New York Bankruptcy Exemptions
New York’s bankruptcy exemptions are governed by two sections that point in opposite directions, and almost nothing written for the public mentions the first one. Debtor and Creditor Law 284 is an opt-out: it says New York debtors are not authorized to claim the federal exemptions in 11 U.S.C. 522(d). Debtor and Creditor Law 285 then says that notwithstanding any inconsistent provision of law, a debtor may opt to exempt property under 11 U.S.C. 522 instead. Both are on the books. The practical result is that a New York debtor does get the federal choice – but by an override in 285 sitting on top of an opt-out in 284 that was never repealed, which is a different thing from a state that simply never opted out. Underneath that election, New York’s own homestead is tiered by county – $204,825, $170,700 and $102,400 on the Superintendent of Financial Services’ current published list – and the sixteen named counties are written into CPLR 5206(a) itself. This page sets out that structure, lays the current New York figures beside the federal 522(d) figures that took effect April 1, 2025, and explains where the inflation adjustment actually comes from – because it is not in CPLR 5206. It is general information about New York exemption law, not legal advice.
The Short Version
New York opted out, and then overrode its own opt-out. DCL 284 bars the 11 U.S.C. 522(d) exemptions for New York-domiciled debtors; DCL 285 restores the federal election “notwithstanding any inconsistent provision of law.” Both sections stand, so a New York debtor genuinely chooses between the state set and the federal set – and the route to that choice is an override sitting on an unrepealed opt-out, not the simple absence of one. The state homestead in CPLR 5206(a) is tiered by county: on the amounts published for the cycle that began April 1, 2024, $204,825 across ten downstate counties, $170,700 across six mid-Hudson and Capital District counties, $102,400 everywhere else, measured above liens. Exceed the tier and the exemption survives – CPLR 5206(d) attaches the judgment lien to the surplus alone. Those are not the numbers in the statute, which still reads $150,000 / $125,000 / $75,000: CPLR 5253 puts 5205, 5206, DCL 282 and DCL 283 on a three-year April 1 cycle run by the superintendent of financial services, and the published list is what governs. This is general information, not legal advice.
Watch: A Choice, and a Sliding Shield
Why the full picture matters in New York.
Watch Overview
New York Opted Out in Section 284 – Then Overrode It in Section 285
Four lines of statute that most guides never quote.
Article 10-A of New York’s Debtor and Creditor Law is short – it runs from section 282 to section 285 and stops there. Two of those four sections decide whether a New York debtor may use the federal exemption schedule, and they appear to contradict each other. Read in order they do not.
DCL 284, “Exclusivity of exemptions,” is the opt-out, complete in one sentence: “In accordance with the provisions of section five hundred twenty-two (b) of title eleven of the United States Code, debtors domiciled in this state are not authorized to exempt from the estate property that is specified under subsection (d) of such section.” That is the mechanism 11 U.S.C. 522(b)(2) contemplates: the federal list is on by default and remains available to a debtor unless the applicable state law specifically disallows it. New York did specifically disallow it. The section has not been repealed and its most recent revision on the Legislature’s own service dates from 2014.
DCL 285, “Alternative federal exemptions,” is the override, and its opening words do all the work: “Notwithstanding any inconsistent provision of law, an individual debtor may opt to exempt from property of the estate such property as is permitted to be exempted pursuant to section five hundred twenty-two of title eleven of the United States Code in lieu of such property as is permitted to be exempted pursuant to the applicable provisions of this article.” The inconsistent provision it is speaking over is section 284, immediately above it. You can read section 285 in full on the Legislature’s site; it is four lines long.
Why this matters beyond pedantry: the shorthand answers in circulation are both wrong. Guides that say “New York has opted out of the federal exemptions” are quoting 284 and stopping. Guides that say “New York never opted out” have not read 284 at all. The accurate statement is that the election exists by override, and the section to cite for it is 285. That also explains a practical asymmetry – the election is an affirmative act by the debtor “in lieu of” the New York article, all-or-nothing, not a licence to mix the better half of each list.
