your identity details and a few minutes of your trust; and its tell is always the same — *someone else* initiating a banking change. The card below is the whole defense.

One habit beats every variant of this scam at once: treat your banking details and your *my Social Security* login the way you treat your SSN (Lesson 150), and make deposit changes only in conversations you started — the dashboard, 1-800-772-1213, or an appointment. Anyone who contacts *you* about your deposit is either SSA (who won't ask you to move money or read out bank details) or a thief. There is no third category.

Three weeks after Manny's stroke hospitalization, the letters started: a balance the supplemental policy didn't cover, sold to a collection agency, and the newest letter uses the sentence that works on almost everyone — *'we may pursue garnishment of your income.'* Manny's income is his Social Security. So the question this whole half of the lesson answers, with a statute: can they?

No. Section 207 of the Social Security Act says benefits are not subject to 'execution, levy, attachment, garnishment, or other legal process' — in English: ordinary creditors cannot take Social Security money, before it's paid or after it lands in your account. Credit-card companies, hospitals and medical collectors, payday lenders, *private* student lenders, landlords with judgments, repo deficiency collectors — all of them are on the wrong side of Section 207. And a detail that surprises even lawyers' clients: winning a lawsuit doesn't change this. A collector can sue over a real debt, win, and hold a valid judgment — the judgment lets them go after other assets if you have them, but benefit money remains off-limits, and the protection follows the money into your bank account as long as it's identifiable as benefits (which is one of the two reasons the two-month rule below exists).

What most people get wrong here — and what collection letters are often *written* to make you get wrong — is assuming a threat implies a power. 'We may pursue garnishment' is technically true about paychecks and legally empty against Social Security; some letters even hint at 'federal benefit offset,' borrowing the government's vocabulary to imply reach they don't have. A private collector saying they'll garnish your Social Security is bluffing, and federal law is on your side, not theirs. That doesn't erase the debt (it can still age, be negotiated, or be handled in other ways — a legal-aid office or nonprofit credit counselor can help), but the monthly benefit itself is not on the table. Manny slept better the day Anita read him the statute's plain-language summary on SSA's own FAQ.

The shield has exactly three gates, all of them federal or family, and all of them operate at the source — the money is withheld before the payment ever reaches your bank, under defined limits. Everything below states 2026 rules.

Gate one: child support and alimony (plus court-ordered restitution to victims). Section 459 of the Act waives the shield for family-support obligations, and SSA itself withholds from the monthly benefit when a valid court or state child-support order arrives. Frank Osei, 58, in Dallas — a one-lesson example, defined here — receives $1,600 a month in SSDI and owes $400 a month in current support for his 15-year-old; Texas's child-support agency serves the order and SSA sends the $400 out of each payment. Federal law (the Consumer Credit Protection Act) caps how deep a support order can cut: 50% of the benefit if Frank were also supporting another spouse or child, 60% if not (his cap: $960), and 5% more — 55%/65% — where arrears run 12 or more weeks behind. His actual order is far below the ceiling, which is typical: the ceilings exist to keep even the deepest garnishment from taking a whole check.

Gate two: federal income taxes. The IRS can levy benefits for back taxes, and its automated route — the Federal Payment Levy Program (FPLP) — takes a flat 15% of each monthly payment until the debt clears. On Frank's $1,600 that would be $240; on a $1,800 benefit, $270. Note the sharp edge: FPLP has no protected floor — the 15% comes out even from a small check (a $700 benefit would still lose $105). The IRS sends warning notices before the levy starts, and the usual tax remedies (installment agreements, offers in compromise, hardship status) can stop or pause it — a reason to open IRS mail, not fear it.

Gate three: other federal debts — money owed to a federal agency, with defaulted federal student loans as the towering real-world example. Collection runs through the Treasury Offset Program, and this gate *does* have a floor: the offset is the lesser of 15% of the monthly benefit or the amount by which the benefit exceeds $750. Gilbert Mota, 64, a retired bus mechanic in San Antonio and Manny's old shop coworker, carries this one: a Parent PLUS loan he took for his daughter's college defaulted during the lean years after the shop closed. On his $1,800 benefit, 15% is $270 and the amount over $750 is $1,050 — the lesser is $270, leaving him $1,530. Now watch the floor actually bite on a smaller check: a beneficiary getting $850 would lose not 15% ($127.50) but only $100 — because $850 exceeds $750 by just $100 — and someone at $750 or below loses nothing at all. Congress set that floor in 1996 and never indexed it, which is its own quiet policy story. One honest 2026 status note: federal student-loan offsets have been paused and restarted repeatedly in 2025–2026 (a Department of Education pause announced in January 2026 was still unresolved months later) — the rule above is the standing law; whether collections are actively running in any given month is worth checking before panicking. And Gilbert's *private* card debt from the same lean years? Behind the shield with everyone else's.

