LLC asset protection by state: the chart everyone publishes is wrong

Search for a state-by-state LLC asset protection chart and you will find the same list recycled across a hundred sites: Wyoming, Nevada, and Delaware strong, California weak, everyone else somewhere in the mushy middle. That list is wrong in at least six states, and not on details. It omits what may be the strongest charging order statute in the country, asserts protection New Jersey repealed in 2013, misses coverage Texas added in 2023, and describes a New Mexico recodification that never happened.

For a single state’s full breakdown, see the state directory.

The standard state-by-state protection chart is wrong in at least six states, because it is copied from other charts instead of read from the statutes.

This page is the verified version. Every tier assignment below comes from reading the state’s charging order statute directly, and every row links to that state’s full protection page, where the statute is quoted and the reasoning shown. All fifty states and the District of Columbia are verified, each tier read from a statute directly; where a specific point has not been confirmed, the row says “not yet verified” instead of guessing. If you want the doctrine first, what a charging order is and whether an LLC protects you at all are the places to start; this page assumes those and compares.

One warning before any table, because it is the finding that survives every comparison on this page: charging order protection is not portable. A creditor enforcing a judgment where you live applies that forum’s procedure, which is how a New York court took an entire Delaware LLC in 2024 without Delaware’s statute ever entering the case. The chart tells you what each state’s law says. Where you live decides whose law gets applied.

Read every tier below through one filter: the strong statute only protects you where it is the law being applied.

The charging order tiers, verified

Strong means the statute makes the charging order the exclusive remedy and bars foreclosure of the interest. Middle means exclusivity with foreclosure still available inside it. Weak means no exclusivity, so the charging order is an opening move rather than the whole game. Two states refuse the tiers entirely, and are labeled accordingly.

