Utah Debt Collection Statute of Limitations
Most limitation statutes tell you how long you have and leave the start date to the case law. Utah’s do not. Section 78B-2-307 gives four years and then says when the four years begins in the same breath – “after the last charge is made or the last payment is received.” Section 78B-2-309 gives six years on an instrument in writing and, for a credit agreement, starts the six years on the later of three named days, one of which is the day the debtor or a third party makes a payment. A payer who is not the debtor can move the start date. This page walks both sections with their lettering, explains the narrow definition of “credit agreement” that Section 78B-2-309(2) borrows from Section 25-5-4, and shows how to read a Utah section without picking up a version that no longer applies. We are a public-records research firm working under a permissible purpose; this is general information, not legal advice.
The Short Version
Utah’s debt collection statute of limitations is four years or six, and the interesting part is not the number but the trigger. Utah Code § 78B-2-307 gives four years – running “after the last charge is made or the last payment is received” – on a contract, obligation or liability not founded upon an instrument in writing, on an open store account for goods, wares or merchandise, and on an open account for work, labor or services rendered or materials furnished. Utah Code § 78B-2-309 gives six years on an obligation founded upon an instrument in writing, and where the obligation is a credit agreement the six years begins the later of three days: the day the debt arose, the day the debtor makes a written acknowledgment or promise to pay, or the day the debtor or a third party makes a payment. Judgments sit at eight years under § 78B-2-311. “Credit agreement” is not a loose phrase here – § 78B-2-309(2) borrows the definition in § 25-5-4, which reaches agreements by a financial institution. Our half of a Utah file is factual: locate the person, confirm identity, and establish from the record who is actually connected to the account. This page is general information, not legal advice.
Watch: The Utah Clock
How limitations shape collection strategy.
Watch Overview
Utah Wrote the Start Date Into the Statute
Why both limitation sections read like accrual rules.
Pick up almost any state’s limitation chapter and you will find two kinds of provision: a list of periods, and – somewhere else, often several sections away – a separate rule about acknowledgment, new promise or part payment that can move the clock. Utah collapsed the two. Both of the sections a debt collector needs carry their own start-date language inside the period itself, and neither of them is titled as a revival provision.
Section 78B-2-307 does it in the opening clause. Section 78B-2-309 does it in a dedicated subsection (2) drafted as a “later of” test with three lettered limbs. The consequence for anyone working a Utah file is practical rather than academic: the question “has this account restarted?” is not answered by hunting for a revival statute, because there is not one to find. It is answered by reading the same section that gives you the period and checking which of the events it names has most recently happened.
That also changes what a creditor needs to know factually before counsel can answer anything. Under § 78B-2-307 the operative facts are the date of the last charge and the date of the last payment received. Under § 78B-2-309(2) they are three dates and, for one of them, the identity of the person who paid. Those are records questions, and they are the ones we work on while the legal reading stays with your lawyer.
Four Years From the Last Charge or the Last Payment
Utah Code § 78B-2-307, effective 5/3/2023.
The section opens: “An action may be brought within four years: (1) after the last charge is made or the last payment is received: (a) upon a contract, obligation, or liability not founded upon an instrument in writing; (b) on an open store account for any goods, wares, or merchandise; or (c) on an open account for work, labor or services rendered, or materials furnished.” The current text is published by the Legislature at Utah Code Section 78B-2-307 and is labelled “Effective 5/3/2023”, amended by Chapter 185 of the 2023 General Session.
Three things in that sentence deserve more attention than the summary pages give them. First, the trigger is rolling. It is not the date of default and it is not the date the account was charged off; it is the last charge or the last payment, whichever the account record actually shows most recently. On a revolving open store account under paragraph (b) that can be a considerably later date than a creditor assumes, and on a dormant one it can be considerably earlier. Balances of the size this subsection usually governs often end up in a small claims proceeding rather than a full civil action, and what a creditor can practically do with the judgment that results is a separate exercise from the limitations question – our small-claims judgment collection guide covers that side of it.
