Nevada Bankruptcy Exemptions
Nevada does not offer a choice of exemption systems and does not index its figures. What it offers is one flat statutory list – NRS 21.090(1), lettered from (a) through (ll) – plus a homestead in NRS chapter 115 that only works once the claimant has signed, acknowledged and recorded a declaration in the county where the property sits. The list is worth reading closely rather than summarising. Its opt-out is not a clean switch: subsection 3 says the federal exemptions in 11 U.S.C. section 522(d) do not apply to a Nevada resident’s property “unless conferred also by subsection 1, as limited by subsection 2.” Five of its paragraphs hand the choice of what to protect to the debtor personally. Its wage limb protects 82 percent of a low earner’s disposable earnings against a floor of 50 times the federal minimum hourly wage. And nowhere in the section is there a consumer price index clause, so these numbers move only when the Legislature moves them, which it last did in the 2025 session. For a creditor, the practical consequence is that Nevada’s protections leave a paper trail: a homestead declaration is a recorded instrument with a date on it. This is a public-records research firm; every request begins with a permissible purpose, and from there the creditor-side work is to locate the debtor and set down what the county recorder, the Secretary of State and the court indexes actually show. This page is general information about Nevada law, not legal advice.
The Two-Minute Read
A Nevada filer builds a claim out of NRS 21.090(1), which runs (a) through (z) and then (aa) through (ll) – 38 lettered paragraphs – together with the chapter 115 homestead. There is no state-versus-federal election to make and no annual inflation adjustment to look up. The homestead in NRS 115.010(2) reaches equity up to $605,000, carries no acreage limit, and covers a mobile home or a common-interest unit as readily as a house; but NRS 115.020 requires the claimant to declare it in writing and record it like a conveyance in the county where the property sits, so, unlike most of the exemptions on this page, it leaves a searchable public document behind. The $10,000 wildcard at (z) is expressly the debtor’s own selection, and so are the categories at (a), (b), (c) and (i). Our contribution is factual: locate the debtor, read the recorder’s index and the Secretary of State’s filings, and report each record with its date. Whether a claim holds is for counsel, the trustee and the court. General information about Nevada law, not legal advice.
Watch: One List, One Homestead, No Index
A short walk through the Nevada statute a creditor is up against.
Watch Overview
NRS 21.090(1), Paragraph by Paragraph
The lettered figures as they appear in the statute. Nothing here is indexed.
| Paragraph | What it covers | Amount in the statute |
|---|---|---|
| (z) | Any personal property not otherwise exempt under the subsection, including equity in property, money, stocks, bonds or funds on deposit – selected by the debtor Wildcard | $10,000 in total value |
| (a) | Private libraries, works of art, musical instruments and jewelry, selected by the debtor, plus all family pictures and keepsakes | $5,000 |
| (b) | Necessary household goods, furnishings, electronics, wearing apparel, other personal effects and yard equipment, selected by the debtor | $12,000 |
| (c) | Farm trucks, farm stock, farm tools, farm equipment, supplies and seed, selected by the debtor | $4,500 |
| (d) | Professional libraries, equipment, supplies, tools, inventory, instruments and materials used to carry on the trade or business | $10,000 |
| (e) | A miner’s or prospector’s cabin or dwelling, cars, implements and appliances, and the mining claim actually worked | $4,500 in total value |
| (f) | One vehicle, unless the creditor is paid the excess above that equity; paragraph (p) removes the cap for a vehicle modified for permanent disability | Equity not exceeding $15,000 |
| (r) | Retirement money – IRAs including inherited ones, Roths, simplified employee pension plans, cash or deferred arrangements, qualified trusts and NRS chapter 353B tuition programs | $1,000,000 in present value |
| (u) | Payments received as compensation for personal injury, expressly excluding pain and suffering and actual pecuniary loss | $16,150 |
| (aa) | A tax refund derived from the earned income credit under 26 U.S.C. section 32 or a similar state credit | No cap stated |
Ten rows are not the whole list. The section runs from (a) to (z) and then continues (aa) through (ll), thirty-eight lettered paragraphs in all, and many of the later ones carry no figure because they protect a category outright: life insurance proceeds at (k), a security deposit held by a landlord at (n), child support at (s), spousal support and its arrearages at (t), restitution for a criminal act at (x), Social Security payments at (y), private disability insurance proceeds at (ee), industrial insurance compensation at (gg), unemployment benefits at (hh), Public Employees’ Retirement System benefits at (ii) and vocational rehabilitation money at (jj). Paragraphs (cc) and (dd) deal separately with trust interests – contingent and discretionary distribution interests, powers of appointment and trust-protector powers – a level of drafting detail that carries no dollar figure and is easy to read past. The full text is published by the Legislature at NRS chapter 21.
