Attachment Of Earnings

Also known as an AEO, an Attachment of Earnings Order is a scenario where your creditor(s) apply to the court for a legal order to take funds directly from your wages to repay outstanding debts you have with them.

An Attachment Of Earnings will mean your employer will become aware of your financial problems.

The order tells your employer to make deductions from your wages in order to pay the debt. Your employer then sends the money to the court.

When your creditor applies for the order, you’ll receive an N56 form from the Court. You’ll be required to supply information such as:

• Your name, address and number of dependants.
• Your employer’s details.
• Your income and outgoings.
• Details of any other debts and Court orders you may have.

Important: An Attachment Of Earnings will mean your employer will become aware of your financial problems.

Can an Attachment of Earnings Order Be Stopped?

In exceptional circumstances, you are able to apply for a suspended order which would stop an Attachment of Earnings order. 

Once your creditor has applied for the order to the courts, you will receive a ‘replying to an attachment of earnings’ application. This is also known as an ‘N56’ form, and this is official notice that your creditor has applied to receive repayments from your wages.

To suspend the order, you need to fill in the reply form. To do this, you can tick the box that asks for the order to be suspended if it is going to cause hardship financially (e.g. cannot afford to pay essential bills) or you could lose your job . This is officially called a ‘Suspended Attachment of Earnings Order’.

Once you have ticked this box, you must provide the reason that you need the order to be stopped.

You must also notify your creditor that you will be applying for a suspended attachment of earnings order, and provide them with the reasons that you are taking this course of action as well as any debt advice that you might be receiving. If you have already done this prior to filling in the reply form, and they have come to an agreement with you on an alternative method of repayments, you need to state this on the form. You should also notify the court that you are receiving debt advice.

Some formal debt solutions such as an IVA, Bankruptcy or DRO would also result in the AOE being stopped once you enter into them. This is because the premise of these Insolvency solutions is that all of your creditors are treated equally. If one of your creditors has an AOE granted then that would mean they are treated preferentially. Upon entering a formal debt solution, this would be addressed and the AOE would need to be stopped. 

You must supply the requested information.
You’ve 8 days to get the form back to the Court. It’s an offence to provide false or incomplete information. Eventually you will be summoned to the Court to explain why you’ve not supplied the information and could go to prison should you fail to attend.

If you have child maintenance arrears, the Child Support Agency (CSA) or Child Maintenance Service (CMS) don’t have to apply to Court for an order to take money from your wages. They can make one themselves. This order is called a deductions from earnings order.