Everything above — the shield *and* its three gates — describes Social Security benefits: retirement, survivor, and disability (SSDI) checks are all garnishable through the gates and only through the gates. Frank's SSDI can be garnished for child support exactly like a retirement check; Margaret's survivor benefit could meet an FPLP levy if she owed back taxes. The benefit family doesn't change the rules.

SSI is different, and absolutely so: nothing garnishes SSI. Not child support. Not the IRS. Not student loans. Nothing. SSI isn't a benefit earned by work — it's a needs-based payment calculated to bring a person to a subsistence floor, and the law treats taking any of it as self-defeating. So Rosa's SSI top-up is untouchable in full, and if Frank's payment were SSI instead of SSDI, even the family-support gate would be closed. For anyone juggling old debts on a tiny income, this distinction is load-bearing — it's also a detail collection agencies are famously careless about, which is one more reason to know your benefit type (your award letter and the *my Social Security* dashboard both state it).

Section 207 protects benefit money even after it lands in your account — but for decades that protection had a cruel gap: a creditor with a judgment would serve a garnishment order on the *bank*, the bank would freeze the whole account first and ask questions later, and a beneficiary who was legally untouchable would still spend weeks without grocery money while proving it. A 2011 Treasury regulation (31 CFR Part 212, refined in 2013) closed the gap with an automatic procedure — no forms, no assertion, no lawyer required. When a bank receives a garnishment order, it must look back two months from the day it processes the order, add up every federal benefit payment directly deposited in that window, and protect the lesser of that sum or the account balance — keeping it fully available to you, un-frozen, no matter what the order says.

Run it on Manny, supposing his hospital collector actually sued, won, and served his bank (they can serve the order; they just can't beat the math). The bank's review finds two direct deposits of $2,200 in the lookback window — $4,400. His balance that morning is $5,100. The bank must leave $4,400 fully available to Manny — his card works, his autopays clear — and only the $700 above it can be frozen for the court process. Had he been running the account down to, say, $3,900, *everything* would have been protected, because the balance would be the lesser number. Notice what makes the rule so strong: it doesn't ask whether the money is 'really' benefits — any balance up to two months of directly-deposited benefits is shielded automatically, even if you'd technically spent the benefit money and the balance was birthday cash.

Now the fine print, because a shield you overtrust is worse than none. First: the automatic rule protects accounts receiving direct deposits — it's triggered by the electronic benefit tag on the deposit. Move your benefit money to a *different* account (a savings account at another bank, a transfer to a joint account), and the automatic math no longer sees it — the money may still be protectable under Section 207, but you'd have to claim the exemption through the court, not enjoy it automatically. Keeping benefits in the account they're deposited into is the practical rule. Second: amounts above two months' worth aren't shielded by this rule even if they're all saved-up benefits — again, Section 207 still applies, but you must assert it (state exemption-claim forms exist; legal aid handles these constantly and usually free — findlegalhelp via your state bar, or the eldercare locator at 1-800-677-1116). Third, and consistent with everything above: orders from the United States government or a state child-support agency bypass the automatic protection entirely — the gates go through this wall too, which is exactly what you'd now predict. And Luis? His Direct Express card is the tidiest case in the lesson: everything on it is benefits by definition, so a garnishment order against the card account runs into a wall of 100% protected money.

Debt in retirement carries a shame it doesn't deserve — a stroke, a shop closing, a loan for a child's education are not moral failures, and neither is having believed a convincing caller. If any part of this lesson found a knot in your stomach, the card below is for that knot: what's still fixable (almost everything), and who helps for free.

The questions real beneficiaries ask about paydays and protection, in the forms they ask them.