Nevada’s Opt-Out Has a Condition Inside It
NRS 21.090 subsection 3, quoted in full.
Nevada’s opt-out is not a separate section with a heading. It is the third subsection of the exemption statute itself, and it reads: “Any exemptions specified in subsection (d) of section 522 of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978, 11 U.S.C. §§ 101 et seq., do not apply to property owned by a resident of this State unless conferred also by subsection 1, as limited by subsection 2.” Read the qualification rather than skipping it. The sentence does not simply switch the federal list off; it says those exemptions do not apply unless conferred also by subsection 1 – the lettered list above – and then subjects even that to subsection 2. Subsection 2 provides that, except as otherwise provided in NRS 115.010, no article or species of property mentioned in the section is exempt from execution on a judgment to recover its price, or on a judgment foreclosing a mortgage or other lien on it. A purchase-money creditor and a foreclosing lienholder are therefore outside the list by the statute’s own terms.
One correction is worth making because the miscitation circulates. NRS 21.090(1)(bb) is not the opt-out. Read it and it says: “Stock of a corporation described in subsection 2 of NRS 78.746 except as set forth in that section” – a charging-order provision about closely held stock, unrelated to federal bankruptcy exemptions. The opt-out is subsection 3 of the section, not a paragraph of subsection 1. If a memorandum in your matter cites (bb), that is the error to catch. And the federal provision the subsection responds to is 11 U.S.C. section 522(b)(2), which makes the federal schedule available unless the applicable State law “specifically does not so authorize”; the text of that section is published at 11 U.S.C. section 522.
Because Nevada is an opt-out state, which state’s list a debtor gets is itself a federal question decided by 11 U.S.C. section 522(b)(3)(A)’s two-year domicile test – a rule that matters here precisely because Nevada gains residents. Our Texas bankruptcy exemptions page develops it. And this page answers the bankruptcy question only. What a judgment creditor may reach outside a bankruptcy case is the enforcement-of-judgment side of the same chapter, covered on our Nevada asset exemptions against creditors page, with the post-judgment procedure on our Nevada judgment collection page.
$605,000, No Acreage Limit, and It Has to Be Recorded
NRS 115.010(2), NRS 115.005(2) and NRS 115.020.
The cap is stated in NRS 115.010(2): the exemption “extends only to that amount of equity in the property held by the claimant which does not exceed $605,000 in value, unless allodial title has been established and not relinquished, in which case the exemption provided in subsection 1 extends to all equity in the dwelling, its appurtenances and the land on which it is located.” The allodial-title clause is a genuine Nevada peculiarity and it is written into the statute, along with a further provision in subsection 4 extending the exemption even against purchase-money and tax obligations where allodial title exists and no specific waiver has been executed. It should not be overstated: establishing allodial title is not a routine step, and subsection 5 confirms it does not exempt property from forfeiture under the statutes it lists. But it is there, and NRS 21.090(1)(l)(2) mirrors it on the execution side.
What the homestead covers is set by the definition in NRS 115.005(2), and it is deliberately broad in form rather than in acreage. “Homestead” means “(a) A quantity of land, together with the dwelling house thereon and its appurtenances; (b) A mobile home whether or not the underlying land is owned by the claimant; or (c) A unit, whether real or personal property, existing pursuant to chapter 116 or 117 of NRS,” with its appurtenant limited common elements and its interest in the common elements. No acreage figure appears anywhere in the definition. A mobile home on rented ground and a condominium unit are homesteads in Nevada on the same footing as a house on its own lot – and NRS 21.090(1)(m) separately protects a dwelling occupied as a home where the equity does not exceed $605,000 and the dwelling sits on land the debtor does not own. “Equity” itself is defined at NRS 115.005(1) as fair market value minus the liens excepted from the exemption, so the recorded encumbrances are the arithmetic. Both halves of that subtraction come out of the same county index, which is why an asset search built for judgment collection in Nevada is a reading of deeds of trust and reconveyances in recording order rather than a valuation exercise.
