Wage garnishment limits in Bulgaria 2026: Art. 446 ГПК

With the amendment promulgated in State Gazette (ДВ) No. 55 of 2025, a new paragraph 3 entered Art. 446 of the Civil Procedure Code (ГПК), and the two paragraphs below it moved down: the former paragraph 3 became paragraph 4, and the former paragraph 4 became paragraph 5. The provision now has five paragraphs instead of four.

The practical consequence is mechanical, but unpleasant. A reference to Art. 446(3) of the ГПК has not become invalid; it has changed its content. Until the summer of 2025 that number held the exception for maintenance obligations, whereas today it holds the rule on the calculation base and on the floor of one minimum wage. Every template, internal methodology or commentary from before the amendment that points to paragraph 3 or 4 now points to a different rule, without this being apparent on a quick read. This analysis sets out the current version, shows where the new floor genuinely narrows the deduction, and separates what the text says from what has yet to be interpreted. All the cited provisions are reproduced verbatim from the consolidated versions on lex.bg.

What exactly changed with State Gazette No. 55 of 2025

The amendment touched neither the introductory sentence of paragraph 1 nor the three ranges in items 1 to 3. It inserted one new paragraph in third place and so pushed the whole numbering below it down. The comparison looks like this:

Legal framework: the introductory sentence and the three ranges

The logic of the provision begins with a threshold, not a percentage. The restrictions under paragraph 1 are triggered only if the income exceeds the minimum wage. Income equal to or below the МРЗ is not subject to deduction at all under this procedure.

The scope of the introductory sentence is wider than the heading suggests. It covers not only salary but any other remuneration for work, and pensions. From there the text works with three ranges, in each of which the share differs according to whether the debtor supports children.

Note the change of technique in item 3. The first two items work with a fraction of the income, while the third abandons fractions and works with the excess over a fixed multiple. This is not a stylistic difference: under item 3 what is left for the debtor is fixed at two, or two and a half, minimum wages, however large the income is.

The calculation base: paragraph 2 and the new paragraph 3

The base is net. Paragraph 2 is categorical and was not changed by the 2025 amendment.

The new paragraph 3 adds two separate rules to this net amount in one sentence. The first answers the question of what the fraction is applied to. The second introduces an absolute floor.

The first rule fixes the base: the fraction is applied to the full amount of the income after the deductions under paragraph 2, and not to the excess over the minimum wage. The difference is not technical. With a net income of €1,000, one third of the full amount makes €333.33, whereas one third of the excess over the МРЗ would give €126.60. The text now points to the first calculation expressly.

The second rule is the floor. That the minimum wage acts as a mandatory limit has been argued in Bulgarian legal writing since 2012, when Rumen Nekov defended the thesis in Предизвикай правото! (Challenge the Law!), that the limit also applies to all three kinds of claim under Art. 446(1) of the ГПК. The thesis was formulated 13 years before the amendment and rests on the text then in force; today the question is no longer derived by interpretation but is stated expressly in the law for the cases in items 1 and 2.

When the floor of one МРЗ genuinely narrows the deduction

This is the practical value of the new paragraph, and it is narrower than it appears at first sight. The floor matters only when the fraction would leave the debtor with less than one minimum wage. That happens in a precisely defined interval, which can be derived arithmetically.

For income under item 1 without children, one third is deducted, that is, two thirds remain. Two thirds of the income equal one МРЗ when the income equals one and a half МРЗ. Below that value the floor is triggered and reduces the deduction. For income under item 1 with children, one quarter is deducted, three quarters remain, and the equalisation occurs at an income equal to four thirds of the МРЗ.

In the range of item 2 the floor is not triggered at all. Half of an income that by definition is at least two МРЗ is never below one МРЗ. Under item 3 at least two МРЗ remain for the debtor anyway. The calculation also explains why the text of paragraph 3 speaks only of items 1 and 2: in the other cases the floor would have nothing to do.