New York’s own list, when the debtor stays with it, is assembled from three places rather than one. DCL 282 makes that explicit: a New York-domiciled debtor may exempt only property exempt under CPLR 5205 and 5206, insurance policies and annuity contracts under Insurance Law 3212, and the specific items 282 itself adds – a motor vehicle, written in the statute as four thousand dollars and currently published at $5,500, or ten thousand as enacted and $13,625 as published where the vehicle has been equipped for use by a disabled debtor, and a personal bodily injury recovery capped at seventy-five hundred dollars as enacted and $10,250 as published, expressly “not including pain and suffering or compensation for actual pecuniary loss.” The gap between the enacted words and the operative figures is the subject of a later section; DCL 282 is one of the four provisions CPLR 5253 indexes.
The Choice, Line by Line: New York or Federal
Both columns at their current published amounts: New York from April 1, 2024, the federal set from April 1, 2025.
| Category | New York set (CPLR / DCL, published from Apr 1, 2024) | Federal 11 U.S.C. 522(d), from Apr 1, 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Homestead | $204,825 / $170,700 / $102,400 by county tier – CPLR 5206(a) Tiered | $31,575 – 522(d)(1) |
| Wildcard | $1,325, available where no homestead is claimed – CPLR 5205(a)(9) | $1,675 plus up to $15,800 of unused homestead – 522(d)(5) |
| Motor vehicle | $5,500; $13,625 if equipped for a disabled debtor – CPLR 5205(a)(8), DCL 282(1) | $5,025 – 522(d)(2) |
| Household goods | Wearing apparel, furniture, one refrigerator, one radio, one television, one computer, one cellphone, crockery and cooking utensils, uncapped by value – CPLR 5205(a)(5) | $800 per item, $16,850 aggregate – 522(d)(3) |
| Jewelry and art | A wedding ring, plus watch, jewelry and art to $1,325 – CPLR 5205(a)(6) | $2,125 – 522(d)(4) |
| Tools of trade | $4,075, limited to what is necessary to the debtor’s calling – CPLR 5205(a)(7) | $3,175 – 522(d)(6) |
| Books | $675 beyond religious texts, family pictures and school books – CPLR 5205(a)(2) | Within the 522(d)(3) household aggregate |
| Personal bodily injury | $10,250, excluding pain and suffering and actual pecuniary loss – DCL 282(3)(iii) | $31,575 – 522(d)(11)(D) |
| Aggregate cap | $13,625 across CPLR 5205(a) personal property and certain six-month annuities – DCL 283(1) | No equivalent overall cap |
| Cash | Up to $6,825 by the DCL 283(2) contingent alternative, conditions below | Available through the 522(d)(5) wildcard alone |
Both columns have to be read at the same vintage, and most published comparisons do not do that. New York and the federal schedule are each produced by a triennial CPI mechanism – CPLR 5253 on an April 1 cycle for New York, 11 U.S.C. 104 on an April 1 cycle for the federal set. Setting New York’s enacted words against the federal set’s adjusted figures compares a 2010-vintage number with a 2025 one, and it makes the state side look roughly a quarter weaker than it is. The table above avoids that: every New York figure is the amount published for the cycle that began April 1, 2024, and every federal figure is the amount effective April 1, 2025.
Read that way, the shape of the decision appears, and it is not the shape the enacted figures suggest. A debtor with real equity in a Kings County or Westchester house is choosing between $204,825 and $31,575 – a gap of more than six to one, and nothing else on the table comes close to overturning it. A debtor who rents is choosing the other way: the New York wildcard is $1,325 and is forfeited the moment a homestead is claimed, while the federal wildcard reaches $17,475 once an unused homestead spills into 522(d)(5). The DCL 283(2) cash route can add up to $6,825 for a debtor claiming no homestead, but it fills headroom under the $13,625 aggregate rather than sitting on top of it, so the New York side for a renter is capped in a way the federal side is not.