State	Statute	Tier	The one-line reality
Wyoming	17-29-503	Strong	Strongest in the classic set, and the 10-year expiration you have read about does not exist in the statute.
Ohio	1706.342(F)	Strong	Arguably the strongest text in the country, and it appears on no published strong-state list.
South Dakota	47-34A-504	Strong	Exclusivity, foreclosure barred, and the statute extends it to single-member companies in plain words.
Texas	101.112	Strong	Bars foreclosure under “any other law,” with single-member coverage added by statute in 2023.
Alabama	10A-5A-5.03	Strong	Exclusive remedy with foreclosure expressly barred and no single-member carve-out, elite tier, though the protection is tied to forming in Alabama.
Oklahoma	18-2034	Strong	Sole and exclusive remedy, no foreclosure, and the statute protects the single member by name, elite tier with Wyoming and Nevada.
Kansas	17-76,113	Strong	Exclusive remedy with foreclosure barred, and the statute protects the single member by name and shields the LLC’s property, elite tier and strong on the home too.
Virginia	13.1-1041.1	Strong	Exclusive since 2006, and a 2026 Court of Appeals decision confirms it bars foreclosure, which most strong states never got in writing.
Michigan	450.4507	Strong	A 2010 amendment barred foreclosure and made the charging order exclusive, close to Wyoming, though the single-member case is untested.
Delaware	18-703	Strong	The famous one, with the famous 2024 asterisk: it did not travel to New York.
Nevada	86.401	Strong	Exclusive, with express single-member coverage; the protection is real even where the tax pitch is not.
Arizona	29-3503	Strong	Exclusive remedy with no foreclosure, on the same uniform act Pennsylvania used to allow it.
Alaska	10.50.380	Strong	Express exclusivity including single-member companies.
New Jersey	42:2C-43	Strong	A 2013 amendment made the charging order the sole remedy and barred foreclosure; firm pages still publish the repealed rule.
North Carolina	57D-5-03(d)	Strong	Genuine exclusivity, and unusually for this list, a federal court confirmed it in 2022.
Tennessee	48-249-509	Strong	Sole and exclusive remedy with no foreclosure for a multi-member LLC, but the statute lets a single member hand governance rights to anyone, so the sole-owner version is exposed.
Missouri	347.119	Strong	No foreclosure, but that result rests on a single mid-level appellate reading of statutory silence, not on exclusive-remedy language.
Mississippi	79-29-705	Strong	Exclusive remedy, no reaching the LLC’s property, and the LLC statute has no foreclosure clause, so a Mississippi LLC interest is better protected than a limited-partnership interest.
Florida	605.0503	Split	Exclusive for multi-member companies; foreclosure expressly authorized against single-member ones. The split is the statute’s own.
Louisiana	12:1331	Middle	No exclusivity in the statute, but a 2020 appellate case reads it as exclusive and protects even a single-member LLC’s interest from seizure.
Illinois	805 ILCS 180/30-20	Middle	Exclusivity with foreclosure written inside it; the foreclosure buyer takes economic rights only.
Montana	35-8-705	Middle	The Illinois pattern: exclusive but foreclosable.
Minnesota	322C.0503	Middle	Exclusive but foreclosable, so the single-member interest is the one left exposed.
Utah	48-3a-503	Middle	Exclusive-remedy label, but foreclosure is available and a single-member LLC is exposed; multi-member protection holds.
Idaho	30-25-503	Middle	Exclusive remedy, and though a court can foreclose, the buyer gets only the economic interest and no management; the single-member LLC is still the soft spot.
Connecticut	34-259b	Middle	Standard RULLCA charging order, exclusive but foreclosable, and the sole-member LLC is the soft spot; the real protection here is the homestead.
District of Columbia	29-805.03	Middle	Exclusive remedy, and a foreclosure buyer of a multi-member interest gets economic rights only, not membership; a 2013 exception leaves the single-member LLC as the soft spot.
Nebraska	21-142	Middle	Exclusive remedy, but a court can foreclose if distributions won’t satisfy the debt in a reasonable time, so the single-member interest is the soft spot.
Maine	1573	Middle	A RULLCA charging order, exclusive but foreclosable, so the single-member interest is the soft spot; the standout here is an inflation-indexed homestead.
North Dakota	10-32.1-45	Middle	Standard RULLCA charging order, exclusive but foreclosable, so the single-member interest is the soft spot; note that farmland must sit in a qualifying farming LLC, not a generic one.
South Carolina	33-44-504	Middle	Exclusive remedy, but a court can order foreclosure at any time, and the sole-member LLC is the soft spot.
Hawaii	428-504	Middle	Exclusive remedy with foreclosure available, the buyer taking only the economic interest; the single-member LLC is the soft spot, and the home leans on entireties, not the tiny homestead.
Kentucky	275.260	Middle	Exclusive remedy, but a court can still order foreclosure, and on a sole member’s interest the buyer can take over the whole company.
Arkansas	4-38-503	Middle	Exclusive remedy but foreclosure is available, so the single-member interest is the soft spot; ordinary RULLCA protection, not the elite tier.
Vermont	4074	Middle	A standard charging order with foreclosure available, so the single-member interest is the soft spot; Vermont’s real innovation is the blockchain-based LLC, not creditor protection.
Georgia	14-11-504(b)	Refuses the tiers	Expressly not exclusive, names garnishment as an alternative, and makes its foreclosure bar a default your own operating agreement can waive.
California	17705.03	Weak	No exclusivity; receivers and foreclosure available on the statute’s face.
Pennsylvania	8853	Weak	Exclusive in name, foreclosable in fact, and a sole member can lose the entire interest, not just the income stream.
Washington	25.15.256	Weak	Exclusive in name, but foreclosure is available at any time and Timberland Bank v. Mesaros foreclosed a single-member LLC; the home is the shield here, not the entity.
Colorado	7-80-703	Weak	No exclusive-remedy subsection for LLCs, so foreclosure and a receiver are both on the table; the haven reputation is wrong on the statute.
Oregon	63.259	Weak	No exclusive-remedy language at all, so foreclosure is unsettled and the single-member LLC is exposed; protection is whatever a court allows case by case.
Iowa	489.503	Weak	Ordinary RULLCA charging order with foreclosure available and no exclusivity, so the single-member interest is the soft spot; Iowa’s strength is the home, not the entity.
West Virginia	31B-5-504	Weak	A 1996 act with no exclusive-remedy language, so foreclosure is available and the single-member interest is exposed; weaker than the modern-act states.
Rhode Island	7-16-37	Weak	An older act with assignee-only rights and no exclusive-remedy structure, so the single-member interest is exposed; the strength here is the home, a $500,000 automatic homestead plus entireties.
Maryland	4A-607	Weak	Labeled exclusive, but the same section allows foreclosure, and in a single-member LLC the buyer can become the sole member and take the company.
Massachusetts	156C 40	Weak	One bare sentence, no exclusivity and no case law, so whether a creditor can foreclose or force dissolution is genuinely open.
New York	LLC Law 607	Weak	Not exclusive, and turnover procedure under CPLR 5225 routes around it entirely.
Indiana	23-18-6-7	Weak	Non-exclusive, and under Brant v. Krilich a member’s own creditor can foreclose the interest and even move to dissolve the whole LLC.
Wisconsin	183.0503	Weak	No exclusivity, and the 2023 act expressly lets a foreclosure buyer take a sole member’s entire company and dissociate them.
New Hampshire	304-C:126	Weak	The statute spells out that a single-member LLC can be taken outright at an execution sale, the buyer becomes the member and the owner is out; multi-member protection holds.
New Mexico	53-19-35	Weak	No exclusivity clause at all, and the 2024 recodification cited by compliance sites is a bill that died in committee.

