For agencies: sending an income withholding order or verifying employment for a support case

Applies to: child support agencies, courts, and government or social service offices that need to serve a withholding order on Ascen or confirm someone's employment. If you are the worker and a deduction has appeared on your pay stub, Wage garnishments and child-support withholding: what to expect is written for you.

Summary: Send income withholding orders and garnishment orders to garnishments@ascen.com. Employment and wage verifications are handled by Thomas & Company, not by Ascen support, and government agencies can often get an answer instantly through their portal.

Serving an order

Email the order to garnishments@ascen.com. That inbox is monitored by the team that applies withholding to payroll, and sending it there is faster than general support, which has to route it anyway. Include the worker's full legal name and the case or order number so it can be matched to a payroll record.

Ascen is the employer of record for the workers placed through our platform, so a valid order served on us is applied to that worker's pay. Withholding starts from the first payroll that can practically be adjusted after the order is processed, and amounts are subject to the federal limits on how much of a person's pay may be withheld.

Checking whether someone is employed

Ascen no longer completes employment and wage verifications directly. They are handled by Thomas & Company, including government and social service requests, and many agency requests can be answered instantly through their government portal at tncverify.com/login. Full instructions, including what to have ready, are in Employment and Wage Verification Requests. Sending a verification request to Ascen support will only delay it.

If you served an order and have seen no payment

Email garnishments@ascen.com and include the worker's full legal name, the case or order number, and the date you originally sent it. The most common reasons a payment has not appeared are that the person is not currently on an active assignment and so has no earnings to withhold from, that they were engaged as an independent contractor rather than as an employee, or that the order reached a different inbox. We can tell you which applies.

Useful federal references

• Wage garnishment (U.S. Department of Labor)

• Fact Sheet 30, limits on wage garnishment (U.S. Department of Labor)

• State and tribal child support agencies (Office of Child Support Services)

Rules on timing and priority vary by state, so check your own state agency for specifics.