Two lines have quietly changed sides on the current cycle, and a page working from the enacted numbers gets both wrong. Tools of the trade: $4,075 in New York against $3,175 federally – the enacted $3,000 lost that comparison, the published figure wins it. Motor vehicle: $5,500 against $5,025, and $13,625 against $5,025 where the vehicle is equipped for a disabled debtor, which is the largest single-line advantage the state set holds after the homestead. Those are the only two reversals; the disabled-equipped vehicle is not a third, because the enacted ten thousand dollars already beat $5,025 before any adjustment. Household goods is a difference of a different kind and never turned on the cycle at all, because CPLR 5205(a)(5) carries no dollar figure at any vintage and protects the listed categories as necessary items rather than metering them at $800 apiece – a structural gap no adjustment creates or closes. What has not changed is the direction on bodily injury, where $10,250 still sits well under the federal $31,575, and on jewelry, where $1,325 still trails $2,125.
Married couples in a joint case. The most common question about these figures is whether spouses can double them, and the answer is in the federal statute rather than in New York’s. 11 U.S.C. 522(m) provides that “subject to the limitation in subsection (b), this section shall apply separately with respect to each debtor in a joint case” – so in a joint case each spouse claims their own set. The limitation referred to is real, though: 522(b)(1) requires both spouses to elect the same alternative, and provides that where they “cannot agree on the alternative to be elected, they shall be deemed to elect paragraph (2)” – the federal 522(d) list – “where such election is permitted under the law of the jurisdiction where the case is filed.” Read that against DCL 284 and 285 and the interlock is neat: the fallback on disagreement is the federal set, and in New York that fallback is available only because section 285 permits the election in the first place. One spouse cannot take the county homestead while the other takes 522(d).
The federal figures above are not the numbers printed in the body of 11 U.S.C. 522. Those are unadjusted base amounts left in the statutory text; the operative figures come from the Judicial Conference notice dated January 30, 2025, published at 90 F.R. 8941 and effective April 1, 2025. The cycle is set by 11 U.S.C. 104, which adjusts each amount every three years for the change in the Consumer Price Index and rounds to the nearest $25, requires publication by March 1, and provides that adjustments “shall not apply with respect to cases commenced” before the adjustment date. The next federal adjustment is due April 1, 2028.
The Homestead Is a County-Tiered Number
CPLR 5206(a) names sixteen counties and then describes the rest.
CPLR 5206(a) protects property “owned and occupied as a principal residence” up to a figure that depends on where the residence is, measured “in value above liens and encumbrances.” The statute enumerates the counties rather than delegating the map:
One hundred fifty thousand dollars as enacted, $204,825 as currently published – Kings, Queens, New York, Bronx, Richmond, Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland, Westchester and Putnam. That is ten counties: the five boroughs, both Long Island counties, and Rockland, Westchester and Putnam in the lower Hudson Valley.
One hundred twenty-five thousand dollars as enacted, $170,700 as currently published – Dutchess, Albany, Columbia, Orange, Saratoga and Ulster. Six counties, spanning the mid-Hudson and the Capital District.
Seventy-five thousand dollars as enacted, $102,400 as currently published – in the statute’s own words, “the remaining counties of the state.” New York has sixty-two counties, so this residual tier covers forty-six of them, and it is a residual category rather than a list, which means a county is in it by not being named above.
The enacted words and the operative amounts are both worth carrying, because the statute is what a court reads and the published list is what the amount actually is. The next section sets out where that list comes from and why it is not inside CPLR 5206.
