Missouri Asset Exemptions: The Figures Actually In Force
Look up RSMo 513.430 or 513.475 on the Missouri Revisor’s site today and the page you land on is labelled “Effective – 01 Jan 2027”. The homestead figure it shows is $40,000. The homestead figure a court applies to an execution commenced this week is $15,000. Both texts are genuinely on the state’s own website, because H.B. 1870 and S.B. 835 & 1111 of 2026 carry a delayed effective date and the Revisor prints both versions – but only one of them is reachable from the default URL, and it is the wrong one for today. This page sets the in-force schedule beside the 2027 schedule, section by section, and then explains what a judgment creditor can actually reach outside bankruptcy and by what procedure.
The Short Version
Two schedules of Missouri exemptions are in print simultaneously. The one in force now – RSMo 513.430 effective 28 August 2022 and RSMo 513.475 effective 28 August 2003 – gives a $15,000 homestead, $3,000 of household goods, a $3,000 vehicle allowance, a $600 wildcard, $1,500 for a wedding ring and $500 for other jewelry, and $5,000 for a mobile home used as a principal residence. The one taking effect 1 January 2027 changes six of those seven and leaves one alone: the homestead goes to $40,000, household goods to $15,000, the vehicle allowance to $5,000 plus up to $10,000 of any unused household-goods allowance, the wildcard to $1,700, other jewelry to $1,700 and the mobile home to $12,000 – while the wedding ring stays at $1,500, unchanged in both texts. The Revisor’s default section URL serves the 2027 text, so a figure copied from it today is premature by more than a year. On top of the schedule, RSMo 513.440 adds $1,250 plus $350 per unmarried dependent child for a head of a family, and RSMo 525.030.2 caps wage garnishment at 25 per cent – or 10 per cent where the employee is both a head of a family and a Missouri resident. Which figure governs a given asset is a question for Missouri counsel. Our part is factual: locating the debtor and documenting holdings from the public record, only after a requester gives a reason the law recognises. General information, not legal advice.
Watch: Two Schedules, One Statute
Reading RSMo 513.430 and 513.475 against their effective dates.
Watch Overview
Missouri’s Own Website Shows You the 2027 Numbers by Default
Why the figure you looked up this morning may not be the one a court applies.
The Revisor of Statutes publishes each section at a stable address of the form revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=513.430. For most sections that address serves the operative text. For these two it does not. Both RSMo 513.430 and RSMo 513.475 were amended in the 2026 session by two separate bills with a delayed effective date, and the Revisor’s own footnote on each page explains the consequence in terms. The note opens “This section was amended by both H.B. 1870 and S.B. 835 & 1111, 2026” and closes, because those bills do not operate until January of next year, “due to a delayed effective date, both versions are printed.”
Both versions are printed – but the section URL resolves to the later one. Each page carries an effective-date banner, and on the default view that banner currently reads “Effective – 01 Jan 2027”. The text in force is reached only through the version table linked from the same page, which lists every enactment with its effective date and end date. For 513.430 the in-force row is the one effective 8/28/2022 and ending 1/1/2027; for 513.475 the version table shows the in-force row running from 8/28/2003 to 1/1/2027, with an earlier 8/13/1982 row before it.
The difference is not cosmetic. On the default page the homestead reads “not exceeding the aggregate value of forty thousand dollars”. In the version in force it reads “not exceeding the value of fifteen thousand dollars”. The household-goods aggregate moves from $3,000 to $15,000, the wildcard from $600 to $1,700, other jewelry from $500 to $1,700, the vehicle allowance from $3,000 to $5,000 with a new $10,000 spillover, and the mobile-home figure from $5,000 to $12,000. A creditor who prices a file off the default page is under-collecting against a schedule that will not exist for over a year; a debtor who does the same is claiming exemptions a court has no power to allow yet.
The practical rule: for a proceeding commenced now, the in-force column applies. The 2027 column becomes relevant on and after 1 January 2027, and how it treats a case already pending on that date is precisely the sort of transitional question to put to Missouri counsel rather than to guess at. What can be said with confidence is which text each column comes from and when each takes effect, and that is set out below.
What Is Exempt Today, Subdivision by Subdivision
RSMo 513.430.1 as effective 28 August 2022 – thirteen enacted subdivisions.