Second, read where the clause sits. “After the last charge is made or the last payment is received” is part of subsection (1), and paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) hang off it. Subsections (2), (3) and (4) of the same section are separate. Subsection (2) puts four years on claims under the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act – specifically Subsection 25-6-202(1)(a), except in the specific situations where Section 25-6-305 limits the time to one year, Subsection 25-6-202(1)(b), and Subsection 25-6-203(1). Subsection (3) covers personal property damage to a motor vehicle or property from an accident involving one, and subsection (4) is the residual “for relief not otherwise provided for by law”. None of those three inherits the last-charge trigger.
Third, subsection (2) matters directly to a creditor who suspects assets have been moved. A voidable transfer claim is a four-year claim, and it runs on its own terms rather than on the account’s. That is a different investigation from a straightforward locate, and the record work behind it is the same work described in our guide to an asset search for judgment collection.
Six Years for a Writing – Beginning the Later of Three Things
Utah Code § 78B-2-309, effective 5/14/2019.
Subsection (1) sets the period: “An action may be brought within six years: (a) for the mesne profits of real property; (b) subject to Subsection (2), upon any contract, obligation, or liability founded upon an instrument in writing, except those mentioned in Section 78B-2-311; or (c) to recover fire suppression costs or other damages caused by wildland fire.” Paragraph (b) is the debt collector’s limb, and two qualifications are built into it: it is expressly subject to Subsection (2), and it excepts the judgments that § 78B-2-311 handles separately.
Subsection (2) is the reason this page leads where it does: “For a credit agreement, as defined in Section 25-5-4, the six-year period described in Subsection (1) begins the later of the day on which: (a) the debt arose; (b) the debtor makes a written acknowledgment of the debt or a promise to pay the debt; or (c) the debtor or a third party makes a payment on the debt.” The section is published at Utah Code Section 78B-2-309 and labelled “Effective 5/14/2019”, amended by Chapter 107 of the 2019 General Session.
Limb (c): the payment a third party makes
Three limbs, and the third is unusual enough that it is worth stating on its own: the debtor or a third party makes a payment on the debt. Not the debtor, not the debtor’s authorised agent, not a payment the debtor directed – a third party. On the face of the subsection, a payment made by somebody who is not the account holder is capable of being the latest of the three days and therefore of fixing the day the six years begins.
Think about who that can be in an ordinary file. A guarantor who makes one payment to keep an account from escalating. A co-signer on a vehicle or student obligation. A parent or spouse paying down a balance that is not theirs. A business partner covering an obligation of the entity. An insurer or a settlement disbursement applied to the balance. Each of those is a person or an entity distinct from the debtor, and each is a payment the account record will show as a payment while telling you very little about who made it.
That is the point where a limitations question becomes a research question, and it is a genuinely different question from “where does the debtor live”. It asks who is connected to the account: whose name is on the instrument alongside the debtor’s, who else the record ties to the address or the collateral, whether a co-obligor exists at all. A payment history showing an isolated payment in an otherwise dormant year is worth understanding rather than assuming about, and understanding it is factual work. Where it leads to a person, it leads back to the ordinary business of locating a judgment debtor.
And limb (2) is narrower than it looks
Subsection (2) does not apply to every written obligation. It applies to a credit agreement, as defined in Section 25-5-4, and that definition is a term of art inside Utah’s Statute of Frauds chapter. Section 25-5-4(2)(a)(i)(A) defines a credit agreement as an agreement by a financial institution to lend, delay or otherwise modify an obligation to repay money, goods or things in action, to otherwise extend credit, or to make any other financial accommodation; subparagraph (B) excludes the usual and customary agreements and terms associated with deposit accounts and overdrafts. “Financial institution” is then defined in Section 25-5-4(2)(a)(iv) as a state or federally chartered bank, savings and loan association, savings bank, industrial bank or credit union, or any other institution under the jurisdiction of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions as provided in Title 7, the Financial Institutions Act. The full definitional subsection is published at Utah Code Section 25-5-4.
So a written supply contract between two businesses is a six-year claim under § 78B-2-309(1)(b), but nothing in the section text gives it the later-of accrual rule in subsection (2), because the counterparty is not a financial institution. A bank loan, a credit union note or a chartered lender’s card programme is a different matter. Section 25-5-4(2)(e) is also worth knowing for the card case: a credit agreement binds without a signature by the party to be charged where the debtor was given a written copy of the terms, the agreement provides that any use of the credit constitutes acceptance, and the debtor then requests funds or uses the credit. Whether a particular obligation falls inside that definition is a legal question for Utah counsel; what we can tell you is who and what the record shows.