Four features of the section are worth more attention than they usually get. First, the protected forms are enumerated too, and they are broader than a house: a lot of land with a dwelling, shares of stock in a cooperative apartment corporation, units of a condominium apartment, or a mobile home. Second, the exemption does not run against everything – it does not apply where “the judgment was recovered wholly for the purchase price,” and the section adds that no exempt homestead is exempt “from taxation or from sale for non-payment of taxes or assessments.” Third, under 5206(b) the exemption continues after the owner’s death for a surviving spouse and children “until the majority of the youngest surviving child and until the death of the surviving spouse.” Fourth, 5206(c) ends the exemption if the property stops being occupied as a residence, with a narrow grace period of not more than one year where the suspension follows injury to or destruction of the dwelling.
The surplus rule is the one creditors care about. CPLR 5206(d) states that the exemption “is not void because the value of the property exceeds” the applicable tier; instead “the lien of a judgment attaches to the surplus.” A downstate house carrying $400,000 of equity is not unprotected because it exceeds the tier – it is protected to $204,825, with the balance exposed. CPLR 5206(e) supplies the procedure: a judgment creditor may bring a special proceeding in the county where the homestead is located for a sale by a sheriff or receiver, the court marshals the proceeds so each person’s share of the money matches their interest in the property, and the debtor’s exempt share stays exempt for one year after payment unless an exempt homestead is acquired with it sooner. Outside bankruptcy that machinery is the judgment creditor’s, and it is developed on our New York asset record for judgment creditors outside bankruptcy; how a debt reaches that stage in the first place is covered in the New York judgment collection guide.
What Indexes – and Where the Authority Actually Lives
Not in CPLR 5206. This is why published figures disagree.
Search the text of CPLR 5206 for an inflation clause and you will not find one. The words “adjust,” “index,” “consumer price” and “superintendent” do not appear anywhere in the section, and subdivisions (d) and (e) still recite $150,000, $125,000 and $75,000 exactly as (a) does. That absence is real, and it is why so many summaries of New York’s homestead print figures that do not match each other or the statute.
The adjustment authority is in a different section entirely. CPLR 5253 is headed “Cost of living adjustment for personal and real property exempt from application to the satisfaction of money judgments and exemptions in bankruptcy,” and subdivision (a) says that beginning on April 1, 2012, and at each three-year interval ending on April 1 thereafter, “the dollar amount of the exemption provided in sections fifty-two hundred five and fifty-two hundred six of this article and sections two hundred eighty-two and two hundred eighty-three of the debtor and creditor law shall be adjusted.” That single sentence reaches all four of the provisions this page has been quoting – the CPLR personal-property list, the county homestead, and both operative Debtor and Creditor Law sections.
Subdivision (b) sets the method: the superintendent of financial services determines the adjustment from the change in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers for New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-CT-PA, over the most recent three-year period ending December 31 before the adjustment, “with each adjusted amount rounded to the nearest twenty-five dollars.” Subdivision (c) requires the superintendent to publish the current amount “together with the date of the next scheduled adjustment,” in a prescribed form which states that the amount “shall not apply to cases commenced before April 1” of that year. Counting forward from 2012 on the statute’s own three-year interval, the adjustment dates are 2012, 2015, 2018, 2021, 2024 and 2027 – so the cycle running now began April 1, 2024 and the next one falls April 1, 2027.
Here is the published list, which is the thing that actually governs. The Department of Financial Services publishes it as Amount Exempt from Judgments, and it is laid out as a grid of every adjustment cycle since 2009, so each figure can be traced back through 2012, 2015, 2018 and 2021 to the amount the Legislature enacted. On the column headed 2024 – effective April 1, 2024, and by its own terms not applicable to restraining notices served or executions effected before that date – the homestead tiers are $204,825, $170,700 and $102,400, against enacted figures of $150,000, $125,000 and $75,000. The rest of the New York set moves with them: CPLR 5205(a)(2) books to $675, 5205(a)(4), (6) and (9) – the wildcard and the jewelry-and-art line – to $1,325, 5205(a)(7) tools of the trade to $4,075, the 5205(a)(8) and DCL 282(1) vehicle to $5,500, DCL 282(3)(iii) bodily injury to $10,250, the DCL 283(1) aggregate and the disabled-equipped vehicle to $13,625, and the DCL 283(2)(c) cash cap to $6,825. The separate CPLR 5205(l) direct-deposit figure, enacted at two thousand five hundred dollars, stands at $3,425 on the same date.
