There is a second thing worth getting straight before you look at a payslip. Priority decides which instrument collects and in what order, and it is not a route to a smaller deduction.

Here is the sequence, what happens when a second creditor joins in, and what priority does and does not do to the total. The seven types of wage arrestment in Scotland sets out each instrument in the queue.

Only one diligence against earnings can operate against the same employment at a time. The exception is a current maintenance arrestment, which can run alongside an ordinary earnings arrestment.

The one-at-a-time rule

That rule sits in Part III of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987. A second ordinary creditor cannot stack another earnings arrestment on top of the first.

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. Whether you can have more than one wage arrestment at the same time goes through the combinations.

The maintenance exception

A current maintenance arrestment is the one recognised overlap, because it collects an ongoing liability rather than a fixed balance.

Its protected daily rate is £24.66, the same figure as the daily nil threshold in force since 6 April 2025. No interest accrues on maintenance arrears recovered that way.

The deductions that come from outside Scots law

A Child Maintenance Service deduction from earnings order and a DWP direct earnings attachment sit outside Scots diligence law, so the single diligence rule does not keep them out.

Priority orders first, then a direct earnings attachment, then non-priority orders. Four instruments share that top rank, and payroll works through them before anything else.

The sequence in full

The order is set out in the Department for Work and Pensions employer’s guide to direct earnings attachments, which is the guidance payroll departments follow.

Where a direct earnings attachment stops producing money

Where the priority orders already take 40% or more of your net earnings, no direct earnings attachment is deducted for that pay period. The employer still returns a nil schedule to the Department for Work and Pensions.

The attachment has not gone away when that happens. It produces nothing that period and starts producing again once the earlier deduction ends.

Who decides the sequence

Not your employer, and not you. If you think the order has been applied wrongly, ask payroll to show you the calculation, and how you know if you have a wage arrestment covers what to look for on the payslip first.

It can, and the reason sits in the definition of net earnings. Section 73(1)(d) of the 1987 Act takes a priority deduction from earnings order off before net earnings are worked out, so the tables are applied to what is left.

The statutory mechanism

A child maintenance deduction from earnings order can outrank an earnings arrestment. Section 73(1)(d) takes off, before net earnings are worked out, any deduction from earnings order that the child support regulations give priority over diligences against earnings, so the tables are then applied to what is left.

That is why the priority is not simply a payroll convention. What counts as net earnings for a wage arrestment sets out all four of the deductions that come off first.

Why it is put conditionally

The subsection makes the priority depend on the child support regulations giving that order priority over diligences against earnings. Where they do, the effect is built into the definition rather than being applied by anyone’s discretion.

What that means for the arrestment figure

The arrestment is still calculated in the ordinary way. It is calculated on a smaller starting figure, which is a different thing from a deduction being reduced on request.

No. Priority decides which instrument collects and in what order, and nothing in it gives anyone the power to reduce a Schedule 2 deduction because you cannot afford it.

What priority changes, and what it leaves alone

There is no hardship route against an earnings arrestment

Section 50 is the only review power over one, covering a declarator that the arrestment is invalid or has ceased to have effect, and a determination of a dispute about how it operates. Challenging a wage arrestment you think is wrong sets out both applications.

Neither limb carries an affordability ground. The unduly harsh test in sections 73Q and 73R applies where an arrestment attaches funds or moveable property, which an unduly harsh application explains, and it does not apply to wages.

So a sheriff cannot trim the figure

A sheriff cannot reduce a Schedule 2 deduction on the ground that it leaves you short. The routes that do work act on the arrestment itself rather than on its size, and the difference between a bank arrestment and a wage arrestment shows how differently the two are treated on this exact point.

The extra pound is separate

Your employer may take £1.00 per deduction as an administration charge, on top of the arrested amount. Ask payroll whether the £1 charge is shown separately.

They apply to the sheriff for a conjoined arrestment order. That consolidates the debts into one deduction, which the employer pays to the sheriff clerk for distribution.

What changes for payroll

Your employer runs one deduction rather than several, and the sheriff clerk splits the money between the creditors who are party to the order. What a conjoined arrestment order is sets out how one is applied for.

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

What does not change

The deduction is still worked out from the statutory tables against your net earnings. How much they can take from your wages sets out every band, all in force since 6 April 2025.

Checking the arithmetic on your own payslip

Start from net pay, because every arrestment figure is calculated from that rather than from gross. Monthly net earnings of £1,800.00 produce £172.50 under the tables in force since 6 April 2025, and how a wage arrestment is calculated on monthly pay works the figure through at other levels of pay.

A conjoined order does not change that arithmetic, only who receives the money. Why a wage arrestment can take more than you expected covers the usual causes of a figure that looks wrong.

There are separate floors and they do not work the same way. An earnings arrestment protects a fixed cash band with no percentage cap, while a deduction from earnings order and a direct earnings attachment each leave you at least 60% of your net earnings.

The floors side by side

The three floors do not merge

The 60% protection belongs to the child maintenance and benefit recovery world. It does not reach a Scottish earnings arrestment, where the top band takes 50% of everything above £3,750.00 a month or £863.06 a week, and whether a wage arrestment can take more than half your wages works that through.

Where the figures come from

The Scottish bands were substituted into Schedule 2 by the Diligence against Earnings (Variation) (Scotland) Regulations 2024, in force since 6 April 2025, and whether the tables change every April covers how often they move.

Look at the routes that stop an arrestment outright, because there is no application that shrinks one. Those routes act by operation of law rather than by negotiation.

The routes that act on the arrestment

An approved Debt Payment Programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme stops an existing earnings arrestment, freezes interest, fees and charges and blocks new diligence.

• Sequestration, including the Minimal Asset Process, ends an existing earnings arrestment, current maintenance arrestment or conjoined arrestment order on the date of sequestration.
• A protected trust deed does the same on the date of protection rather than the date of signing.
• A time to pay order, where the debt outstanding is £25,000 or less excluding interest, obliges the sheriff to recall an existing earnings arrestment. It is not settled whether an earnings arrestment on its own opens the door to an application.

Ask a money adviser or the sheriff clerk whether one is competent on your facts, and see how you stop a wage arrestment in Scotland for where each route sits.

What a moratorium does and does not reach

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 an earnings arrestment that was already running. Section 197(5)(d) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 lets a creditor carry on executing an earnings arrestment, a current maintenance arrestment or a conjoined arrestment order that came into effect before the moratorium began.

It does stop arrested funds being released to a creditor under section 73J of the 1987 Act, so it bites harder on a bank account than on a payslip. Whether a statutory moratorium can stop a wage arrestment sets the carve-out out in full.

Money already taken

Deductions made before any of those routes bites are credited against the debt rather than refunded, so check the position with the creditor. What happens to money already taken when a wage arrestment stops covers each route in turn.

Bring your last three payslips to that conversation. General guidance on debt and diligence sits on mygov.scot.