Section 513.430.1 opens “The following property shall be exempt from attachment and execution to the extent of any person’s interest therein” and then runs (1) through (13). Taking them in order, and using the statute’s own lettering:
(1) Household furnishings, household goods, wearing apparel, appliances, books, animals, crops or musical instruments held primarily for personal, family or household use – $3,000 in the aggregate. (2) A wedding ring not exceeding $1,500, and other jewelry held for personal, family or household use not exceeding $500 in the aggregate – two separate ceilings, not one. (3) “Any other property of any kind”, capped at $600 – the wildcard, and the only limb in the schedule that is not tied to a category of property. (4) Implements, professional books or tools of the trade of the debtor or a dependent – $3,000. (5) “Any motor vehicles”, plural, not exceeding $3,000 in the aggregate across all of them. (6) A mobile home used as the principal residence but not attached to real property in which the debtor has a fee interest – $5,000.
(7) Unmatured life insurance contracts other than credit life, plus up to $15,000 of matured proceeds for actual funeral, cremation or burial expenses where the deceased was the beneficiary’s spouse, child or parent. (8) Accrued dividend, interest or loan value on unmatured policies, with three qualifications worth noting: in a Title 11 proceeding the exempt amount is capped at $150,000; no amount is exempt from a claim for child support; and nothing is exempt under a contract purchased within one year before the proceeding commenced. (9) Professionally prescribed health aids, uncapped.
(10) is the benefits limb and runs (a) through (f): Social Security, unemployment compensation and public assistance; veterans’ benefits; disability, illness or unemployment benefits; alimony, support or separate maintenance not exceeding $750 a month; pension and deferred-compensation payments to the extent reasonably necessary for support, subject to a qualified domestic relations order; and money or assets in a plan qualified under IRC sections 401(a), 403(a), 403(b), 408, 408A or 409 – expressly including an inherited account – with no exemption in a Title 11 proceeding for contributions found fraudulent under RSMo 428.024 during the three years the debtor participated before commencement.
(11) Wrongful-death payments to a dependent, to the extent reasonably necessary for support. (12) Firearms, firearm accessories and ammunition, $1,500 in the aggregate – a figure the 2027 amendment leaves untouched. (13) Money in Missouri savings or deposit accounts under RSMo 166.400 to 166.456 or 166.500 to 166.529 where the designated beneficiary is a lineal descendant of the account owner – fully exempt, except as to contributions made within two years before a bankruptcy petition or within one year before an execution on judgment. That one-year execution lookback is the limb a judgment creditor actually uses. That lookback also fixes the order of work, because it is measured back from an execution, and an execution has to be aimed at a county where the debtor and the account can both be placed – which is what a post-judgment locate settles before anything is levied.
Subsection 2 then closes a door: nothing in the section exempts assets in an IRC 408 or 408A account from a valid judicial or administrative order for child support or maintenance. Where the debtor may have moved on, note that these figures do not travel with them – a judgment enforced against property in Denver runs into a different schedule entirely, which our page on Colorado asset exemptions against creditors sets out. And if the debtor files a petition rather than defends an execution, the framing changes; see Missouri bankruptcy exemptions for that side of the question.
$15,000 of Homestead, and Neither Spouse Can Alienate It Alone
RSMo 513.475.1 and .2, in the version effective 28 August 2003.
The in-force text of subsection 1 reads: “The homestead of every person, consisting of a dwelling house and appurtenances, and the land used in connection therewith, not exceeding the value of fifteen thousand dollars, which is or shall be used by such person as a homestead, shall, together with the rents, issues and products thereof, be exempt from attachment and execution.” The 2027 text substitutes “not exceeding the aggregate value of forty thousand dollars” and changes nothing else in the sentence.
The rest of subsection 1 is the anti-stacking rule, and it survives both versions unchanged: the exemption “shall not be allowed for more than one owner of any homestead if one owner claims the entire amount”, and where more than one owner claims, the exemptions allowed to each “shall not exceed, in the aggregate, the total exemption allowed under this subsection as to any one homestead”. Co-owners share a single ceiling. Two owners do not produce $30,000 of protection today, nor $80,000 after the amendment.