Two cautions travel with those numbers. First, provenance is the whole point: a figure quoted without its cycle is worth very little, and a figure attached to the wrong cycle is worse than none, because 5253(c) ties the amount to the date the case was commenced – a petition filed in March 2024 is measured against the 2021 column, not the 2024 one. Second, the Department’s own footnote records a wrinkle in the mechanism: CPLR 5205(l)(ii) and 5253(b) both specify the Consumer Price Index for the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island region, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics no longer publishes that series, so the Department used the New York-Newark-Jersey City series instead. The statute names an index that has ceased to exist, and the adjustment was made on its successor.
A separate and narrower mechanism is often confused with this one. CPLR 5205(l)(3) also runs a three-year April 1 cycle under the same superintendent and the same regional CPI, but it reaches only the exemption for a bank account into which statutorily exempt payments were deposited electronically – the figure that appears in 5205(l)(1) as “two thousand five hundred dollars” and now stands at $3,425 – together with CPLR 5222(e), 5222(h), 5230(a) and 5232(e). The statute settles the scope itself: the publication form prescribed in 5205(l)(3)(iii) is headed with exactly those five citations. It is an enforcement-side protection for direct-deposited benefits, not a homestead provision, and it is not the section that moves the numbers on this page. The time limits that govern whether a creditor can still be enforcing at all are a different question again, set out in our note on the New York debt collection statute of limitations.
The $1,000 Wildcard, and the Price of Claiming It
CPLR 5205(a)(9) is one sentence with a condition on the front.
New York’s wildcard reads, in full: “if no homestead exemption is claimed, then one thousand dollars in personal property, bank account or cash.” Every word of the condition is load-bearing. This is not a supplementary allowance stacked on top of the county homestead; it is an alternative to it. A debtor who claims the Suffolk County tier – $204,825 on the current list – has no wildcard at all, and a debtor who has no home equity worth claiming picks up flexible protection they would otherwise lack. The enacted thousand dollars is $1,325 on the amounts published from April 1, 2024, the same line that carries the 5205(a)(6) jewelry and art figure.
For a debtor with no meaningful equity, that trade is easy and $1,325 is real money against a bank balance. For a debtor with a mortgaged home, the arithmetic turns on equity above liens rather than on market value – CPLR 5206(a) measures the homestead “in value above liens and encumbrances,” so a downstate house worth $700,000 with $690,000 of mortgage against it offers $10,000 of homestead, and whether that beats the wildcard plus the federal alternative is exactly the kind of calculation the DCL 285 election exists to allow. Florida runs the same either/or structure at a very different number and with the trade pointed the other way, since its homestead is limited by acreage rather than value; the comparison is set out on our page on Florida bankruptcy exemptions.
One more limit belongs here because it catches people out. The motor-vehicle exemption in CPLR 5205(a)(8) – four thousand dollars as enacted and $5,500 as published, or ten thousand and $13,625 where the vehicle has been equipped for use by a disabled debtor – carries an express carve-out: it “shall not apply if the debt enforced is for child support, spousal support, maintenance, alimony or equitable distribution, or if the state of New York or any of its agencies or any municipal corporation is the judgment creditor.” A support creditor and a municipal creditor are simply outside that exemption.
The DCL 283(2) Cash Alternative, Condition by Condition
Three conditions, two caps, and a “whichever is less.”
Debtor and Creditor Law 283 does two jobs. Subdivision (1) imposes an aggregate: the amount a debtor may exempt for CPLR 5205(a) personal property, together with certain annuity contracts bought within six months of filing, “shall not exceed ten thousand dollars” – $13,625 on the amounts published from April 1, 2024. So the individual CPLR 5205(a) figures – $675 of books, $1,325 of jewelry and art, $4,075 of tools – are also collectively ceilinged, and a debtor who maximises all three has used $6,075 of the $13,625 before reaching anything else.