With a minimum wage of €620.20 from 1 January 2026, the thresholds look like this:

Applied to specific numbers, for a debtor without children the effect is seen immediately:

The only row where the new paragraph 3 changes the result is the second. Under the old text the deduction at a net income of €800 would have been €266.67 and the debtor would have been left with €533.33, that is, below the minimum wage. Today the deduction shrinks to €179.80.

Maintenance: paragraphs 4 and 5

The two paragraphs that changed their numbers regulate maintenance (издръжка) from its two sides. Paragraph 4 says what happens when maintenance is the claim being collected.

The mechanics here are two-stage. The maintenance awarded is deducted in full, outside the restrictions of paragraph 1. Only on the remainder of all income are the restrictions of paragraph 1 applied for the other obligations, and also for maintenance obligations for past time. That is, current maintenance and overdue maintenance are treated under different procedures.

Paragraph 5 looks at maintenance from the opposite side: as a claim of the debtor.

Protected income in a bank account: Art. 446а of the ГПК

The protection of Art. 446 of the ГПК would be easy to circumvent if it ended at the cash desk. Art. 446а, created by State Gazette No. 86 of 2017, carries it over to the bank account, but with an express time limit.

The one-month window is the essential limitation. Receipts older than one month before the garnishment (запор) was imposed do not carry the protection with them, even if their origin is undoubtedly protected income.

Paragraph 3 leaves the assessment to the bank itself. When the basis of the receipt shows remuneration for work, the bank does not enforce the garnishment up to the amount of the МРЗ, and the text does not make this depend on an instruction from the enforcement agent.

Waiver of protection and deductions by the employer

The protection under Art. 444 and Art. 446 of the ГПК is not dispositive. The debtor's consent, entered in a contract, settlement or declaration before the creditor, has no effect.

The restriction also operates outside the enforcement process. The employer has no freedom of its own over deductions: the ceiling up to which it may deduct is the one in the ГПК.

The combination of the two provisions has direct application in labour disputes. Paragraph 2 of Art. 272 of the КТ makes no distinction by the ground for the deduction, but sets a general monthly ceiling established by the ГПК. An employee's consent does not widen this ceiling, insofar as Art. 447 of the ГПК declares a waiver of the protection invalid.

Alongside income, the ГПК also protects certain property. Art. 444 lists the items against which enforcement cannot be directed, and Art. 445 sets out the cases in which that protection falls away. The most common of them is security created in favour of the creditor itself.

The same question under the ДОПК: why the public enforcement agent counts differently

When the claim is public, the applicable provision is not Art. 446 of the ГПК but Art. 213 of the Tax and Social Security Procedure Code (ДОПК). The two regimes are often mixed up in correspondence, and their result differs, in favour of the debtor in public enforcement.

The practical consequence is that where enforcements compete over the same income, the two protected minimums do not coincide, and the data they depend on are updated in different ways: one by a separate act on the МРЗ, the other quarterly, with the publication of the official statistics.

Application in time: § 17 of the transitional provisions

The amendment carries its own transitional rule, which deserves attention precisely because it was not written with the enforcement process in mind.

Three places where the text is silent

Beyond the transitional regime, the new wording leaves a few more rough edges that practice has yet to smooth out.

Checklist for working under Art. 446 of the ГПК

Conclusion

The amendment in State Gazette No. 55 of 2025 does not redraw Art. 446 of the ГПК. It closes an old dispute about the calculation base, introduces a floor whose real field is a narrow interval in the case of item 1, and moves two paragraphs down. It is precisely the last of these that carries the greatest risk in day-to-day work, because it is not visible on a quick read and survives in templates long after promulgation.

The rest is the familiar construction: a net base, three ranges, absolute protection of maintenance, carrying protected income over to the bank account within one month, and invalidity of any waiver of this protection. The neighbouring regimes remain independent: employer deductions under Art. 272(2) of the КТ follow the limits of the ГПК, while public enforcement moves along its own, more generous threshold in Art. 213 of the ДОПК.

Related material on the system of enforcement proceedings and the structure of the code can be found in the analysis ГПК 2026: Structure of the Civil Procedure Code, and on appealing the court's actions in appeal proceedings in Appeal under the ГПК: deadline, content and practice 2026.

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