The federal 25% limit on garnishing earnings does not stop a Florida court from withholding more to enforce alimony that comes from a marital settlement agreement incorporated into the divorce judgment, the Fourth District Court of Appeal held on October 7, 2026. In Kennedy v. Kennedy, Nos. 4D2025-2845 and 4D2026-1196, the court affirmed income withholding orders that took 65% of the former husband’s Social Security payments for past-due alimony. Judge Gross wrote the opinion, and Judges May and Ciklin concurred. It is not final until any timely rehearing motion is decided.
The background
The 2003 final judgment approved the parties’ settlement agreement and incorporated it by reference, but said it “shall not merge” into the judgment. It ordered the parties to comply with all of its provisions and reserved jurisdiction. The agreement required alimony of $15,000 a month, stepping down over time to $5,000 a month until the husband turned 65, and made it non-modifiable. The husband was an attorney then. The Social Security Administration found him disabled in 2013. A 2017 money judgment set alimony arrears at $240,000. In 2020 the trial court entered an income withholding order garnishing 65% of his disposable earnings, and in 2026 it entered a second money judgment of $500,724.74 and an amended order at 65%.
The argument
Under 15 U.S.C. § 1673(a)(1), garnishment is generally capped at 25% of disposable earnings. Section 1673(b)(1)(A) lifts that cap for “any order for the support of any person issued by a court of competent jurisdiction or in accordance with an administrative procedure, which is established by State law, which affords substantial due process, and which is subject to judicial review.” Section 1673(b)(2) sets higher limits of 50% to 65%. The husband argued that his alimony came from an agreement, not a court order, and was non-modifiable, so it was not a support order that met the exception. He relied on Naedel v. Naedel, 693 A.2d 60 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1997), which reached that result for a non-modifiable obligation under an incorporated but unmerged agreement.
Why the Fourth District disagreed
First, it read the statute differently. Because Congress added the administrative-procedure language in 1977, and under the rule of the last antecedent, the clause “which is established by State law, which affords substantial due process, and which is subject to judicial review” modifies only “an administrative procedure,” not court orders. Second, Florida law lets a court enforce an incorporated settlement agreement as a judgment where it reserved jurisdiction, citing Paulucci v. General Dynamics Corp., 842 So. 2d 797 (Fla. 2003), and Webb v. Webb, 302 So. 3d 1039 (Fla. 2d DCA 2020). The judgment here incorporated the agreement, ordered compliance, reserved jurisdiction and came from a court of competent jurisdiction. The court wrote that it could not “conceive of a clearer expression” of a support order. It found Naedel unpersuasive.
A procedural point
The husband had appealed the 2020 order before and lost without a ruling on this issue. He raised the federal-cap argument only in his reply brief, which the court said it would not have considered. So the law-of-the-case doctrine did not bar the argument now.
What the ruling leaves open
The husband did not argue that the limit should be 55% under § 1673(b)(2) because he supports another spouse or a dependent child, so the court did not address it. The opinion decides the federal-cap question only.
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