Hawaii Garnishment Routine (HIGR)

When an employee is selected for payroll processing and the Hawaii Garnishment (HIGR) special routine is used, all deductions are reviewed to determine the order and allocation of the ordered withholdings before processing continues.  

This deduction routine first calculates the Minimum Protected Wage Amount from the employee’s disposable wages.  If the result is zero or negative, garnishment processing is discontinued as there are no wages available for processing.  If the result is positive garnishment processing continues.  

The deduction routine next reviews the employee’s processed deductions in order to identify if any child/spouse support payments were processed.  If no support payments have been made the routine sets the Adjusted Non-Support Garnishment Amount equal to the lesser of the Max Non-Support Garnishment Amount and the Amount Available for Garnishment.  

• If child/spouse support payments have been made the routine totals the support garnishment amounts.  The total support garnishment amount are compared to the Max Non-Support Garnishment Amount.  

• If the total support garnishment amount is greater than or equal to the Max Non-Support Garnishment Amount, then garnishment processing is discontinued as the withholding exceeds the maximum withholding allowed for non-support garnishments.

• If the total support garnishment amount is less than the Max Non-Support Garnishment Amount, then the program calculates the Adjusted Non-Support Garnishment Amount.  The Adjusted Non-Support Garnishment Amount is determined as follows.

• The Max Non-Support Garnishment Amount is compared to the Amount Available for Garnishment.

• If the Max Non-Support Garnishment Amount is less than or equal to the Amount Available for Garnishment, the Adjusted Non-Support Garnishment Amount is equal to the Max Non-Support Garnishment Amount minus the total amount of support deductions.  If the resulting amount is negative or zero, garnishment processing is discontinued as all available wages have been garnished.  If the resulting amount is positive, additional garnishment processing continues.

• If the Max Non-Support Garnishment Amount is greater than the Amount Available for Garnishment, the Adjusted Non-Support Garnishment Amount is equal to the Amount Available for Garnishment minus the total amount of support deductions.  If that resulting amount is negative or zero, garnishment processing is discontinued as all available wages have been garnished.  If the resulting amount is positive, additional garnishment processing continues.

The remaining garnishments are processed by Deduction Processing Order Number until available wages have been depleted or all garnishments have been processed, using the Hawaii processing rules.  

For additional information on the data setup required for processing multiple garnishments, please refer to the "Multiple Garnishments" topic.