Subdivision (2), the “contingent alternative bankruptcy exemption,” turns that ceiling into an opportunity, and it is genuinely hard to find explained anywhere. It applies “notwithstanding section two hundred eighty-two” to a debtor who satisfies three conditions in sequence:
(a) the debtor “does not elect, claim, or otherwise avail himself of an exemption described in section fifty-two hundred six” – no homestead, the same trade as the wildcard; (b) the debtor “utilizes to the fullest extent permitted by law” the subdivision (1) exemptions subject to the ten thousand dollar aggregate; and (c) the debtor “does not reach such aggregate limit.”
A debtor who clears all three “may exempt cash in the amount by which ten thousand dollars exceeds the aggregate of his or her exemptions referred to in subdivision one of this section, or in the amount of five thousand dollars, whichever amount is less.” Both of those figures index, so the arithmetic runs on $13,625 and $6,825 rather than on the enacted words. Worked through: a debtor who claims $3,000 of CPLR 5205(a) property has $10,625 of headroom under the aggregate, but takes $6,825, because that is the lesser figure. A debtor who claims $8,000 has $5,625 of headroom and takes $5,625, because now the headroom is the lesser. The crossover sits at $6,800 of claimed subdivision (1) exemptions – below that the cash cap binds, above it the headroom does – and the subdivision shrinks to nothing as the debtor uses the aggregate up elsewhere.
The statute also defines its terms, which matters because “cash” here is wider than currency: it means “currency of the United States at face value, savings bonds of the United States at face value, the right to receive a refund of federal, state and local income taxes, and deposit accounts in any state or federally chartered depository institution.” A pending tax refund is cash for this purpose. DCL 283 is one of the four provisions CPLR 5253 indexes, which is why the ten thousand and five thousand written into the section are read as $13,625 and $6,825 for a case commenced on or after April 1, 2024.
Who Uses This Research
Creditor-side work in a New York bankruptcy.
Creditors’ Counsel
Equity above the county tier
Chapter 7 Trustees
Surplus under CPLR 5206(d)
Secured Mortgage Holders
Exposure past the election
Post-Discharge Creditors
Following a debtor into Chapter 7
Forensic Accountants
Valuing above liens
Trade Creditors
Owed by a New York filer
What all six have in common is that the exemption analysis is only half the problem. Whether the New York set or the federal set applies, and what tier a residence falls in, both operate on a schedule of assets the debtor prepared. Establishing what the public record independently shows – which parcels, in which county, carrying which recorded liens – is the factual half, and it is the half we do. That is also the honest description of work aimed at assets nobody scheduled: not an assertion that anything was concealed, but a county-level record placed beside the schedule so that counsel, the trustee and the court can see where the two do not meet.
Where the Record Changes the Answer
Six situations that turn on facts, not on the statute.
Equity Above the Tier
A Westchester house well past $150,000 above liens, where 5206(d) leaves the surplus exposed.
The Second Parcel
5206(a) protects a principal residence; an upstate cabin or a rental unit is not one.
The Co-op Share
Shares in a cooperative apartment corporation are within 5206(a), and are recorded differently from a deed.
Occupation Lapsed
5206(c) ends the exemption when the property stops being occupied as a residence.
The Entity-Held Interest
Value inside an LLC is not the debtor’s residence and does not sit in any 5206 tier.
The Wrong County
A residence recorded in a county the debtor no longer lives in changes which tier is even arguable.
How We Build the Record
Four steps, each producing something citable.
Confirm Permissible Purpose
We establish and record a permissible purpose before any search begins.
Search by County
Because the tier follows the county, the county clerk’s records are where the work starts.
Set It Against the Schedules
Recorded parcels, liens and entities, laid beside what the filing disclosed.