Every state not listed has not been verified here yet, whatever its reputation.

Six states where the published consensus is wrong

The tier chart above disagrees with the standard lists six times, and each disagreement traces to the same cause: the lists copy each other, and this site reads statutes. Wyoming’s widely published 10-year charging order expiration is not in the statute. Texas single-member coverage was added in 2023, overruling the case every older article still cites. New Jersey barred foreclosure in 2013; the pre-2013 rule is still the one most firm pages describe. Ohio’s 2022 act produced charging order text as strong as anything in Wyoming or Texas, and no strong-state list has noticed. Georgia’s statute says nearly the opposite of what at least one 2026 vendor page claims it says. And New Mexico’s supposed 2024 modernization never passed; the full autopsy of that one is worth reading as a case study in how legal misinformation propagates.

Six of the first sixteen states came back from a direct statute read materially different from the published consensus. Expect the ratio to hold as the remaining states are verified.

Single-member LLCs: four categories, not one answer

The single-member question gets a one-line answer on most charts. The statutes actually sort into four groups. First, express protection: Wyoming, Nevada, Alaska, South Dakota, Texas, and Delaware write single-member coverage into the statute itself. Second, express exposure: Florida’s statute authorizes foreclosure against single-member companies by name, codifying Olmstead. Third, strong exclusivity with no single-member sentence: Ohio, New Jersey, and North Carolina have statutes whose plain text should protect a solo owner, and no court has tested whether the Olmstead logic can pry them open. Fourth, states where the question barely arises because there is no exclusivity to argue about: California, New York, Illinois, and New Mexico. Georgia sits outside the groups as usual, and Montana adds its own wrinkle, a dissociation-on-bankruptcy default that cuts against solo owners regardless of the charging order. The doctrine behind all of this is on the single-member LLC page.

Homestead, with dates

Homestead exemptions are where stale tables do the most quiet damage, because legislatures have been raising them faster than the tables update. Three of the figures below changed within the last eighteen months, and the old numbers are still the majority result in a search.

