When a creditor’s garnishment order reaches a bank with no federal benefits notice attached, a federal rule gives the bank two business days to look at the account and set aside the benefit money inside it. Treasury’s rule at 31 CFR Part 212 covers payments from Social Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Railroad Retirement Board and the Office of Personnel Management. What the bank must leave alone is the lesser of two months of those payments posted to the account or the balance on the day of the review.

The two-day review and what it protects

The rule starts a clock when the bank receives an order. Under section 212.5(a), the account review is due no later than two business days after the bank receives the order and enough information to identify the account holder. The review looks back over what the rule calls the lookback period: the two months that begin on the date before the review and end on the matching date two months earlier.

The amount the bank must protect is defined as “the lesser of” two numbers. One is the total of all benefit payments posted to the account during that lookback period. The other is the account balance when the review is done. A person with $3,000 in posted benefits over two months and a $1,800 balance has $1,800 protected; a person with $3,000 in posted benefits and a $6,000 balance has $3,000 protected. Those figures are an illustration of the formula, not numbers from the regulation.

Once the amount is set, section 212.6 says the bank cannot freeze it because of the garnishment order and must give the account holder “full and customary access” to it. The account holder does not have to claim a garnishment exemption first. A protected amount is “conclusively considered to be exempt from garnishment under law.”

For someone whose account is frozen and who receives federal benefits, the question is what is protected, and the rule answers it in layers. Benefits from the four named agencies that posted in the two-month lookback are protected up to the account balance. Money above that amount is not covered by the rule, and section 212.6(d) says the bank handles it under its usual garnishment procedures, which can include a freeze. Only one review is done for a given order, so a re-served copy of the same order does not start a new one.

An account frozen over a garnishment order can hold two months of Social Security or VA deposits that the bank is required to release. The Bank Account & Debt Protection Kit includes the 2-month bank protection rule and the frozen-account response, so the first call to the bank is made with the rule in hand.

Open the frozen-account response in the debt protection kit →

The carve-out: orders that arrive with a federal notice

The two-day review does not happen for every order. The rule’s section 212.4 tells a bank to check each garnishment order, no later than two business days after receiving it, for an attached Notice of Right to Garnish Federal Benefits. If the notice is attached or included, the bank follows its “otherwise customary procedures for handling the order” and skips the review. If the notice is not attached, the bank follows the review and protection steps in sections 212.5 and 212.6.

The practical consequence is that the headline protection is conditional. An order without the notice triggers the two-business-day review and the protected amount. An order with the notice does not.

What happens after the review

The bank owes the account holder a notice in some cases. Under section 212.7, notice is required when a benefit payment arrived in the lookback period, the balance was above zero at the review and the funds exceed the protected amount. The notice is due within three business days from the date of the account review.

The bank also cannot keep garnishing later deposits. After the review date, section 212.6(g) bars it from continually garnishing or freezing amounts deposited to the account unless it receives a new or different garnishment order. A new order against the same account holder triggers a fresh review.

Fees get a narrow exception. The rule says the bank may not charge a garnishment fee against a protected amount. It may charge a fee up to five business days after the review only if non-benefit funds are deposited in that window, and the fee cannot be more than those non-benefit funds.

A rule that has not changed since 2013

The Part 212 text on eCFR shows Title 31 as up to date as of October 8, 2026, with no changes to the content after January 3, 2017. Its source citations are 76 Federal Register 9955, published February 23, 2011, as amended at 78 Federal Register 32109 on May 29, 2013. The scope is limited to the four agencies named in the rule, so benefits paid by another source are outside it.

First moves on a frozen account

The free official text is Treasury’s Part 212 on eCFR, which shows the lookback definition, the protected amount, the review timing and the account-holder notice. Anyone with a frozen account can start by finding the notice the bank was required to send within three business days of the review, because it states what the bank treated as protected.

The deposits themselves are the evidence. Bank statements for the last two months showing the Social Security, VA, Railroad Retirement or federal retirement payments make it possible to compare what the bank protected against what the rule defines. If the balance on the review date was lower than two months of benefits, the whole balance should be accessible. If the balance was higher, the rule protects the benefit total and leaves the rest to ordinary garnishment.

The timing, the formula and the carve-out all trace to sections 212.4 through 212.7 of the Treasury rule.

Two months of benefits in a frozen account

A bank that freezes an account without setting aside the protected amount can leave benefit money out of reach for weeks, and the account holder is often left to prove which deposits are exempt. The Bank Account & Debt Protection Kit lays out the 2-month bank protection rule and the frozen-account response in order, with a debt inventory, call log and deadline tracker for keeping the dates straight.

Use the two-month rule and call log in the Bank Account & Debt Protection Kit →

This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.