Updated August 7, 2026. Quick answer: what your home is protected for against a judgment creditor depends entirely on which state you live in, and the spread is enormous — from $3,500 in Michigan to unlimited in value in Florida and Texas. The two most generous states do not cap dollars at all; they cap acres, which is a different kind of limit and catches people who assume “unlimited” means unconditional.
20 states, read from the statute
| State | Protected amount | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| Alabama | $15,000 general; $56,400 if aged 62 or older or an individual with a disability | Ala. Code 6-10-2(a), as amended by Act 2026-203Act 2026-203 effective 2026-06-01, already in force. Only the elderly and disabled figure was increased; the general figure remains $15,000. |
| Arizona | $400,000 Indexed — confirm the current figure before relying on it. | A.R.S. 33-1101CPI-adjusted annually from 2024-01-01, rounded up to the nearest $100. One exemption per person or married couple. Sale proceeds protected for 18 months, but not refinance proceeds. |
| California | Countywide median sale price for a single-family home, floored at $300,000 and capped at $600,000 Indexed — confirm the current figure before relying on it. | Cal. Civ. Proc. Code 704.730The 2021 amendment replaced the old family/age-65/disabled tiers with one formula for all homeowners. CCP 703.140(b)(1) is a separate alternative system, not this one. |
| Colorado | $250,000; $350,000 where an owner, spouse or dependent is 60 or older or disabled | C.R.S. 38-41-201(1)(a)-(b)Amounts fixed by SB 22-086 (2022). The statute contains NO indexing clause – contrary to common assumption, these figures do not auto-adjust and require new legislation to change. |
| Florida | Unlimited in value | Fla. Const. art. X, sec. 4(a)Verified directly on flsenate.gov by the editor after the researcher’s fetch failed. The exemption inures to the surviving spouse or heirs under art. X sec. 4(b). The ad valorem tax homestead exemption is a different provision entirely. |
| Illinois | $50,000 per individual owner; $100,000 aggregate where two or more individuals own the property | 735 ILCS 5/12-901 |
| Kentucky | $5,000 | KRS 427.060Does not apply to mortgage foreclosure or purchase-money debt, or where the debt pre-existed the purchase or improvement. |
| Maryland | NONE against ordinary judgment creditors | Md. Code Ann., Cts. & Jud. Proc. 11-504(f)Maryland has NO general homestead exemption outside bankruptcy. Section 11-504(f) is a BANKRUPTCY-ONLY exemption pegged to the federal figure. Outside bankruptcy only the wildcard exemption applies. |
| Massachusetts | $125,000 automatic; $1,000,000 with a recorded written declaration | M.G.L. c.188, secs. 1, 4, 5The declared amount was raised from $500,000 effective 2024-08-06. Distinct allocation rules apply to joint tenants, tenants by the entirety, tenants in common and trust beneficiaries. |
| Michigan | $3,500 | Mich. Comp. Laws 600.6023(1)(h) |
| Minnesota | $510,000; $1,275,000 if used primarily for agricultural purposes Indexed — confirm the current figure before relying on it. | Minn. Stat. 510.02, subd. 1Indexed periodically per Minn. Stat. 550.37 subd. 4a. The effective year of the current figures was not separately isolated beyond the published text. |
| New York | $150,000 in Kings, Queens, New York, Bronx, Richmond, Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland, Westchester and Putnam counties; $125,000 in Dutchess, Albany, Columbia, Orange, Saratoga and Ulster; $75,000 elsewhere | N.Y. C.P.L.R. 5206(a)Continues after death for the surviving spouse and children – a survivorship continuation, not a larger figure. |
| North Carolina | $35,000; $60,000 for an unmarried debtor aged 65 or older whose residence was previously held with a now-deceased spouse or co-owner | N.C. Gen. Stat. 1C-1601(a)(1)The $60,000 tier is widow(er)-specific, not a general married-couple doubling. |
| Ohio | $125,000 Indexed — confirm the current figure before relying on it. | Ohio Rev. Code 2329.66(A)(1)(b)Adjusted every third year by the Ohio judicial conference for CPI, rounded to the nearest $25. |
| Oregon | $150,000 individual; $300,000 combined household. Lower figures of $40,000/$50,000 apply to child-support, spousal-support and restitution judgments Indexed — confirm the current figure before relying on it. | ORS 18.395(1)(a),(d)Indexed each July 1 by the State Court Administrator to CPI-U West Region, rounded to the nearest $100. |
| Pennsylvania | No dedicated homestead exemption. A general $300 exemption applies to any property. | 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. 8123(a)Tenancy by the entireties is a separate, non-statutory protection available to married co-owners against one spouse’s individual creditors. It is not a homestead exemption. |
| South Carolina | $50,000 per debtor; $100,000 aggregate cap on a single living unit | S.C. Code Ann. 15-41-30(A)(1) |
| Virginia | $5,000 general householder; $10,000 if aged 65 or older; PLUS $50,000 for real or personal property used as the principal residence; +$500 per dependent Indexed — confirm the current figure before relying on it. | Va. Code 34-4CPI-indexed every three years beginning 2027-04-01. An 8-year reuse limitation applies under the companion section 34-21. |
| Washington | The greater of $125,000 or the county median sale price of a single-family home in the preceding calendar year Indexed — confirm the current figure before relying on it. | RCW 6.13.030The county median is determined per county where the property sits, using Washington Center for Real Estate Research data or a designated successor. |
| Wisconsin | $75,000 (each spouse may claim separately) | Wis. Stat. 815.20(1)Resident owner-occupied. Extends to sale proceeds for 2 years if reinvestment is intended. |
What the table is, and what it is not
These are the 9 states whose operative text we read this session, each cell carrying its own citation. The remaining states are not included rather than estimated, and we would rather publish ten cells that are right than fifty that are mostly right.
