Services / Enforcement and asset recovery
Attaching wages, and what cannot be touched
The question asked most is how much of a salary can be attached. The answer is not a fixed percentage, as many assume, but a floor protected in baht, and the protection is not the same for public and private employment.
The section number has changed
This used to sit at section 286 of the Civil Procedure Code, and a great many websites still cite that number. The provision in force is section 302, which changed both the protected amounts and who fixes them. Reading the older material therefore gives entirely the wrong figures.
State salaries cannot be attached
Section 302(2) exempts the salary, wages, pension, gratuity, allowance or similar income of officials, officers and employees of government bodies from execution. No ceiling qualifies it: the protection covers the whole amount, and extends to relief, pension or gratuity paid by a state body to their surviving spouse or relatives.
Private employment is protected to twenty thousand
Section 302(3) protects the salary, wages, pension, indemnity, relief or similar income of employees and workers other than those in (2), up to a combined twenty thousand baht a month, or such amount as the execution officer thinks fit. What may be attached is the excess above the protected amount, not a proportion of the whole.
Gratuities and severance have their own cap
Section 302(4) protects a gratuity, severance or similar income of a person within (3) up to three hundred thousand baht, or such amount as the execution officer thinks fit. A debtor who has just been dismissed and received a lump sum is therefore not automatically stripped of all of it.
Disputing the amount fixed
The fourth paragraph of section 302 allows the judgment creditor, the judgment debtor or an interested third party who disagrees with the amount fixed by the execution officer to apply to the court within fifteen days of learning of it. The closing paragraph further allows a fresh application where the debtor's circumstances of living have changed.
Property that cannot be seized
Its companion is section 301, listing property exempt from execution: clothing, bedding, household and personal effects up to twenty thousand baht per category; animals, tools and equipment necessary to earn a living up to one hundred thousand baht in total; equipment assisting or replacing a bodily function; property strictly personal in character; and property that cannot be transferred by law.
PREPARE
What to bring
- The judgment and the writ of execution
- The debtor's employer and bank account details so far as known
- The attachment notice you received, if you are the one attached
- Evidence of family circumstances and dependants
- Recent payslips
QUESTIONS
Questions this raises
Is it thirty per cent?
No. Section 302 is not written as a proportion but as an amount protected: for private-sector employees, a combined twenty thousand baht a month, or such amount as the execution officer thinks fit. The percentage people quote is a summary of older practice, not the wording of the provision in force.
I am a civil servant but my bank account has been attached.
The exemption in section 302(2) speaks of salary and similar income paid by a state body. Money already in an account and mixed with other funds raises a separate question that turns on the facts. Evidence of where the money in the account came from therefore matters a great deal here.
LAW
The legislation
- Civil Procedure Code, sections 301 and 302
ENQUIRIES