• "When is my check paid each month?" By your birth date: born the 1st–10th → second Wednesday; 11th–20th → third Wednesday; 21st–31st → fourth Wednesday. SSI comes on the 1st; people receiving since before May 1997 (or getting both SSI and Social Security) are paid on the 3rd. Weekend or holiday → paid the business day *before*, never after.
• "Do I have to use direct deposit?" Effectively yes — paper checks ended with the September 2025 electronic-payment requirement. Your two rails are direct deposit into any account you choose, or the Direct Express prepaid card if you don't have (or want) a bank account. A narrow Treasury waiver exists for genuinely exceptional situations (1-877-874-6347).
• "How do I change my bank safely?" Open the new account first; make the change yourself through your *my Social Security* account, 1-800-772-1213, or a field-office appointment; keep the old account open until a payment actually lands in the new one; then close it and move your autopays. Never make a change because someone contacted *you*.
• "Can a creditor take my Social Security?" Almost never. Section 207 shields benefits from private creditors — credit cards, hospitals, payday lenders, private student loans — even if they sue and win. The only ways in: child support/alimony, federal taxes, and debts to the federal government (like defaulted federal student loans), each with defined 2026 limits.
• "What about child support or back taxes?" Those are the real exceptions. Support orders are withheld by SSA under CCPA caps (50–65% ceilings); the IRS's FPLP takes a flat 15% for back taxes; federal non-tax debts take the lesser of 15% or the amount of the benefit over $750 a month. All three come out before the money reaches your bank.
• "Is my bank account protected if someone gets a judgment against me?" Automatically, up to a point: your bank must protect the last two months of directly-deposited benefits (or your full balance, if smaller) — unfrozen and spendable — whenever a garnishment order arrives. Above that amount, or if you've moved the money to another account, the protection still exists under Section 207 but you have to claim it; legal aid does this free.
• "My payment didn't arrive — what do I do?" Check the date against the holiday rule (it may have come *early*), check the account history, call your bank or card provider first, then SSA at 1-800-772-1213 to trace and reissue. If the dashboard shows banking details you don't recognize, treat it as fraud immediately — Lesson 152.
• "Does any of this work differently in Puerto Rico or the territories?" The payment machinery — Wednesdays, direct deposit, Direct Express, all the protections — is identical everywhere. What differs is SSI, which doesn't operate in Puerto Rico, Guam, USVI, or American Samoa (Lessons 86 and 162).

Everything in this lesson compresses into two skills: mapping a birth date to a payday, and sorting a scary letter into *bluff* or *real gate*. The explorer below drills both — set a birth day and benefit type to see the payment day (it starts on Manny's March 9 and knows Luis's July 22), then aim different creditor types at the benefit and watch which bounce off Section 207 and which pass through a gate, with the 2026 limit computed on the example check.

The explorer works our named examples on 2026 rules — it never computes your own benefit, and a real garnishment or levy situation deserves a human: SSA at 1-800-772-1213 for anything about the payment itself, your local legal-aid office (free, and exemption claims are their bread and butter) for a frozen account or collector suit, and a nonprofit credit counselor for the underlying debt. If this lesson's fears are your daily reality, those calls are the next step, and none of them costs anything.

• Payment schedule (birth-date Wednesdays) — the rule since June 1997 that pays retirement/survivor/disability benefits on the second, third, or fourth Wednesday of the month according to whether the birth date falls on the 1st–10th, 11th–20th, or 21st–31st.
• Paid in arrears — each payment covers the month before the month it arrives; September's deposit is August's benefit.
• Direct deposit — electronic payment straight into your own bank or credit-union account; the default way benefits are paid (re-glossed from Lesson 110).
• Direct Express — the Treasury's prepaid debit Mastercard for beneficiaries without bank accounts: no credit check, no sign-up or monthly fee, benefits load automatically on the normal payday; federal payments only.
• Electronic-payment requirement — the rule (a 2013 Treasury regulation, completed by Executive Order 14247 effective September 30, 2025) that ended paper benefit checks; narrow Treasury waivers remain for exceptional circumstances.
• Section 207 — the Social Security Act provision shielding benefits from execution, levy, attachment, and garnishment by private creditors — before and after deposit.
• Garnishment — a legal process ordering that money owed to you (wages, accounts) be diverted to a creditor; against Social Security it works only through the three federal/family gates.
• Section 459 / child-support garnishment — the exception allowing benefits to be withheld for child support, alimony, and court-ordered restitution, within CCPA caps of 50–65%.
• Federal Payment Levy Program (FPLP) — the IRS's automated levy of a flat 15% of each monthly benefit for delinquent federal taxes; no protected floor.
• Treasury Offset Program (TOP) — Treasury's collection of federal non-tax debts (defaulted federal student loans, etc.) from benefits: the lesser of 15% or the amount of the monthly benefit over $750.
• The two-month rule (31 CFR 212) — the automatic bank procedure protecting the lesser of the last two months of directly-deposited federal benefits or the account balance when a garnishment order arrives; doesn't apply to orders from the U.S. or state child-support agencies.
• Treasury waiver — the narrow exception to electronic payment for people in remote areas without banking access or with qualifying impairments; requested from Treasury at 1-877-874-6347.