Report With Sources
Each finding carries its source and an honest confidence note, including what we could not establish.
Where a matter needs the debtor found rather than the property found – for service, for a 341 examination, or for post-discharge enforcement of a non-dischargeable debt – that is judgment debtor location work, and where the question is what a creditor can reach outside a bankruptcy case altogether it becomes an asset search for judgment collection. Our skip tracing services page describes the sourcing standard that applies across all of them.
What We Will and Will Not Do
We will give you a sourced, county-by-county record of what a New York debtor owns – parcels, recorded liens and encumbrances, cooperative and condominium interests, registered entities and vehicles – set against the schedules filed, with every item traceable to the record it came from and an honest note where the record is thin or ambiguous. We confirm a permissible purpose first and decline the work without one. We read public and lawfully available records; we do not pretext, impersonate, or talk our way into anything, and we do not obtain private financial account contents or balances. We are a public-records research firm and have worked to that standard since 2004. We are not licensed private investigators, we hold no investigator’s licence in New York and we do not offer surveillance or any service that requires one; we are also not a law firm. We will not tell you which exemption set a debtor may elect, which CPLR 5206 tier applies, what a claimed exemption is worth, or whether an omission was deliberate – those belong to counsel, the trustee and the court. A first read on a workable request usually comes back within 24 hours.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did New York opt out of the federal bankruptcy exemptions?
Both answers you will read online are half right. Debtor and Creditor Law 284, headed “Exclusivity of exemptions,” says that debtors domiciled in New York “are not authorized to exempt from the estate property that is specified under subsection (d)” of 11 U.S.C. 522 – a plain opt-out, and it has never been repealed. But DCL 285 then provides, “Notwithstanding any inconsistent provision of law,” that an individual debtor “may opt to exempt” property permitted under 11 U.S.C. 522 instead of the New York article. So the federal election is live in New York, and it is 285 that supplies it, not the absence of an opt-out. Which set a particular debtor elected is a question for that debtor’s filing, counsel and the trustee.
Which New York counties get the $150,000 homestead tier?
CPLR 5206(a) names them: Kings, Queens, New York, Bronx, Richmond, Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland, Westchester and Putnam – ten counties, written into the section as one hundred fifty thousand dollars and published by the Superintendent of Financial Services at $204,825 for the cycle that began April 1, 2024. A second tier of six counties, Dutchess, Albany, Columbia, Orange, Saratoga and Ulster, is enacted at one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars and published at $170,700, and the statute assigns seventy-five thousand dollars, published at $102,400, to “the remaining counties of the state.” The figure is measured in value above liens and encumbrances on property owned and occupied as a principal residence. The enacted words and the published amounts differ because CPLR 5253 adjusts the section without rewriting it; the next answer sets out that mechanism.
Does the New York homestead figure move with inflation?
Yes, but not by anything written inside CPLR 5206 – which is why sources disagree about it. The adjustment authority sits in a separate section, CPLR 5253, headed “Cost of living adjustment.” It provides that beginning April 1, 2012, and at each three-year interval thereafter, the dollar amounts in CPLR 5205 and 5206 and in Debtor and Creditor Law 282 and 283 are adjusted by the superintendent of financial services, using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers for New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, rounded to the nearest twenty-five dollars. On that schedule the current cycle began April 1, 2024 and the next adjustment falls April 1, 2027. CPLR 5253 also requires the superintendent to publish the current amount together with the date of the next scheduled adjustment, so the published list is what governs a live filing. On the current list the homestead tiers are $204,825, $170,700 and $102,400, and the amount applies only to cases commenced, restraining notices served and executions effected on or after April 1, 2024.
What happens if the home is worth more than the county tier allows?