State	Homestead	The note that matters
Texas	Unlimited	Acreage-limited, not dollar-limited.
Florida	Unlimited	Constitutional, and it survived bankruptcy attack in Havoco.
South Dakota	Unlimited	Dollar-unlimited for most debtors.
Oklahoma	Unlimited	No dollar cap, within 1 urban or 160 rural acres, but titling the home into an LLC forfeits it, so keep the residence in your own name.
Iowa	Unlimited	No dollar cap within a half-acre urban or 40 rural acres; do not confuse it with the property-tax exemption. No entireties, but the home rarely needs it.
Kansas	Unlimited	No dollar cap within 1 urban or 160 rural acres; no entireties, but the home cannot be sold without both spouses’ consent.
Arkansas	Unlimited	No value cap on a quarter-acre urban or 80 rural acres, though excess acreage is capped at an antiquated $2,500; entireties adds a marital shield.
District of Columbia	Unlimited	No dollar cap on the residence, plus strong entireties, but titling the home into an LLC forfeits it, so keep the home in your own name.
Massachusetts	$125,000 / $1,000,000	Automatic then declared; recording a declaration takes it from $125,000 to $1,000,000, an eightfold jump from one filing.
Minnesota	$540,000 / $1,350,000	Home then agricultural, adjusted every two years, but there is no marital shield behind it.
Rhode Island	$500,000	Automatic with no filing, and it follows the home into a revocable or irrevocable trust; entireties stacks on top for a married couple.
Montana	~$425,827	2026 figure, escalating 4% yearly, requires a recorded declaration. Tables still showing $250,000 are stale.
Arizona	$400,000+	Prop 209 raised it from $250,000 in 2022 and indexes it to CPI every January; tables still showing $150,000 are stale.
Colorado	$250,000 / $350,000	Standard then elderly or disabled; with a weak entity shield and no entireties, the homestead does the real work.
Connecticut	$250,000 / $500,000	Doubles for a jointly owned home, but drops to $75,000 against a judgment for willful or reckless misconduct; no entireties here.
Delaware	$200,000	Since January 1, 2025. Major exemption tables still publish $125,000.
Idaho	$175,000	Automatic with no acreage cap, but Idaho is community property with no entireties, so a married couple’s LLC interest can be community property.
Oregon	$158,300 / $316,700	Recently raised from $40,000 and indexed every July, now one of the stronger ones; entireties adds a marital-home shield.
New York	$75,000 to $150,000	Tiered by county.
Washington	$125,000 or county median	The greater of $125,000 or the county median home price, so in King County it runs near $968,000.
Vermont	$125,000	Not doubled by a couple, but entireties is recognized by statute and shields the home from a one-spouse creditor.
New Hampshire	$120,000 / $240,000	Per person then a jointly owned couple; solid mid-tier, and there is no entireties, so the homestead does the work.
Nebraska	$120,000	Raised in 2024, but a married couple cannot double it, and there is no entireties, so a couple with real home equity is exposed.
North Dakota	$100,000	Moderate and tied to the bankruptcy exemption; no entireties, so a couple’s home rests on this alone.
Maine	$80,000 / $160,000	Base then higher for minor dependents or age 60 and up, and it adjusts for inflation every year, which few states do; no entireties.
South Carolina	$76,125	Per owner and indexed every two years, so married co-owners reach about $150,000; do not confuse it with the $50,000 property-tax figure.
Wisconsin	$75,000 / $150,000	Each spouse can claim it, so a married couple reaches $150,000; there is no entireties here, so this and marital property do the work.
Mississippi	$75,000	Up to 160 acres, and entireties adds a marital shield on top.
Alaska	$72,900	Indexed.
New Mexico	$60,000	Per person; $120,000 for a couple on a joint home.
Utah	$52,400 / $104,700	Individual then married couple, usable outside bankruptcy, but there is no entireties, so both spouses must be on title to double it.
Illinois	$50,000	Tripled from $15,000 on January 1, 2026. Most tables show the old figure.
Virginia	$50,000	Recently raised from one of the lowest in the country; the real marital shield in Virginia is entireties, not homestead.
Georgia	$50,000 / $100,000	Doubled effective July 1, 2026. Nearly every published table is stale.
Missouri	$15,000, soon $40,000	The $15,000 rises to $40,000 on January 1, 2027; either way modest, and Missouri’s real shield is broad entireties in real and personal property.
Louisiana	$35,000	One per couple with no doubling, though unlimited for catastrophic injury; Louisiana is community property, with no entireties.
North Carolina	$35,000	The $60,000 figure in circulation is a narrow widow-and-widower provision with three conditions, not a senior exemption.
Tennessee	$35,000 / $52,500	Individual then joint, and modest; the real married shield is entireties in real and personal property, one of the strongest in the country.
Michigan	$30,000+	Modest and disputed across sources; Michigan’s real married-couple shield is entireties, 100% with no cap, not the homestead.
Hawaii	$20,000 to $30,000	$20,000, or $30,000 for a head of family or age 65 and up; low, so the real married-couple shield is entireties, strong under Sawada v. Endo.
Indiana	$22,750 / $45,500	Per person then joint, among the lowest in the country; do not confuse it with the property-tax deduction aggregators surface.
Alabama	$16,450	Low and per owner, about $32,900 for a couple; with no entireties, the home leans on the entity and insurance, not the exemption.
Kentucky	$5,000	A tiny creditor homestead; do not confuse it with the $49,100 property-tax exemption for seniors. Entireties carries the marital home, with a wrinkle.
West Virginia	$5,000	One of the lowest in the country against an ordinary judgment; $25,000 only in bankruptcy, and no entireties, so the home leans on insurance.
Maryland	$31,575 in bankruptcy	Bankruptcy only; against an ordinary judgment there is just a $6,000 wildcard, so the real shield is entireties.
New Jersey	None	No state homestead; federal bankruptcy exemptions are available instead.
Pennsylvania	None	Pennsylvania has no homestead exemption at all; the one real lever is tenancy by the entireties, married couples only.
Wyoming, Nevada, California, Ohio	Not yet verified here	Amounts exist; they have not passed this site’s statute-read standard yet, so they are not printed.