The Two Clocks and What Starts Them
Each figure with its section and its trigger.
| Obligation | Period | Section | What the section says starts it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contract, obligation or liability not founded on an instrument in writing | 4 years | 78B-2-307(1)(a) | After the last charge is made or the last payment is received. |
| Open store account for goods, wares or merchandise | 4 years | 78B-2-307(1)(b) | Same rolling trigger as (1)(a). |
| Open account for work, labor or services rendered, or materials furnished | 4 years | 78B-2-307(1)(c) | Same rolling trigger as (1)(a). |
| Voidable transfer claims under the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act | 4 years | 78B-2-307(2) | Own terms; one-year situations under 25-6-305 excepted. |
| Obligation founded on an instrument in writing | 6 years | 78B-2-309(1)(b) | Subject to Subsection (2); judgments under 78B-2-311 excepted. |
| Credit agreement as defined in 25-5-4 | 6 years | 78B-2-309(2) Later of | The later of: the debt arising; a written acknowledgment or promise to pay; or a payment by the debtor or a third party. |
| Judgment or decree of a United States, state or territorial court | 8 years | 78B-2-311(1) | The date of entry. |
| Renewed judgment | 8 years | 78B-2-311(2) | The date of renewal under Title 78B, Chapter 6, Part 18. |
| Relief not otherwise provided for by law | 4 years | 78B-2-307(4) | Residual; no rolling trigger. |
The eight-year judgment row is the boundary of this page. Section 78B-2-311 was amended by Chapter 493 of the 2025 General Session, and the mechanics of renewal under the Renewal of Judgment Act sit with our Utah collection and judgment enforcement guide rather than here. What a Utah judgment can actually reach afterwards is covered in our Utah asset exemptions guide for creditors, and the earnings side in our Utah wage garnishment rules. If the debtor has filed and the obligation is a tax debt, the survival analysis is a separate question – see what a creditor faces when tax debt enters bankruptcy. For the wider picture, our state-by-state limitations overview places these two clocks alongside the rest.
Reading Utah’s Code Without Getting the Wrong Version
Effective-date labels, three amendment years, and one trap.
The three sections on this page were last amended in three different years, and each carries its own effective-date label at the top and its own enactment line at the foot:
Section 78B-2-309 – labelled “Effective 5/14/2019”, foot line “Amended by Chapter 107, 2019 General Session”. Section 78B-2-307 – labelled “Effective 5/3/2023”, foot line “Amended by Chapter 185, 2023 General Session”. Section 78B-2-311 – labelled “Effective 5/7/2025”, foot line “Amended by Chapter 493, 2025 General Session”.
The 2025 amendment is the one most likely to trip a reader. A secondary source written at any point in 2024 was describing a version of the eight-year judgment section that has since been amended, and there is no notice on that source telling you so. The same applies in reverse to anyone comparing an older file to today’s text: the version that governs a cause of action is not automatically the version on the screen.
There is also a subtler trap, and it caught us while preparing this page. Utah’s code site is versioned, and the plain section address – the one everybody links – is a shell. Request le.utah.gov/xcode/Title78B/Chapter2/78B-2-S307.html without a browser and what comes back has the right title, “Utah Code Section 78B-2-307”, and no statutory text in it at all; the text lives in a separate file the page then loads, C78B-2-S307_2023050320230503.html, whose filename encodes the effective date 3 May 2023. A section number rendering at a working address is therefore not evidence of what that section currently says, or that it says anything. The reliable signal is the enactment line at the foot of the section – “Amended by Chapter N, YYYY General Session” or “Enacted by Chapter N, YYYY General Session” – together with the effective-date label at the top. If a section renders without them, treat the number as unverified rather than as authority, and do not repeat it. That is how a superseded or wrongly-numbered figure gets copied forward with confidence.
A worked example of the cost, and it is a citation you will encounter: that Utah’s open store accounts are limited by Section 78B-2-310. They are not. Open store accounts for goods, wares or merchandise are paragraph (b) of Section 78B-2-307(1), which is where the four-year period and the last-charge trigger both live. Section 78B-2-310 is titled “Actions against public officers — Within six years” and concerns an action by the state, an agency or a public corporation against a public officer for malfeasance, misfeasance or nonfeasance in office, brought within six years after the officer ceases to hold office; it was amended by Chapter 76 of the 2025 General Session. A reader who took the citation on trust would have the wrong section, the wrong period and the wrong trigger.
