Missouri Bankruptcy Exemptions

These figures are presented as general legal information and reflect the amounts most commonly cited under the current Missouri statutes; specific dollar caps and the way courts apply them can change, so confirm the figure that governs a particular case against the primary text at the Missouri Revisor of Statutes and with Missouri counsel. This is not legal advice.

Most of This Table Changes on 1 January 2027

Every figure above is the law today and stops being the law at the end of this year. Missouri’s 2026 legislature rewrote both operative sections – House Bill 1870, merged with Senate Bills 835 and 1111 – and the new text carries a delayed effective date of 1 January 2027. The Revisor prints both versions and says so in its own note on the section: “This section was amended by both H.B. 1870 and S.B. 835 & 1111, 2026. Due to a delayed effective date, both versions are printed.” Anyone checking a figure between now and then has to know which of the two they are reading, because the Revisor’s default view of 513.475 already serves the 2027 text; the versions in force this month are the ones dated 28 August 2003 for the homestead and 28 August 2022 for 513.430.

Section by section, and this is where a creditor’s arithmetic moves rather than merely shifts: the homestead under 513.475 rises from fifteen thousand dollars to forty thousand, and the mobile-home cap in 513.430.1(6) from five thousand to twelve thousand. Household goods under 513.430.1(1) go from three thousand to fifteen thousand – a five-fold increase, and the single largest change in the list. The base wildcard in 513.430.1(3) moves from six hundred to one thousand seven hundred, and jewellery other than a wedding ring from five hundred to the same one thousand seven hundred, the wedding-ring cap of fifteen hundred staying where it is. The motor-vehicle cap in 513.430.1(5) goes from three thousand to five thousand, and it also gains a mechanic the current text has no equivalent of: up to ten thousand dollars of any unused household-goods exemption may be allocated to a vehicle, which means a debtor with modest furnishings can carry a materially larger vehicle exemption than the headline five thousand suggests. Two figures do not move at all – tools of trade stays at three thousand under 513.430.1(4), and the head-of-family wildcard in 513.440 stays at one thousand two hundred fifty plus three hundred fifty per dependent child, since that section was not amended.

The practical consequence is a timing question a creditor should raise with counsel now rather than in January. Equity that is comfortably reachable in a case filed this year may sit entirely inside the exemption in a case filed after the new year, and the gap on a single homestead is twenty-five thousand dollars. Our research reports the value we find and the date we found it; which version of Chapter 513 applies to a given filing is a legal question for a Missouri bankruptcy attorney.

The wildcard is where Missouri departs most sharply from the simple “cap and seize” picture, and it is the figure most worth understanding before you assume an asset is reachable. Under Mo. Rev. Stat. 513.430 a debtor may exempt up to about $600 of any property of their choosing. Mo. Rev. Stat. 513.440 then layers on more for a family filer: an additional $1,250 if the debtor is the head of a family, plus another $350 for each unmarried dependent child under the age of eighteen.

That stacking is the distinctive part. A head of household with three dependent children does not have $600 of flexible protection; they have six hundred, plus one thousand two hundred fifty, plus three times three hundred fifty, which adds up to roughly $2,900 of property they can shield from any category. Apply that on top of the homestead and vehicle caps and a modest pool of non-exempt cash, a tax refund, or a bank balance can disappear entirely behind exemptions that a creditor working from a generic national chart would never have anticipated. Few states tie the wildcard to head-of-family status and stack it per child the way Missouri does, so a figure carried over from elsewhere will understate the shield here.

For collections, the lesson is to count the dependents and run the wildcard before deciding an asset is worth pursuing. A bank account that looks exposed on paper may be fully covered once the per-child amounts are applied, while a higher-value asset, business equipment, or surplus home equity sails right past a wildcard that small. Our research identifies the assets and their approximate value; counsel applies the exemption math to each one.

People Locator Skip Tracing is a public-records research firm. In a bankruptcy context we work for creditors, collections departments, and the attorneys representing them, locating debtors and identifying assets that may sit outside Missouri’s exemptions. We rebuild a debtor’s current address and employment picture, surface real property and vehicles, and trace the connected parties a debtor sometimes uses to park value. What we hand back is research, not a legal opinion: an inventory of what exists and roughly what it is worth, so your Missouri counsel can run the exemption analysis and decide strategy.

We are not a law firm and we do not give legal advice; the figures on this page are general information and you should confirm the controlling amounts and apply them to your facts with a Missouri bankruptcy attorney. We are also not a consumer reporting agency under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, and our work is not used for credit, employment, insurance, or tenant-screening eligibility decisions; it is asset and locate research for a permissible purpose such as enforcing a judgment or evaluating a claim in a bankruptcy. This work pairs naturally with our guides on how to find hidden assets and what assets can be seized to satisfy a judgment, and with our broader skip tracing services. For a legitimate creditor matter, a verified asset and locate report typically comes back within 24 hours.