The part that leaves a public record
Most exemptions exist only as a line on a schedule. Nevada’s homestead does not. NRS 115.020(1) requires the claimant to declare an intention in writing to claim the property as a homestead, on a form the Real Estate Division of the Department of Business and Industry prescribes under NRS 115.025. Subsection 2 sets out what the declaration must state, including that the claimant intends to use and claim the property as a homestead. And subsection 3 is the operative one for anyone searching records: the declaration “must be signed by the person or persons making it and acknowledged and recorded as conveyances affecting real property are required to be acknowledged and recorded,” with both spouses joining where the property is the separate property of one of them. Subsection 4 confirms the venue by regulating fees for recording “in the county in which the property is located.”
So a Nevada homestead claim is a dated instrument sitting in a county recorder’s index – Clark, Washoe, Douglas, Lyon, Elko, Nye and the rest – and it can be searched for, found or not found, on the public record. Subsection 5 adds a wrinkle worth knowing: the rights acquired by declaring a homestead “are not extinguished by the conveyance of the underlying property in trust for the benefit of the person or persons who declared it,” and a trustee may declare a homestead for the settlor or beneficiaries who reside there. A transfer into a family trust does not, by itself, make the declaration disappear from the chain. The chapter text is published at NRS chapter 115. It also means a pre-filing transfer into a Nevada trust is a chain-of-title question before it is anything else: whether it belongs in the fraudulent conveyance and asset-transfer analysis is for counsel and the trustee, but the deed, its date and the declaration standing behind it are all in the recorder’s index and can be pulled.
The $10,000 Wildcard the Debtor Selects
NRS 21.090(1)(z), and the four other paragraphs that hand the choice to the debtor.
Paragraph (z) reads in full: “Any personal property not otherwise exempt from execution pursuant to this subsection belonging to the judgment debtor, including, without limitation, the judgment debtor’s equity in any property, money, stocks, bonds or other funds on deposit with a financial institution, not to exceed $10,000 in total value, to be selected by the judgment debtor.” Three things in that sentence do real work. It applies to property not otherwise exempt under the subsection, so it is a residual rather than a top-up on the lettered categories. Its subject is personal property, and its named examples are equity, money, stocks, bonds and funds on deposit – the liquid holdings a schedule can describe in a single line. And it is capped at $10,000 in total value across everything the debtor points it at.
The closing clause – “to be selected by the judgment debtor” – is not unique to (z). The same formula appears at (a) for libraries, art, instruments and jewelry, at (b) for household goods and personal effects, at (c) for farm trucks, stock, tools and seed, and at (i) for one gun. Five paragraphs of this statute make the debtor the person who decides which items the protection lands on. That is a drafting choice with a practical consequence for a creditor: the same debtor with the same possessions can produce materially different schedules depending on how the selection is made, so what the schedule says is a choice rather than a description. The recorded and registered picture underneath it does not move, which is precisely why it is worth establishing independently.
The Wage Limb That Protects 82 Percent
NRS 21.090(1)(g), stated here as a bankruptcy exemption.
Paragraph (g) protects, for any workweek, “82 percent of the disposable earnings of a judgment debtor during that week if the gross weekly salary or wage of the judgment debtor on the date the most recent writ of garnishment was issued was $770 or less, 75 percent of the disposable earnings … if [it] exceeded $770, or 50 times the minimum hourly wage prescribed by section 206(a)(1) of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 … and in effect at the time the earnings are payable, whichever is greater.” Two numbers there are Nevada’s own. The low-earner tier protects 82 percent rather than the more familiar 75, and the absolute floor is 50 times the federal minimum hourly wage rather than the 30 times used in the federal consumer credit protection formula. Both would be false if pasted onto another state’s page.
The paragraph also names its own exceptions, and they matter in a bankruptcy context: except as otherwise provided in paragraphs (o), (s) and (t), the exemption does not apply to a court order for the support of any person, to an order of a court of bankruptcy, or to a debt due for any state or federal tax. Its internal definitions are unusually wide – “earnings” at (g)(2) expressly includes tips, commissions and bonuses, and reaches compensation already held in accounts at a bank or other financial institution, as well as a receivable still due to the debtor. NRS 21.005 then sets out how the gross weekly salary is computed, dividing gross earnings for the calendar year by weeks worked, with a rounding rule at subsection 2 that rounds down at three excess days and up at four.
The garnishment mechanics that flow from this paragraph – how a writ is served, how an employer answers, what a debtor files to claim the exemption – belong on our Nevada wage garnishment laws page rather than here. On this page (g) matters for a narrower reason: it tells you which slice of a debtor’s earnings was never estate value in the first place, and where the rest of it may have gone.
