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 It omits what may be the strongest charging order statute in the country, asserts protection New Jersey repealed in 2013, misses coverage Texas added in 2023, and describes a New Mexico recodification that never happened.

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. Sixteen states are verified so far; the rest of the country appears here only when its statutes have been read, which is why some rows say “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.
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.
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.
Florida	605.0503	Split	Exclusive for multi-member companies; foreclosure expressly authorized against single-member ones. The split is the statute’s own.
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.
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.
New York	LLC Law 607	Weak	Not exclusive, and turnover procedure under CPLR 5225 routes around it entirely.
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 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.
Montana	~$425,827	2026 figure, escalating 4% yearly, requires a recorded declaration. Tables still showing $250,000 are stale.
Delaware	$200,000	Since January 1, 2025. Major exemption tables still publish $125,000.
New York	$75,000 to $150,000	Tiered by county.
Alaska	$72,900	Indexed.
New Mexico	$60,000	Per person; $120,000 for a couple on a joint home.
Illinois	$50,000	Tripled from $15,000 on January 1, 2026. Most tables show the old figure.
Georgia	$50,000 / $100,000	Doubled effective July 1, 2026. Nearly every published table is stale.
North Carolina	$35,000	The $60,000 figure in circulation is a narrow widow-and-widower provision with three conditions, not a senior exemption.
New Jersey	None	No state homestead; federal bankruptcy exemptions are available instead.
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. And thirty-five states are absent from every table above for the only honest reason: their statutes have not been read here yet. Each one joins the tables the day its research passes the same standard as the first sixteen.

The bottom line

The published tier lists are wrong in at least six of the sixteen states verified so far, always in the same direction: copied from each other rather than read from the code. Nine 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.