Two working habits follow. Cite the section number, the effective-date label and the amending chapter together, so a reader can check the same three things you did. And when a figure on any summary page – including this one – matters to a decision, open the section itself rather than trusting the summary, because a summary carries no effective date at all.
What We Do on a Utah File
Person, connections, county record, sourced hand-off.
Locate the Named Debtor
A current address from public records and lawfully licensed data.
Identify Who Else Is Attached
Co-obligors and guarantors the record links to the same obligation – the people limb (c) can turn on.
Search the County Recorder
Real property and recorded interests in Salt Lake, Utah, Davis, Weber and Washington counties.
Hand It Over Sourced
Each item with the office or licensed source it came from, and the gaps named.
Utah Situations We Are Asked About
Each one turns on a date or on a person.
One Payment in a Dormant Year
Whose payment was it? Limb (c) makes the answer matter.
An Open Store Account
Four years running from the last charge, not the default.
A Co-Signer Who Vanished
The other name on the instrument, and where it leads.
A Transfer That Looks Deliberate
Four years under 78B-2-307(2), on its own terms.
A Judgment Approaching Eight Years
Renewal timing sits with the judgment-collection page.
A Debtor Who Left the Wasatch Front
Gone from the address of record, in state or out.
Who Sends Us Utah Work
The people who need the facts under the section.
Chartered Lenders
Credit agreements under 25-5-4
Creditor Attorneys
Facts under the accrual test
Servicers
Dating charges and payments
Credit Unions
Notes with co-signers attached
Trade Suppliers
Open accounts for materials furnished
Judgment Creditors
Eight-year windows and renewals
What connects them is a section they can read for themselves and a set of dates and names they cannot. Utah’s statute tells you that a payment by a third party can fix the start of the six years; it does not tell you who that third party was, or where either of them is now. Establishing that is record work, and it is the same discipline described across our skip tracing services. Send us the person, the identifiers you already hold, and the permissible purpose you are acting under.
The Limits of This Page and of Our Work
Everything above is a reading of published Utah statutory text with the section number and effective date attached so you can check it. It is general information and not legal advice. Whether an obligation is founded upon an instrument in writing, whether it meets the Section 25-5-4 definition of a credit agreement, and which of the three limbs of Section 78B-2-309(2) is latest on your facts are questions for a Utah lawyer with the documents in front of them.
Our own scope is narrower than people sometimes expect. We are a skip-tracing and public-records research firm acting under a permissible purpose. We do not reach into private financial account contents – which is also why we cannot tell you from the outside who made a payment on an account. County recorder indexes and court dockets are open offices, and Utah record work belongs there. Nor are we a consumer reporting agency. What leaves here is a research file, not a consumer report, and it must not be put to any of these eligibility decisions – credit, insurance, employment, housing.
And there is a category we turn away. If the surrounding facts point to someone who relocated for their own safety – a protective order, an address confidentiality enrolment, an indication the person is hiding from the requester – the matter stops there. We do not narrow the request until it reads acceptably, and we do not accept the file. Collecting a debt is a permissible purpose; reaching a person who moved to be unreachable is not, and an approaching limitation date does not alter that.
What We Stand Behind
Every Utah finding is traceable to the office or licensed source that produced it, and where the record is silent we report the silence rather than filling it. That habit is the same one this page applies to the Utah Code itself: cite the section, cite the effective date, and say plainly what could not be verified. Lawful research since 2004, under a permissible purpose, and never a stand-in for the statutory reading your lawyer is there to do.
Utah Limitations Questions
What is the statute of limitations on debt in Utah?
It depends on whether there is an instrument in writing behind the obligation. Utah Code Section 78B-2-307 gives four years on a contract, obligation or liability not founded upon an instrument in writing, on an open store account for goods, wares or merchandise, and on an open account for work, labor or services rendered or materials furnished. Utah Code Section 78B-2-309 gives six years on a contract, obligation or liability founded upon an instrument in writing, except judgments, which Section 78B-2-311 puts at eight. How those categories apply to a particular account is a question for Utah counsel; this page is general information, not legal advice.