These Figures Do Not Index – They Move When the Legislature Moves Them
What the history line at the end of NRS 21.090 actually tells you.
Read NRS 21.090 from end to end and one thing is conspicuously absent: there is no consumer price index clause, no adjustment cycle, no agency charged with republishing the amounts, and no date on which anything recalculates itself. The same is true of the $605,000 in NRS 115.010(2). Every figure quoted on this page is a number the Legislature wrote, and it will read exactly the same next April as it does today unless a session law changes it.
What does change is the history line beneath the section, which records each amendment by year and page. NRS 21.090’s ends “; 2025, 3600” – the section was amended in the 2025 session. We read the current text of the section rather than the session law, so we are not going to tell you which paragraphs that amendment touched; anyone who needs that answer should read the 2025 enactment itself. What we can say is that the figures set out above are the current statutory text as published by the Legislature, and that a memorandum written against a pre-2025 printing of this section is worth re-checking rather than trusted.
For a creditor the absence of an index cuts both ways. A fixed dollar figure does not quietly erode a claim between one year and the next, so an analysis does not go stale on a calendar. But it also means the protections do not track house prices or wages, and in a state where property values move quickly the gap between $605,000 of protected equity and what a parcel is actually worth is a question of fact rather than a question of law. Establishing that gap is records work. Where a creditor is weighing action before a debtor files at all, the sequencing questions are covered on our page about protecting a judgment before a bankruptcy is filed.
Six Nevada Situations a Schedule Will Not Settle
Each of these is answered by a record, not by an assertion.
No Declaration in the Index
NRS 115.020 requires a recorded declaration, so its absence is a searchable fact.
Equity Past the $605,000 Line
Value less recorded liens is arithmetic; both halves come out of the recorder’s index.
A Dwelling on Land Someone Else Owns
Paragraph (m) reaches it, and the title record and the lot record are two different searches.
Title Standing in a Nevada Entity
Secretary of State filings say who manages it and since when; a schedule may say nothing.
A Conveyance Into a Family Trust
NRS 115.020(5) says the declared homestead survives it, so the chain has to be read in order.
A Debtor No Longer at the Address
Examination and notice need a current one, which is judgment debtor location work.
Who Sends Us Nevada Matters
Six kinds of client, one deliverable.
Creditors’ Counsel
The recorded picture, dated
Chapter 7 Trustees
Value past the lettered caps
Nevada Lenders
Lien position and priority
Judgment Holders
Where the lettered list stops
Forensic Accountants
A chain of title in date order
Trade Creditors
Owed by a Nevada filer
The deliverable is the same in every case: a list of records, each with the office it came from and the date it carries, and a plain statement of anything we could not establish. Give us the debtor’s name as filed, the Nevada counties in play and the lawful reason behind the request. Where the person has to be found before any of this begins, that is skip tracing services work and it comes first.
How a Nevada File Gets Built
Four steps, in this order, because the statute is county-recorded.
Name the Counties
Clark, Washoe, Douglas, Lyon, Elko or Nye – a homestead declaration is recorded where the property sits.
Search the Recorder’s Index
Declarations of homestead, deeds, deeds of trust and reconveyances, each read in recording order.
Read the Entity Filings
Secretary of State records for the companies that hold title, and who has been on them, and since when.
Report With Dates
Every instrument sourced to its office and its recording date, with an honest note wherever confidence is lower.
What a Nevada Matter Gets From Us
Because NRS 115.020 makes the Nevada homestead a recorded instrument, our answers on this state can be checked against a public index – and we hold ourselves to that. Each record is reported with the county office it came from and the date it carries, and where a declaration is simply not in the index we say that plainly rather than implying it. No search starts until a lawful reason for it has been stated; where there is not one, the request is declined. None is claimed – this is recorder, Secretary of State and court-index research done in the open. We decline location work when the pattern suggests a person moved for their own safety rather than to avoid a creditor – a protection order, an enrollment in Nevada’s confidential address program, someone fleeing abuse who does not want to be found – and we do not look for a way around that. Nothing we produce is a consumer report, and it may not be used for credit, employment or tenancy decisions. Whether an exemption holds, what any figure means for a case, and whether anything was concealed are calls for your attorney, the trustee and the court. Public-records research since 2004.
Nevada Questions, Answered From the Statute
Can a Nevada filer elect the federal exemptions in 11 U.S.C. 522(d)?