Subsection 2 is the provision creditors underestimate. “Either spouse separately shall be debarred from and incapable of selling, mortgaging or alienating the homestead in any manner whatever, and every such sale, mortgage or alienation is hereby declared null and void” – with a proviso preserving a joint conveyance by both spouses. This is a restraint on unilateral alienation, not an exemption figure, and it operates whatever the dollar limit happens to be. Its practical effect on a collection file is that a one-spouse transfer of the homestead is void on the face of the statute, so a recorded conveyance signed by one spouse alone is worth pulling and reading rather than treating as a completed disposal. Section 513.475 carries a cross-reference to RSMo 442.025 on conveyance requirements. A single-spouse conveyance is also one of the recorded signs that a debtor is moving property out of reach, and the statute declaring it void does not take it out of the chain: it still has to be found, read and explained before anyone treats the homestead as gone.
Note also what the homestead exemption is measured against. Section 513.475 speaks of the value of the homestead, and the interaction between that value, prior encumbrances and a judgment lien is a matter of Missouri lien law rather than of the exemption statute – another reason the recorded chain at the county recorder of deeds is the first document to obtain, not the last. That work sits alongside the rest of an asset search for judgment collection.
In Force Now vs. 1 January 2027
Read the left column for anything commenced today.
| Provision | In force now | From 1 Jan 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| 513.475.1 homestead | $15,000 Eff. 28 Aug 2003 | $40,000 aggregate |
| 513.430.1(1) household goods, apparel, appliances, books, animals, crops, instruments | $3,000 aggregate | $15,000 aggregate |
| 513.430.1(2) wedding ring / other jewelry | $1,500 ring; $500 other | $1,500 ring; $1,700 other |
| 513.430.1(3) wildcard, “any other property of any kind” | $600 | $1,700 |
| 513.430.1(4) implements, professional books, tools of the trade | $3,000 | $3,000 – unchanged |
| 513.430.1(5) motor vehicles | $3,000 aggregate | $5,000, plus up to $10,000 of unused (1) allocable to a vehicle |
| 513.430.1(6) mobile home as principal residence | $5,000 | $12,000 |
| 513.430.1(12) firearms, accessories, ammunition | $1,500 aggregate | $1,500 – unchanged |
| 513.440 head-of-family add-on | $1,250 + $350 per qualifying child | No pending amendment |
| 525.030.2 wage garnishment | 25% / 10% | No pending amendment |
Two rows deserve emphasis. The 2027 vehicle limb is not simply a higher number: it lets up to $10,000 of any unused household-goods allowance be allocated to a motor vehicle, which is a structural change rather than an indexation, and it only works because subdivision (1) rises to $15,000 at the same moment. And the last two rows are flat because RSMo 513.440 and RSMo 525.030 were not amended by the 2026 bills at all – their pages carry no delayed-effective-date footnote and no second version, so the ordinary section URL is reliable for them.
The Head-of-Family Add-On, and the Ten Percent It Does Not Cover
RSMo 513.440, effective 28 August 2012.
Section 513.440 sits on top of the 513.430 schedule rather than inside it, and it is short enough to quote in full: “Each head of a family may select and hold, exempt from execution, any other property, real, personal or mixed, or debts and wages, not exceeding in value the amount of one thousand two hundred fifty dollars plus three hundred fifty dollars for each of such person’s unmarried dependent children under the age of twenty-one years or dependent as defined by the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, determined to be disabled by the Social Security Administration, except ten percent of any debt, income, salary or wages due such head of a family.”
Three features are easy to lose. First, the property class is deliberately open – “any other property, real, personal or mixed, or debts and wages” – so it behaves as a second, larger wildcard for a debtor who qualifies as a head of a family, on top of the $600 in 513.430.1(3). Second, the per-dependant increment reaches two distinct groups: unmarried dependent children under twenty-one, and dependants as defined by the Internal Revenue Code who have been determined disabled by the Social Security Administration. A head of a family supporting two minor children and an adult disabled dependant is at $1,250 plus three increments of $350.
Third, and most useful to a creditor, is the closing exception. The add-on cannot be applied to ten percent of any debt, income, salary or wages due the head of the family. That ten percent is carved out of the 513.440 selection entirely, which is a different mechanism from the wage cap in RSMo 525.030 even though the same figure appears in both. Missouri courts have had to keep the two apart: in one reported dispute an expense reimbursement owed by a company to its president was held not to be earnings for personal services under 525.030 at all, but a debt the debtor could assert as exempt under 513.440 instead. The classification of a receivable therefore decides which statute rations it.