Three homestead figures on this table changed in the last eighteen months. The tables that never change are the ones to distrust.

Tenancy by the entireties

One state does something genuinely different: Florida recognizes entireties in personal property, including bank accounts and the LLC membership interest itself, which puts a married couple’s jointly held interest beyond one spouse’s creditors. A second group recognizes entireties in real property with varying strength: North Carolina (well developed), New Jersey (protecting the survivorship interest), Delaware (real but fragile against any joint debt), New York and Wyoming (narrow), Illinois (residence only), and Ohio (a historical artifact rather than a tool). The rest of the verified set has none: Georgia, Montana, Nevada, and Texas do not recognize it, and California and New Mexico are community property states where the doctrine does not exist. One creditor walks through every version of it: under United States v. Craft, a federal tax lien attaches to entireties property in every state, so none of this protects against the IRS. The full doctrine, including the proceeds trap and the unsettled LLC-interest theories outside Florida, is on the entireties page.

Self-settled trusts: why there is no chart here

Several verified states have domestic asset protection trust statutes, and this page deliberately refuses to rank them in a table, because DAPT strength is not one number. Ohio has the shortest seasoning period in the country at 18 months, and also lets divorce and support creditors through. Nevada seasons in 2 years and lets no one through, a combination its supreme court enforced in Klabacka. A seasoning-only chart would tell a divorcing settlor that Ohio beats Nevada, which is exactly backwards. Delaware seasons in 4 years with its own exception list, South Dakota in 2, and Alaska, which invented the device, has the worst litigation record of the group. Rankings need one axis; this decision has at least two, so it stays in prose where the qualification sits next to the number. The trust doctrine and the state-by-state reasoning are on the trusts page.

A chart makes a claim louder. Where the truth needs two axes, this site keeps it in prose.

What is not on this page yet

This page prints what has been verified and names what has not, so the roadmap is part of the content. Not yet compared here, and coming as the research passes complete: fraudulent transfer lookback periods by state, the support-creditor carve-outs that pierce charging order exclusivity in some states, the exemption categories beyond homestead (wages, life insurance, annuities, retirement accounts), and how each state’s courts actually behave on receivership when a statute says exclusive. Every state and the District of Columbia is already in the tables above; these columns are what those tables do not cover yet. Each one is added the day its research passes the same standard the first sixteen did.

The bottom line

The published tier lists are wrong in at least six of the first sixteen states verified, always in the same direction: copied from each other rather than read from the code. Eighteen states earn the strong tier, including Ohio, which no published list includes. Florida splits by member count in the statute’s own words, and Georgia refuses every tier. Homestead figures moved in three states within eighteen months and the tables have not caught up. Entireties does real work in exactly one state’s expansive form and none against a federal tax lien. And none of it travels: your home state’s procedure, not your formation state’s statute, decides what a creditor actually gets.

Last verified July 2026.