The exemption does not collapse. CPLR 5206(d) says in terms that the exemption “is not void because the value of the property exceeds” the applicable tier – instead, “the lien of a judgment attaches to the surplus.” CPLR 5206(e) then lets a judgment creditor bring a special proceeding in the county where the homestead sits for a sheriff’s or receiver’s sale of a homestead above the tier, with the court marshalling the proceeds; money paid to the debtor as their exempt share stays exempt for one year unless they buy another exempt homestead with it. Whether any of that is available in a given matter is for counsel and the court.
Why would a New York debtor take the federal set instead?
Because on several lines the federal schedule is simply larger, and because of one structural difference. Under the Judicial Conference notice of January 30, 2025 at 90 F.R. 8941, effective April 1, 2025, the federal wildcard in 11 U.S.C. 522(d)(5) is $1,675 plus up to $15,800 of any unused homestead exemption – so a renter or a debtor with little equity can convert a large unused homestead into protection for cash and ordinary property. New York’s wildcard in CPLR 5205(a)(9) is one thousand dollars as enacted and $1,325 as published, and is available only if no homestead exemption is claimed. Read at matching vintages the two sets split cleanly: a debtor with substantial equity in a downstate home prefers the New York tier, which is $204,825 against a federal $31,575, while a debtor with no house usually does better federally, because the state personal-property side is capped in aggregate at $13,625 and the federal side is not.
What is the New York wildcard, and what does claiming it cost?
CPLR 5205(a)(9) is one sentence: “if no homestead exemption is claimed, then one thousand dollars in personal property, bank account or cash.” The condition is the whole point – it is an either/or, not an add-on. A debtor who claims the county homestead cannot also take the wildcard, which stands at $1,325 on the amounts published from April 1, 2024. Debtor and Creditor Law 283(2) offers a related and much less familiar route: a debtor who claims no CPLR 5206 homestead, uses the 5205(a) exemptions subject to the ten thousand dollar aggregate in DCL 283(1) to the fullest extent, and still does not reach that aggregate, may exempt cash in the amount by which that aggregate exceeds what they did claim, or five thousand dollars, whichever is less. Both figures index under CPLR 5253, so the working numbers are a $13,625 aggregate and a $6,825 cash cap.
Do you decide which exemption set applies, or whether something was concealed?
No to both, and the line is deliberate. Which set a debtor may elect under DCL 284 and 285, how a county tier applies to a particular parcel, what a claimed exemption is worth, and whether an omission from a schedule amounts to concealment or a false oath are determinations for the debtor’s counsel, the trustee, the United States Trustee and the bankruptcy court – and, where a crime is alleged, for law enforcement. This is a public-records research firm operating under a permissible purpose. We do not practise law and we are not licensed private investigators; nothing on this page is legal advice. We document what the record shows and how it compares to what was filed. We surface a discrepancy; we do not return a verdict. Where a pre-petition transfer is the discrepancy, the division of labour is the same: the county clerk’s index supplies the date, the consideration recited and the parties on the instrument, and the fraudulent conveyance and asset-transfer question that follows from those facts belongs to the trustee, counsel and the court.
Is this a consumer report, and will you locate anyone on request?
No on both counts. We are not a consumer reporting agency and this research is not a consumer report – it is not gathered or delivered for credit, insurance, employment or tenant-screening decisions, and we do not repurpose it for any FCRA-covered use. On locating: we confirm a permissible purpose before we begin, we work only from lawful records, and we never pretext, impersonate or pose as a creditor, a government office or the subject. Where a request looks like an attempt to reach someone who has moved for their own safety – including anyone protected by a New York order of protection – we decline it and point the requester to the court that issued the order rather than to an address.
Find Out What Sits Above the Tier
DCL 285 lets a New York debtor choose the schedule; CPLR 5206(a) sets the tier by county; CPLR 5206(d) leaves the surplus above that tier reachable. Every one of those rules is applied to a list of assets somebody else prepared. Tell us what needs establishing and your lawful, permissible purpose, and we will build the county-level record and set it beside the filing, usually with a first read within 24 hours. The statutory calls stay with your counsel, the trustee and the court. Contact us to get started.
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