New York asset protection: the charging order fight your creditor does not need to have

In most states the asset protection fight is about one word: whether the charging order is the creditor’s exclusive remedy. New York never wrote that word into its LLC statute, and in New York it hardly matters, because a creditor with a judgment against you has a faster tool.

New York’s enforcement law lets a judgment creditor ask a court to order property turned over, and courts have applied it to LLC membership interests directly. The charging order is one route. It is not the only one, and often it is not the one a New York creditor takes.

The charging order, and the sentence New York left out

The charging order protection page explains the toll booth. New York builds it without the wall around it.

New York’s LLC statute provides a charging order and never says it is the creditor’s only remedy.

New York LLC Law § 607 gives a judgment creditor a charging order against a member’s interest. What it does not contain is the exclusive-remedy language Wyoming, Texas, Nevada, Alaska, South Dakota, and New Jersey all wrote into their statutes. There is no sentence barring foreclosure, no sentence barring receivers, and no sentence protecting the company’s own property from a member’s creditor. The strong states negate the creditor’s menu item by item. New York simply does not address it.

The tool that goes around it

Here is what makes New York harder than its statute suggests.

A New York creditor can ask a court to order your membership interest turned over, without needing the charging order at all.

New York’s Civil Practice Law and Rules provide that a money judgment may be enforced against any property that can be assigned or transferred, and its turnover provisions let a creditor bring a proceeding compelling a debtor to hand property over. Courts have applied that machinery to LLC membership interests, and an appellate decision in 2022 allowed a creditor to reach a debtor’s interest in exactly this way. Courts have also permitted foreclosure of LLC interests and, in narrow circumstances, reverse veil piercing.

There is a second feature worth understanding, because it surprises people who assume distance helps.

New York’s turnover power follows the debtor, not the asset, so a New York debtor can be ordered to produce property held anywhere.

Because the court’s authority runs against the person, a debtor domiciled in New York can be directed to turn over assets located outside the state, so long as the debtor has the legal ability to reach them. Add New York’s restraining notices, which freeze accounts on service, and New York is a genuinely difficult place to hold liquid assets while a judgment is outstanding.

The single-member problem, sharpened

Every state’s charging order protection is thinnest for the one-owner LLC, because the doctrine exists to protect innocent co-owners. New York starts without exclusivity and then applies that logic on top of it.

With no exclusive-remedy statute and no partners to protect, a New York single-member LLC is close to transparent to a determined creditor.

A creditor holding a judgment against the sole member of a New York LLC faces no statutory bar to foreclosure, no bar to turnover, and no co-members whose interests a court would be protecting by limiting the remedy. The single-member LLC page treats this as the general weakness of the form; New York is the state where the weakness has the fewest counterweights. A genuine second member with a real stake changes the analysis materially, and in New York it is closer to essential than optional.

Piercing the veil

The attack in the other direction, reaching the owner for the company’s debts, runs on New York’s alter ego doctrine: a plaintiff must show that the owner exercised complete domination over the company and used that domination to commit a fraud or wrong that injured the plaintiff. Both parts are required, and ordinary sloppiness is not enough. The piercing the veil page covers the doctrine, and the practical rule is the same everywhere: money handling is the whole game, and the record of separation is what a court actually reads.

Beyond the LLC, and there is not much

New York’s exemptions are modest, and its homestead in particular sits near the bottom of the states in this project.

New York’s homestead is set by county and starts at $75,000, against unlimited protection in Florida, Texas, and South Dakota.

Under CPLR § 5206, the homestead exemption is $150,000 for Kings, Queens, New York, Bronx, Richmond, Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland, Westchester, and Putnam counties; $125,000 for Dutchess, Albany, Columbia, Orange, Saratoga, and Ulster; and $75,000 for the rest of the state. Those statutory figures are adjusted periodically for inflation, and the adjusted downstate amount is reported at roughly $204,825, though that figure is a practitioner calculation rather than a published state number. Exceeding the exemption does not void it, but a judgment lien attaches to the surplus and a creditor can bring a proceeding to force a sale.

Put that next to the rest of the picture. New York has no domestic asset protection trust statute. It recognizes tenancy by the entireties for real property, but not in the expansive form Florida uses, so it does not give married New Yorkers a reliable way to hold an LLC interest beyond one spouse’s creditors. What remains is what the site recommends everywhere and recommends here most emphatically: adequate liability insurance first, real separation of money, and a genuine multi-member structure if the LLC holds anything you cannot afford to lose.

The courts

New York has the deepest commercial bench in the country outside Delaware. Its Commercial Division has handled sophisticated business disputes for decades and produces a large body of written decisions, which is a genuine advantage when the fight is among owners rather than with a creditor. The courts page explains why that predictability matters. The honest New York summary is that the judges are excellent, the case law is deep, and much of that case law favors creditors.

The bottom line

New York’s LLC statute provides a charging order and never makes it the exclusive remedy, for single-member or multi-member companies.

New York’s enforcement rules let a creditor compel turnover of a membership interest directly, so the charging order is often not the fight.

Turnover authority follows the debtor, so a New York debtor can be ordered to produce assets held outside the state.

A single-member New York LLC has neither statutory protection nor innocent co-owners to invoke, which makes a real second member close to essential.

The homestead exemption runs from $75,000 to $150,000 by county before inflation adjustments, among the lowest in this project.

New York has no asset protection trust statute, so insurance, separation, and structure carry the load.

What this page does not cover

This page is about how creditors reach you in New York. The written operating agreement New York requires by law, and the default rules that apply when it is silent, are on the governance page. The publication requirement, the Transparency Act, and the cost of holding a New York LLC are on the structure and cost page. The filing fees and the two deadlines that start the day you form are on the filing page.

Last verified July 2026.