Not under Nevada law. NRS 21.090 subsection 3 provides that the subsection (d) exemptions “do not apply to property owned by a resident of this State unless conferred also by subsection 1, as limited by subsection 2.” That is Nevada exercising the opt-out that 11 U.S.C. section 522(b)(2) leaves open to a state. Note the qualification in the sentence rather than reading it as a flat repeal: the federal exemptions are switched off except to the extent the Nevada list itself confers the same protection, and even that is subject to subsection 2’s purchase-money and lien-foreclosure carve-out.
Does the Nevada homestead have to be recorded before it protects anything?
NRS 115.020 sets out the mechanics and they are not optional formalities. Subsection 1 requires a written declaration of the intention to claim the property as a homestead, on the form the Real Estate Division prescribes under NRS 115.025. Subsection 3 requires that declaration to be “signed by the person or persons making it and acknowledged and recorded as conveyances affecting real property are required to be acknowledged and recorded,” and subsection 4 confirms it is recorded in the county where the property is located. Whether a particular filer’s declaration was effective and when is a legal question; whether one appears in a county index is a question of record, and that part we can answer.
Is NRS 21.090(1)(bb) the Nevada opt-out?
No, and the miscitation is common enough to be worth checking in your own papers. Paragraph (1)(bb) reads “Stock of a corporation described in subsection 2 of NRS 78.746 except as set forth in that section,” which concerns closely held corporate stock and has nothing to do with federal bankruptcy exemptions. The opt-out is subsection 3 of NRS 21.090 – a separate subsection, not a lettered paragraph of the exemption list. If a memorandum cites (bb) for the proposition that Nevada opted out, the citation is wrong even though the conclusion is right.
What does the $10,000 wildcard at (z) actually cover?
Paragraph (z) covers “any personal property not otherwise exempt from execution pursuant to this subsection,” expressly including the debtor’s equity in property, money, stocks, bonds or other funds on deposit with a financial institution, capped at $10,000 in total value and “to be selected by the judgment debtor.” Two limits are built into that wording: it is residual, applying to what the other paragraphs do not already reach, and the cap is an aggregate rather than a per-item figure. How it applies to a particular asset is a matter for counsel and the trustee.
Why does Nevada protect 82 percent of some paychecks?
Because paragraph (g) is written in tiers rather than as a single percentage. It protects 82 percent of disposable earnings for a workweek where the gross weekly wage was $770 or less, 75 percent where it exceeded $770, or 50 times the federal minimum hourly wage under section 206(a)(1) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, whichever of those is greater. The 82 percent tier and the 50-times floor are both particular to Nevada. The paragraph then excepts support orders, orders of a court of bankruptcy and state or federal tax debts, subject to paragraphs (o), (s) and (t).
Do these Nevada figures rise with inflation?
Nothing in NRS 21.090 or NRS 115.010 provides for indexation – no consumer price index clause, no adjustment interval and no agency charged with republishing amounts. They change by amendment. The history line at the foot of NRS 21.090 ends “; 2025, 3600,” which records an amendment in the 2025 session; we read the current text of the section rather than that session law, so we do not say which paragraphs it altered. A creditor working from an older printing of the section should re-check it rather than assume it still reads the same.
Will you tell us whether a Nevada exemption claim holds?
No. We quote the Nevada Revised Statutes and we do not construe them. Whether a declaration was effective, whether a selection under (a), (b), (c) or (z) was properly made, how a cap applies to a particular asset and whether anything was omitted are determinations for your bankruptcy counsel, the trustee, the United States Trustee and the court. Our contribution sits underneath all of that: who held title, in which county, encumbered by what, and on what dates the instruments were recorded.
Is this a consumer report, and what do you need to start?
It is not a consumer report and we are not a consumer reporting agency; nothing in a Nevada asset file may be used to decide credit, employment or tenancy, and we will not release it for those purposes. To open a matter we need the debtor’s name as it appears on the petition, the Nevada counties involved, the filing date and the lawful reason behind the request. A first read normally comes back within 24 hours, and it distinguishes clearly between what the records establish and what remains unconfirmed.
Find the Declaration, Then the Rest of the Chain
A Nevada homestead claim leaves a dated document in a county recorder’s index, and that document – present or absent – is often the first useful fact in a creditor’s file. Send us the debtor’s name as filed, the counties in play and your lawful reason for the request, and we will read the recorder’s index, the Secretary of State’s filings and the court records, and report each item with its office and its date, normally with a first read within 24 hours. The statute, the claim and the outcome stay with your counsel, the trustee and the court. Contact us to open a matter.
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