Georgia is deliberately absent. Georgia publishes its Official Code through a commercial licensee rather than a free state website, and the legislature’s own site carries bills rather than the codified Code. We could not read the operative text on an official source, so there is no Georgia row. The figures circulating elsewhere may well be right; we simply did not verify them.
Texas carries a flag for an unusual reason worth stating plainly: the official Texas statutes site serves a JavaScript application that returns no statutory text to any automated read. Six attempts across two researchers and one editor, including the Texas Legislative Council’s own PDF, which has no extractable text layer for this article. The constitutional language is corroborated across reproductions and is almost certainly correct — but it was not read on an official page, so it says so.
Three things the dollar figure does not tell you
Unlimited is limited by area. Florida protects 160 contiguous acres outside a municipality and one-half acre inside one. Texas protects 200 rural acres and 10 urban. A large house on a small urban lot is comprehensively protected; a large holding is not, and the municipal boundary matters more than the value.
California indexes, and the answer depends on your county. Since the 2021 amendment the exemption is the countywide median sale price for a single-family home, floored at $300,000 and capped at $600,000. The old tiers for families, over-65s and disabled homeowners are gone — one formula now applies to everyone.
Pennsylvania has no homestead exemption at all. Its general exemption is $300, against any property. Married couples there rely instead on tenancy by the entireties, which is a different mechanism with different limits, and protects only against a creditor of one spouse alone.
The federal layer sits on top, and only inside bankruptcy
Everything above is state law against ordinary judgment creditors. Inside a bankruptcy case a further federal rule applies: a homestead interest acquired within the 1,215 days before filing is capped, whatever the state says. The codified figure in the statute is $125,000, and it is adjusted for inflation every three years, so the operative number is higher than the one printed in the Code. We are not publishing the current adjusted figure because we could not confirm it against the official notice this session — if your position is anywhere near the line, that number needs to come from the current Administrative Office notice for your filing date, not from any article.
The point of the rule is to stop someone moving to an unlimited-homestead state shortly before filing. Which is worth knowing before treating a move as a protection strategy: where people move for tax reasons and where they move for protection are not the same list, and the clock matters.
The line this page does not help you cross
Everything here describes protection that exists because you arranged your affairs before anyone had a claim against you. That is ordinary, lawful planning, and it is what exemption statutes are for.
Moving assets to defeat a creditor who already exists, or one you can reasonably foresee, is a different act with a different name. Courts call it a fraudulent transfer, or in the more modern phrasing a voidable transaction, and the remedy is that the transfer is undone — often alongside consequences considerably worse than the original debt. The two things courts look at are timing and intent, and a transfer made after the car accident, after the demand letter, or after the audit notice tends to answer both questions by itself.
We have not verified each state’s version of that doctrine for this page, and we are not going to summarise fifty of them from memory. The principle is what matters, and it does not vary much: protection is something you build in advance, not something you reach for once a claim has arrived. If a claim has already arrived, the person you need is a lawyer in your state, today — not a website.
Related
The other half of this system is retirement money, where the rules run the opposite way — strong federal protection and patchy state protection: IRA creditor protection by state and why a rollover can change what you are protected against. If a house is passing through an estate, creditors get a defined window to claim against it.
Each cell cites the constitutional provision or statute it came from, read on the state’s official legislature or constitution site except where flagged. Federal homestead cap from 11 U.S.C. § 522(p). Read August 2026. Exemption amounts change by amendment and, in several states, by annual or triennial index. This is a factual compilation of published statutes and constitutional provisions for planning purposes. It is not legal advice, exemption law is intensely fact-specific, and the difference between winning and losing an exemption fight is usually a detail no article can see. Confirm your own position with a lawyer licensed in your state.