When does Utah’s four-year clock actually start?
The section writes the trigger into itself. Utah Code Section 78B-2-307 reads “An action may be brought within four years: (1) after the last charge is made or the last payment is received” and then lists the three kinds of account in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c). So the four years runs from a rolling event on the account rather than from a single default date. Read the grammar carefully: that “last charge or last payment” trigger sits inside subsection (1), and subsections (2), (3) and (4) – voidable transfer claims, motor vehicle property damage, and relief not otherwise provided for by law – are not governed by it.
Can a payment by someone other than the debtor move a Utah clock?
For a credit agreement, yes, on the face of the statute. Utah Code Section 78B-2-309(2) provides that the six-year period begins the later of the day on which (a) the debt arose, (b) the debtor makes a written acknowledgment of the debt or a promise to pay the debt, or (c) the debtor or a third party makes a payment on the debt. Limb (c) names the third party expressly. A guarantor, a co-obligor, a relative settling part of an account or any other payer can therefore be the event that fixes a later start date, and the identity of the payer becomes a fact worth establishing rather than a detail.
What counts as a credit agreement in Utah?
Section 78B-2-309(2) borrows the definition in Utah Code Section 25-5-4, and that definition is narrower than the ordinary meaning of the words. Section 25-5-4(2)(a)(i) defines a credit agreement as an agreement by a financial institution to lend, delay or otherwise modify an obligation to repay money, goods or things in action, to otherwise extend credit, or to make any other financial accommodation, and expressly excludes the usual and customary terms of deposit accounts and overdrafts. Financial institution is then defined as a state or federally chartered bank, savings and loan association, savings bank, industrial bank or credit union, or another institution under the jurisdiction of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions under Title 7.
Does a written acknowledgment restart a Utah debt?
Utah does not frame it as a restart. Limb (b) of Utah Code Section 78B-2-309(2) makes a written acknowledgment of the debt or a promise to pay it one of three candidate start dates for the six-year period, and the period begins on whichever of the three is latest. That is an accrual rule sitting inside the limitation section, not a revival section, and it reaches only credit agreements as Section 25-5-4 defines them. What happens on an obligation outside that definition is a question for Utah counsel, and we do not answer it.
How long is a Utah judgment enforceable?
Eight years. Utah Code Section 78B-2-311 allows an action within eight years upon the date a judgment or decree was entered by a federal, state or territorial court, and the same eight years runs again from the date the judgment is renewed under the Renewal of Judgment Act in Title 78B, Chapter 6, Part 18. Check the label before trusting any secondary summary of this one: the section was amended by Chapter 493 of the 2025 General Session. Renewal mechanics belong to our Utah judgment-collection page rather than to this one.
Why do sources disagree about Utah’s limitation periods?
Because Utah’s code is versioned and its sections carry effective-date labels that are easy to miss. The three sections on this page were last amended in three different years – Section 78B-2-309 by Chapter 107 of the 2019 General Session, Section 78B-2-307 by Chapter 185 of the 2023 General Session, and Section 78B-2-311 by Chapter 493 of the 2025 General Session. The state’s own site compounds it: the plain section address returns a correctly titled shell with no statutory text in it, and the operative text sits in a separate versioned file whose name encodes the effective date. That is how a superseded provision ends up quoted on a summary page. The line to check is the enactment line at the foot of the section.
How quickly does a Utah request come back, and what is in it?
Ordinarily within 24 hours where the request is workable. The file comes back with a locatable address, an identity tied to the identifiers you supplied, any co-obligor or guarantor the record links to the same obligation, and recorded interests pulled from county recorder indexes in Salt Lake, Utah, Davis, Weber and Washington counties. Each item names the office or licensed source behind it, and anything the record left blank is reported as blank. We do not rule on whether your claim is timely.
Get the Dates and the Names Under the Section
Let counsel decide which limb of Utah Code § 78B-2-309(2) is latest on your facts. Send us the person and your permissible purpose, and we search the records for a current address, a confirmed identity, the co-obligors the record connects to the obligation, and Utah county recorder holdings – ordinarily back within 24 hours. Contact us to open a file.
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