Where the Wage Rules Sit, and the Two Conditions on the Ten Percent
RSMo 525.030.2, effective 2 January 1979.
Wage garnishment is not in chapter 513 at all; it is in RSMo 525.030, and subsection 2(1) states the cap as the least of three quantities: (a) twenty-five per centum of aggregate earnings for the workweek after amounts required by law to be withheld; (b) the amount by which those earnings exceed thirty times the federal minimum hourly wage prescribed by section 6(a)(1) of the Fair Labor Standards Act in effect when the earnings are payable; or (c) “if the employee is the head of a family and a resident of this state, ten per centum”.
Limb (c) carries two conditions, not one. The employee must be a head of a family and a resident of Missouri. A Missouri-resident debtor who is not a head of a family gets no benefit from it; nor does a head of a family employed by a Missouri garnishee but resident elsewhere. Sources that describe Missouri as “a ten per cent state” routinely drop the residency half. That does real work in the St. Louis metro, where a debtor employed on the Missouri side but living across the river fails the residency half of limb (c) while their property sits under a different schedule altogether – the one set out on our Illinois asset exemptions guide for creditors.
Subsection 2(3) supplies the conversion for longer pay periods, and it is arithmetic rather than judgment: the multiple of the federal minimum wage is “the number of workweeks or fractions thereof (x) x 30 x the applicable federal minimum wage”, with a calendar month treated as 4 1/3 workweeks and a semimonthly period as 2 1/6 weeks. Subsection 2(2) lifts the caps entirely for a court order for the support of any person, a chapter XIII bankruptcy order, or any debt due for state or federal tax. Subsection 2(5) defines “earnings” to include commission and bonus and “periodic payments pursuant to a pension or retirement program”. Subsections 5 and 6 make discharge for a single indebtedness unlawful and a wilful violation a misdemeanour.
That is the boundary of what belongs here. The service mechanics – who is summoned, what the garnishee must answer, how continuing withholding is administered – are covered on our Missouri wage garnishment page, and the enforcement sequence from judgment to writ is set out under Missouri collection. What matters for an exemption analysis is only that wages are rationed by a different statute, on a different unit of time, with a head-of-family concept that is not the same test as the one in 513.440.
Where Missouri Files Go Wrong
Six recurring facts, each with a statutory consequence.
A figure taken off the default page
It is the 1 January 2027 text, not the one in force.
A one-spouse conveyance
513.475.2 declares it null and void on its face.
A 529 account funded last spring
Contributions inside one year of execution fall outside 513.430.1(13).
Three cars, one $3,000
Subdivision (5) is an aggregate across all motor vehicles.
“Missouri is a ten percent state”
Only for a head of a family who also resides here.
A reimbursement, not a wage
Classification decides whether 525.030 or 513.440 rations it.
Who This Is Built For
Missouri enforcement, from triage to writ.
Missouri Judgment Creditors
Pricing a file against the right column
Creditors’ Counsel
Recorded chain before an execution issues
Agencies
Portfolio triage on Missouri paper
Lenders Pursuing a Deficiency
Deficiency and charge-off recovery
Suppliers
Unpaid invoices reduced to judgment
Fiduciaries
Estate and receivership collections
The common need is a factual base the exemption analysis can stand on: which county holds the recorded interest, what encumbers it, how many vehicles are titled, whether a mobile home is the principal residence, and whether the household composition supports a head-of-family claim. That research is the substance of our skip tracing services, and every file is opened only after a requester states a basis the law recognises. We are not a consumer reporting agency; what we deliver is not a consumer report and must not be used to decide on credit, insurance, employment or a tenancy.
The Four Things We Actually Deliver
Facts with sources, not conclusions about the law.
Locate and identify
Current Missouri address where the record supports one, with the identity corroborated.
Pull the recorded interest
County recorder of deeds instruments and the order in which they were filed.
Inventory titled property
Vehicles, mobile homes, vessels and entity interests the public record can support.
Document the household facts
What the record does and does not show about dependants, since 513.440 and 525.030 turn on it.
Step four has a hard limit worth stating: household composition is often not a matter of public record, and where it is not, we say so rather than infer it. An inference dressed up as a finding is worse than a gap, because counsel cannot see it to discount it.
