Updated August 2, 2026. Quick answer: most states protect an IRA fully from ordinary judgment creditors, but not all of them, and the exceptions are not the states you would guess. California protects an IRA only to the extent necessary to support you in retirement — a judge’s assessment, not a dollar figure. And whether an inherited IRA is protected is a separate question that most state statutes simply do not answer.
18 states, read from the statute
| State | Protection from judgment creditors | Inherited IRAs | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arizona | Fully exempt No dollar cap. Contributions made within 120 days before a bankruptcy filing are excluded. | A.R.S. 33-1126(B)Roth: named (408A) · Inherited: expressly protected | |
| California | Limited Private and union employer plans are fully exempt. Self-employed plans and IRAs under IRC 408/408A are exempt only to the extent necessary for the debtor’s support in retirement – a discretionary, case-by-case standard, not a dollar cap. | Cal. Civ. Proc. Code 704.115Roth: covered by cross-reference to IRC 408A; the word Roth does not appear · Inherited: not addressed | |
| Colorado | Fully exempt No dollar cap stated. | C.R.S. 13-54-102(1)(s)Roth: named (408A) · Inherited: not addressed | |
| Florida | Fully exempt | Fla. Stat. 222.21Roth: covered by cross-reference to IRC 408A · Inherited: expressly protected | |
| Illinois | Fully exempt No dollar cap; the gate is good-faith intent that the plan qualify under the Internal Revenue Code. | 735 ILCS 5/12-1006Roth: generic IRA wording; no express 408A cross-reference found · Inherited: not addressed | |
| Kentucky | Fully exempt No dollar cap. Excludes contributions made within 120 days before a bankruptcy filing or before judgment or levy. Does not apply to maintenance or child-support orders. | KRS 427.150(2)(f)Roth: named by cross-reference (408A) · Inherited: not addressed | |
| Maryland | Fully exempt No dollar cap. The only carve-out is claims by the Maryland Department of Health. | Md. Code Ann., Cts. & Jud. Proc. 11-504(h)(1)Roth: named (408A) · Inherited: not addressed | |
| Michigan | Limited Contributions within 120 days before a bankruptcy filing are excluded, and the account is not exempt to the extent subject to a divorce property-division order. | Mich. Comp. Laws 600.6023(1)(j)Roth: covered by cross-reference to IRC 408a · Inherited: not addressed | |
| Minnesota | Limited Capped at $81,000 present value, plus additional amounts reasonably necessary for support. Does not apply to support-order debts. Whether the $81,000 is itself indexed was ambiguous in the source and is not asserted. | Minn. Stat. 550.37, subd. 24Roth: named · Inherited: not addressed | |
| Missouri | Limited No reasonably-necessary-for-support test. Exception for QDRO claims in dissolution or legal separation. | 513.430.1(10) RSMoRoth: named (408A) · Inherited: expressly protected | |
| North Carolina | Fully exempt | N.C. Gen. Stat. 1C-1601(a)(9)Roth: Roth retirement accounts appears verbatim · Inherited: expressly protected | |
| Ohio | Fully exempt Carve-out for assets deposited to evade a debt, plus child-support and certain restitution exceptions. | Ohio Rev. Code 2329.66(A)(10)Roth: the term Roth IRA appears verbatim · Inherited: expressly protected | |
| Oregon | Fully exempt Expressly includes IRAs and annuities under IRC 408 or 408A. A carve-out leaves 75 percent of the interest (or 50 percent of a lump sum) exempt, with the remainder reachable for support obligations. | ORS 18.358Roth: named (408A) · Inherited: not addressed | |
| Pennsylvania | Limited Recent contributions lose exempt status under a lookback the statute ties to a bankruptcy filing, and there is a contribution ceiling within a one-year period. The specific figures were captured by summarisation rather than a literal block quote and are NOT published. | 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. 8124(b)(1)(ix)Roth: expressly covered via IRC 408A · Inherited: not addressed | |
| South Carolina | Limited Protected only to the extent reasonably necessary for the support of the debtor and dependents – a needs-based standard, not an unlimited exemption. | S.C. Code Ann. 15-41-30(A)(13)Roth: named (408A) · Inherited: not addressed | |
| Virginia | Limited Unusually, Virginia sets the protected amount by CROSS-REFERENCE to federal bankruptcy law rather than stating an independent state figure – so the state-law answer tracks the federal cap for IRAs. | Va. Code 34-34Roth: named (408A) · Inherited: not addressed by that term | |
| Washington | Fully exempt No dollar cap. Exceptions for child-support collection and state tax collection. | RCW 6.15.020Roth: named · Inherited: not addressed | |
| Wisconsin | Fully exempt No dollar cap for ordinary debtors, but owner-dominated plans (90 percent or more benefiting owner-employees) are limited to what is reasonably necessary for support. Does not apply to child support, family support or maintenance orders. | Wis. Stat. 815.18(3)(j)Roth: not confirmed in the text read · Inherited: not addressed |
What this statute read informs. Protection differs between an employer plan and an IRA, which makes a rollover a protection decision as well as an investment one — and after a job loss that decision arrives early. Why the rule of 55 applies to the 401(k) only and the decision order at 55 to 62.
The California problem
This is the single most important cell in the table, because California is the largest state and its rule is the least like the others. Employer plans are fully exempt. IRAs are exempt only “to the extent necessary to provide for the support of the judgment debtor when the judgment debtor retires” and for dependents.
That is a standard, not an amount. It asks a court to decide how much you need, which means the answer depends on your age, your other assets, your earning capacity and the judge. A large IRA belonging to a 45-year-old with a good income is a very different case from a modest one belonging to a 68-year-old with nothing else. Anyone in California treating an IRA as categorically safe is relying on a rule their state did not enact.
Inherited IRAs are a separate question, and mostly an unanswered one
Four of the states here — Florida, Texas, Ohio and North Carolina — expressly address inherited accounts in the statute. The others do not, which does not mean unprotected; it means unaddressed, and an unaddressed question is one someone will eventually have to litigate. Under federal bankruptcy law the answer is settled and unfavourable: the Supreme Court held inherited IRAs are not retirement funds at all.
Two regimes, and almost every article confuses them
This table is state law, against ordinary judgment creditors, outside bankruptcy. There is a second, entirely separate system that applies inside a bankruptcy case, written in the federal Bankruptcy Code, where retirement funds get their own exemption and IRAs get their own dollar cap. The two regimes can reach opposite answers on the same account.
Which one applies to you depends on what is actually happening — a creditor with a judgment is not a bankruptcy — and, if it is a bankruptcy, on whether your state lets you choose the federal exemption list at all. Congress left that choice to the states. How the two systems interact, and why moving money between accounts can change which one protects you is the page that matters most here.
Georgia is absent for the same reason as on the homestead table: no free official source for the Code exists, so no cell is published.
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
Homestead exemption by state is the other half of the picture, and it runs the opposite way — enormous variation, no federal baseline outside bankruptcy. If a rollover is on your mind for other reasons, the fee side of that decision is a separate argument that points a separate way.
Each cell cites the statute it came from, read on the state’s official legislature site except where flagged. Read August 2026. Exemption statutes are amended regularly, and several states amended theirs after 2014. 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.
Archived, citable copy. This dataset is deposited with a permanent DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21762863. Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with attribution.
Why this table has 18 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, Massachusetts, New York, Texas. The holes are the method working, and they close as the extraction continues.