Changelog correction, 7 August 2026. This page displayed an earlier “Updated” date than its last material change. The date is now correct. The cause was structural rather than careless: our edit discipline replaces a table or appends sections in place so that earlier verified work survives, and it was preserving the dateline along with it. On a page whose value is being current, that understates the very thing readers came for — so the rule now is that any change to a tracker updates its date in the same operation.
How this page is kept current
What moves it: Legislative sessions, and annual indexation where a state indexes. Homestead amounts are statutory and change less often than the tax figures on this site.
What we do not promise. There is no automated watcher behind this page. What exists is a dated register of changes we already know are coming, checked at every batch close rather than waited on, plus a re-read whenever we touch the page for another reason. We would rather describe that plainly than claim a monitoring cadence we do not run — a tracker that overstates its own maintenance is the thing this page class exists to avoid.
Cite this
Clear Money Guide, Homestead Exemption by State 2026. https://clearmoneyguide.com/homestead-exemption-by-state/. Each row states the statute or agency source behind it and the date it was read.
Archived, citable copy. This dataset is deposited with a permanent DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21762862. Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with attribution.
Why this table has 20 rows and not 51. Every row above was read from the state’s own statute or constitution and carries its citation. The remaining jurisdictions are not omitted because they lack a rule — they are omitted because we have not yet read the primary text for them, and we do not publish a figure we have not read. Held back at this revision pending confirmation: Georgia, Texas. The holes are the method working, and they close as the extraction continues.
Three different protections share one word
Added August 6, 2026. Most confusion about homestead exemptions comes from treating one word as one rule. States use it for three unrelated protections, and a state can be generous in one and offer nothing in another.
1. Creditor protection — how much of your home’s equity is beyond the reach of creditors, including in bankruptcy. This is the one with the famous unlimited-value states and the one this page’s table is mostly about.
2. Property-tax relief — a reduction in assessed value or a tax credit for an owner-occupied home, often with extra tiers for older owners, veterans or people with disabilities. Completely separate legislation, usually a different chapter of the code, and frequently requiring an application that people never file.
3. Protection at death — rights the surviving spouse or minor children have in the home, which in some states override what the will says. This is the one that surprises estate planners: in a handful of states a homestead cannot be freely devised away from a surviving spouse at all.
A state with an unlimited creditor homestead may offer almost no property-tax relief, and a state with generous tax relief may protect very little equity. Ask which of the three you actually need before comparing any numbers.
The federal opt-out, which decides whether your state number even applies
In bankruptcy the state figure is not automatically the operative one. 11 U.S.C. §522 gives debtors a federal exemption schedule — the federal homestead is “The debtor’s aggregate interest, not to exceed $15,000 in value, in real property or personal property that the debtor or a dependent of the debtor uses as a residence” (§522(d)(1); the figure is periodically adjusted) — but only “unless the State law that is applicable to the debtor… specifically does not so authorize” (§522(b)(2)).
That clause is the opt-out. A state may forbid its residents from using the federal schedule, in which case the state homestead is the only one available. Roughly two-thirds of states have opted out. So “my state protects $X” and “$X is what I get” are different sentences, and which applies depends on a choice your legislature made, not one you make.
The 1215-day trap on a newly bought home
The unlimited-homestead states are famous, and the federal cap on them is not. §522(p)(1): a debtor electing state exemptions “may not exempt any amount of interest that was acquired by the debtor during the 1215-day period preceding the date of the filing of the petition that exceeds in the aggregate $125,000 in value” in a residence, a residential cooperative, a burial plot, or property claimed as a homestead.
1,215 days is three years and four months. Move to an unlimited-homestead state, buy a house, and the state’s protection is capped at roughly $125,000 in bankruptcy until that clock runs out. The provision exists precisely to stop the move being a strategy, and it is the single most commonly missed fact about homestead planning. (A carve-out exists for a family farmer’s principal residence.)
Two related pages: IRA creditor protection by state runs on entirely different rules and is not a homestead question, and how domicile is actually established matters because §522(b)(3)(A) looks at where you were domiciled for the 730 days before filing.
Sources for this section
11 U.S.C. §522 — subsections (b)(2)-(3), (d)(1) and (p)(1) — read at Cornell LII on 2026-08-06. Dollar figures in §522 are adjusted periodically by the Judicial Conference; the figures above are the statutory text as published and the current adjusted amounts should be checked before relying on them. Per-state homestead amounts are set by state statute and are not federal.
See methodology and corrections. General information about published statutes, not legal advice; bankruptcy exemption planning is a lawyer’s job and the timing rules above are why.