The Standard We Hold Ourselves To
Every figure on this page was read out of the version of the Missouri statute actually in force, reached through the Revisor’s version table rather than the default section URL, and we will correct it here the day that changes – which for these two sections is a known date, 1 January 2027, when the right-hand column becomes the only column and the dual-printing problem described above disappears. On a file, every finding is attributed to the county recorder, circuit court docket or licensed source it came from, and anything we could not establish is written down as not established. Where a request looks like an attempt to reach someone who left an abusive situation, or where a protective order or stalking history is in view, we decline it – a Missouri judgment is not a reason to put a person in danger.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Missouri’s homestead exemption $15,000 or $40,000?
Both figures are printed on the Revisor’s site right now. $15,000 is the text effective 28 August 2003 and in force today; $40,000 is the text effective 1 January 2027, enacted by H.B. 1870 and S.B. 835 and 1111 of 2026. Because those bills carry a delayed effective date, the Revisor prints both versions, and the default section URL resolves to the 2027 one. For a proceeding commenced now the $15,000 figure is the operative one. How a case pending across the changeover is treated is a question for Missouri counsel.
Why did the figure I looked up not match?
Almost certainly because you used revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx for 513.430 or 513.475. Those two sections each carry a Revisor’s note recording amendment by two 2026 bills whose operation is deferred, with the consequence that two texts of the same section are in print at once. The in-force text is reached through the version table linked from the same page, where the current row runs to 1/1/2027. Other sections cited here, including 513.440 and 525.030, have no second version and their ordinary URLs are reliable.
What is the Missouri wildcard exemption worth today?
RSMo 513.430.1(3) exempts “any other property of any kind” up to $600 in the aggregate under the version in force, rising to $1,700 on 1 January 2027. A debtor who is a head of a family may also select property under RSMo 513.440 up to $1,250 plus $350 for each unmarried dependent child under twenty-one or each disabled dependant, though that selection cannot reach ten percent of any debt, income, salary or wages due to them.
Does Missouri really cap garnishment at ten percent?
Only in one case. RSMo 525.030.2(1)(c) applies ten per centum where the employee is the head of a family and a resident of this state – two conditions, both required. Otherwise the cap is the lesser of twenty-five per centum of aggregate earnings after legally required withholding, or the amount by which those earnings exceed thirty times the federal minimum hourly wage. Support orders, chapter XIII bankruptcy orders and state or federal tax debts are outside the caps altogether.
Can one spouse sell the Missouri homestead?
RSMo 513.475.2 says either spouse separately is debarred from and incapable of selling, mortgaging or alienating the homestead in any manner whatever, and declares every such sale, mortgage or alienation null and void, while preserving a conveyance made jointly by both. Whether a particular recorded instrument falls within that language is a legal question for counsel; on a collection file it is a reason to obtain and read the instrument rather than assume the property is gone.
Does this page cover bankruptcy exemptions?
No. This page is about what a judgment creditor can reach outside bankruptcy – attachment, execution, and garnishment under chapters 513 and 525. What a debtor is entitled to keep once a Title 11 petition is filed is a different framework with its own lookbacks and its own case law, and our Missouri bankruptcy exemptions page handles it. Several subdivisions of 513.430 are drafted to behave differently in a Title 11 proceeding, which is one reason the two questions do not share an answer.
Do you interpret the exemption statutes for us?
We do not, and nothing here is legal advice. Deciding which subdivision covers a particular asset, how the head-of-family tests apply, and what happens across the 2027 changeover is work for a Missouri attorney. What we supply arrives earlier in the sequence: the debtor located, the recorded interest identified by county and instrument, titled property inventoried, and each item attributed to the office or licensed source it came from.
Are there requests you turn down?
Yes. We decline files where the purpose looks like locating someone who left because of domestic violence, where a protective order or a pattern of stalking or harassment is in view, or where the aim appears to be intimidation rather than enforcement. A judgment establishes a debt; it does not authorise conduct that would endanger a person.
Work the Column That Is Actually in Force
Send us the debtor, the judgment and the lawful reason behind the request, and we will return the recorded interest, the filing order against it, and the titled property the Missouri record supports – so counsel can apply the in-force schedule rather than the 2027 one. Most workable requests come back within 24 hours. Contact us to get started.
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