What Is A Current Maintenance Arrestment?

It is not an ordinary wage arrestment and it is not a Child Maintenance Service deduction either. All three are worked out differently, and each has its own route for dealing with a problem.

Here is what a current maintenance arrestment does to your pay, why it is the one deduction allowed to sit beside an ordinary arrestment, and what ends it. The seven types of wage arrestment in Scotland sets the whole family of deductions out side by side.

How is a current maintenance arrestment worked out?

Your employer compares two figures and deducts the lower one: the daily maintenance rate multiplied by the days since the last deduction, or your net earnings above £24.66 a day across those same days.

The two figures your employer compares

The protected £24.66 is the same figure as the nil threshold in the daily table, substituted into Schedule 2 to the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 by the Diligence against Earnings (Variation) (Scotland) Regulations 2024, in force since 6 April 2025.

The comparison worked through on two levels of pay

Take a daily maintenance rate of £10.00 and a pay period of 30 days. The maintenance figure is £300.00.

On net earnings of £1,500.00 for that period, which is £50.00 a day, the earnings figure is £760.20. The lower of the two is the maintenance figure, so £300.00 comes off.

Drop the pay to £900.00 for the same 30 days and it is £30.00 a day. The earnings figure becomes £160.20, which is now the lower one, so that is what comes off instead.

Which pay figure the sum starts from

The starting point is net earnings as the Act defines it, not the amount that lands in your account. What counts as net earnings for a wage arrestment sets out the four deductions that come off first.

No interest accrues on maintenance arrears recovered this way. Keep the payslip for any period where nothing came off, so the record of the deductions is complete.

How is it different from an ordinary earnings arrestment?

An ordinary earnings arrestment recovers a fixed debt using the Schedule 2 tables and stops when the balance clears. A current maintenance arrestment collects a liability that keeps falling due, using a daily comparison instead of a table.

The two instruments side by side

The cash thresholds on the ordinary side are £750.00 a month and £172.61 a week, both in force since 6 April 2025. How much they can take from your wages sets out every band above them.

The 60% idea belongs somewhere else

The rule that you must be left with 60% of your net earnings belongs to Child Maintenance Service and Department for Work and Pensions deductions. What a deduction from earnings order is covers the maintenance version of that floor.

Neither Scottish arrestment works that way. A current maintenance arrestment protects a daily cash figure, and an ordinary earnings arrestment protects a cash threshold with no percentage cap above it.

Can it run at the same time as another deduction?

Yes, and this is the point that makes it unusual. A current maintenance arrestment is the one recognised exception to the rule that only one diligence against earnings can operate against the same employment.

The exception, and the rule it is an exception to

Two ordinary creditors cannot both serve an earnings arrestment on the same job. A second one has to apply for a conjoined arrestment order instead, which the sheriff clerk administers.

Maintenance is treated separately, so the two can sit on one payslip at once. Whether you can have more than one wage arrestment at the same time goes through the combinations.

What a conjoined arrestment order does to it

While a conjoined arrestment order is in force, it is not competent to execute a separate earnings arrestment or current maintenance arrestment against the same debtor’s earnings from that employer. The conjoined order is the deduction at that point.

Where it sits when other orders are also running

A current maintenance arrestment sits in the priority group that payroll deals with first, alongside a conjoined arrestment order, an earnings arrestment and a Child Maintenance Service deduction from earnings order. Which type of arrestment takes priority sets out the full running order.

Does interest get added to what you owe?

No. No interest accrues on maintenance arrears recovered through a current maintenance arrestment.

Why that makes the figure checkable

The balance is not quietly growing behind the deductions. That means your payslips and the daily rate in the order should reconcile with each other.

Keep the payslips covering each period. They are the record of what the daily comparison actually produced.

What to ask payroll if they do not reconcile

Ask which daily rate was applied and how many days the period was treated as covering. Ask which of the two figures came out lower, and what net earnings figure was used for the second one.

If the arrestment itself looks wrong rather than the arithmetic, that is a different problem. Why a wage arrestment can take more than you expected covers the usual causes of a figure that looks too high.

What brings a current maintenance arrestment to an end?

Sequestration, a trust deed becoming protected, or a conjoined arrestment order taking over. Each of those acts on the arrestment rather than on the maintenance liability behind it.

The routes, and where each one comes from

Changing jobs is not a way out of it

Section 47(2) ends an earnings arrestment when the employment ends, and the sources give that rule for an earnings arrestment. Ask a money adviser what happens to a current maintenance arrestment if you change employer.

The maintenance liability itself is untouched by a move. Whether you can stop a wage arrestment by changing jobs looks at that as a tactic and why it does not work as one.

Insolvency ends it by operation of law

Section 72(2) of the 1987 Act ends an existing earnings arrestment, current maintenance arrestment or conjoined arrestment order on the date of sequestration, with no application to make. Whether bankruptcy stops a wage arrestment covers what replaces it.

For a protected trust deed the trigger is the date of protection rather than the date you signed, under section 173 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016. Whether a trust deed stops a wage arrestment covers the gap in between.

Does a statutory moratorium stop a current maintenance arrestment?

Not one that was already running. Section 197(5)(d) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 names a current maintenance arrestment expressly among the things that stay competent where they came into effect before the moratorium period began.

What the carve-out says

Despite the prohibition on diligence in section 197(3)(b), section 197 keeps it competent to execute an earnings arrestment, a current maintenance arrestment or a conjoined arrestment order that came into effect first.

So a deduction that has already started keeps coming off through the six months. Whether a statutory moratorium can stop a wage arrestment works through what that means for an applicant.

What it does stop

A statutory moratorium gives six months of protection and you get one per rolling 12 months. It stops service of a charge for payment, stops new diligence and stops creditor petitions for sequestration.

It does not stop a creditor obtaining a decree, and interest and charges keep accruing throughout.

It bites harder on a bank account

A moratorium does stop arrested funds being released to the creditor under section 73J of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987, and the moratorium period is left out of the count for that clock.

That asymmetry is worth knowing if a creditor has gone at your account as well. The difference between a bank arrestment and a wage arrestment sets the two instruments against each other.

What can you do if the deduction is unaffordable?

Take advice on the maintenance itself rather than on the arrestment. There is no hardship or affordability route against a wage deduction of this kind.

Why the sheriff court route is so narrow

Section 50 of the 1987 Act allows a declarator that an arrestment is invalid or has ceased to have effect, and a determination of a dispute about how it is operating. Challenging a wage arrestment you think is wrong sets out what each application is for.

Neither limb is an affordability test. The unduly harsh provisions in sections 73Q and 73R reach arrestments over funds and moveable property, which an unduly harsh application explains, and they do not apply to wages.

The steps that do move the figure

• Ask payroll which daily maintenance rate it is applying and over how many days.
• Take the maintenance order itself to a money adviser, because the arrestment cannot be argued down on affordability.
• Deal with the other debts on the same payslip separately, so more of what is left stays yours.
• Get free advice before agreeing to anything you cannot sustain.

The routes that act on the other deductions

An approved Debt Payment Programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme stops an existing earnings arrestment for the debts in it, and freezes interest, fees and charges.

Where a sheriff makes a time to pay order, section 9(2)(a) requires recall of any existing earnings arrestment. The debt outstanding must be £25,000 or less excluding interest, and the sheriff must be satisfied an order is reasonable in all the circumstances.

It is not settled whether an earnings arrestment on its own opens the door to an application, so ask a money adviser or the sheriff clerk. Wider guidance on debt and diligence sits on mygov.scot.