Welcome to the Texas Parental Rights Association.

Child support DOES have a MAXIMUM % LIMIT under federal law.  If your child support amount is TOO high, then your child support order amount is illegal in violation of federal garnishment protection law, it is VOID, you owe *nothing* from such rogue order, and it (expressly by law) cannot be enforced.  If the court imputed income of ANY amount, that family support order is VOID, and it cannot be enforced.  These terms of law also apply to alimony orders, which are also "family support" orders.

The absolute maximum limit of any/all support orders against you is either 50% [you have a newer/other spouse/child also, besides the family unit of the C$/alimony order] or 60% [otherwise] of your actual, real, current "disposable earnings" - which for most people is simply their net paycheck after all normal federal, state and local taxes are withheld/deducted.  See federal law, 15 USC 1673, paragraphs (b) and (c).

Every State is supposed to have its own "equal or better" such garnishment protection statute (or statutes) too (see Sections 1675 and 1677).  As yet another federal funding scheme, the States all took the money and most did make their own CCPA state statutes, but the federal government never told the States WHERE to put those statutes....  Only just a few States put them in the right place, i.e., in direct proximity to domestic relations statutes, but MOST of the States ended up basically "hiding" their own state versions under completely different main titles of their own code, i.e., like under Trade law, or Commerce law, or Labor law, or similar main titles of law - far away from their family law code, so that not even experienced family law attorneys (let alone mere pro se parents) would ever even know that they existed....

For example, the State of Indiana enacted its own garnishment protection version at IC 24-4.5-5-105, under its Trade Regulation main title of law, and it is a nearly-verbatim copy of the federal CCPA language, merging several of the federal CCPA statutes into a single long state statute, but that Title 24 of the Indiana Code is found far away and completely separate from Indiana Code Title 31 ("Family Law and Juvenile Law"), so you could study Indiana's entire Title 31 and become an expert upon all family law and juvenile law matters within Indiana, but you would still never know about the maximum limits of child support amounts, ever, because that's only found far off in a completely different area (title) of law....  For the State of Maine, this whole same thing is found under Maine Revised Statutes, Title 9-A, § 5-105, which is all under the completely different title of law called "Consumer Credit Code" whereas Maine's family law is found a whopping seventeen (17) titles away from that title of state law....   For the Commonwealth of Virginia, it's once again the same thing.  Virginia Code, Title 34, Chap. 4, § 34-29 discusses those different percentage limits (50%/60%), discusses "disposable" earnings, and all of that same stuff again, including the same express prohibition against enforcement of violative support orders.  But Virginia Title 34 is "Homestead and Other Exemptions" which, again, is nowhere near the family law title.

There are only seven (7) different federal CCPA statutes that apply to garnishment and family support orders (15 USC 1671-1677), and they are all pretty short/simple, found here.  Indeed, in addition to the state courts, the federal courts have subject matter jurisdiction over constitutional validity of child support payments, and those can be unquestionably challenged in any federal court pursuant to 45 CFR 303.100(a)(3) and 15 U.S.C. § 1673(c) of the Consumer Credit Protection Act (CCPA), invoking the Department of Labor if necessary, because any order for garnishment of wages for purposes of support must comply with § 303(b) of the Act (which = 15 USC 1673(b) in the statutes themselves).  See, e.g., Voss Products, Inc. v. Carlton, 147 F.Supp.2d 892 (E.D. Tenn. 2001); Marshall v. District Court for Forty-First Judicial District of Michigan, 444 F. Supp. 1110 (E.D. Mich. 1978); and etc.

Again, almost every State actually does have its own (usually verbatim copy) version of the federal CCPA.  The trick for you is locating it, usually under Trade, Labor, Commerce, or similar title of your State's own law.  Repeating, the MAIN federal CCPA statute you are concerned about is 15 USC 1673, paragraphs b and c.

It's a pretty short statute which is required to be cited upon every Title IV-D IWO (income withholding order) "garnishment" order (the one sent to an employer to begin withholding).  Imputing ANY income is strictly illegal in IV-D and/or alimony orders pursuant to these federal Consumer Credit Protection Act laws, as it MUST be based only upon actual, real, ongoing income, the definitions of such "earnings" and "disposable earnings" are in adjacent statute 15 USC 1672, and the point is that for whatever amount of current ACTUAL income you have, even zero if unemployed for whatever reason, then the max total of any/all C$ and/or alimony order amount(s) that can be against you is 50%/60% of that disposable earnings amount (even if that is zero), or else such C$/alimony order is void, expressly by 15 USC 1673(c), and also expressly cannot be enforced. Id.  Likewise, if you earn regular income, but the total amount of [child support / alimony] order(s) against you exceeds that 50% or 60% of your disposable earnings, then whichever such order(s) finally put you "over the top" of that federal limit is/are void, and cannot be enforced, because there was no legally created debt (because they got too greedy in exceeding the max limits of federal law).  To clarify, even if you have multiple family court cases involving multiple other parents and children, the TOTAL of ALL combined support orders cannot exceed that 50%/60% of your actual disposable earnings.

The U.S. Dept. of Labor has "jurisdiction" over ALL wages/income in the U.S., of course, and pursuant to 15 USC 1676 has the legal responsibility to and "shall enforce" these wage garnishment provisions/protections.

The U.S. Dept. of Labor also has a lengthy "fact sheet" available which anyone interested in this subject should review, because it covers just about every "kind" of money there is, and whether or not that kind of money is deductible or not under the CCPA calculations (long story, go look), while this webpage gives State-by-State garnishment protection information, often with citation to the given State's law.

Moral of the story:  If your C$ and/or alimony amounts are fairly "reasonable" then look to argue under state law, state guidelines, and state etc., even just plain equity and reasonableness arguments, but if your C$ and/or alimony amounts are way too high versus your income - and if ANY amount was imputed - then look to federal law protections.

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