Virginia Asset Exemptions: The Deed, the Deadline, and What Is Left
Collecting a Virginia judgment means reading Code of Virginia Title 34, where two regimes sit side by side: Section 34-4’s homestead, which outside bankruptcy exists only once a writing is admitted to record, and Section 34-26’s list, which attaches automatically with no deed and no deadline. General legal information, not legal advice.
The Short Version
Two Virginia regimes decide what a judgment creditor is left with. Section 34-4 lets a householder hold exempt property he selects: $5,000 in value, or $10,000 at sixty-five or older, plus real or personal property used as the principal residence to $50,000, plus $500 per dependent; Section 34-4.1 adds $10,000 for a veteran rated at a service-connected disability of forty percent or more. Outside bankruptcy none of it attaches until a Section 34-6 or Section 34-14 writing is admitted to record, within the Section 34-17 deadline. Section 34-26 runs the other way: thirteen enumerated items, automatic, no deed and no deadline, with motor vehicles capped at $10,000 across all of them. On April 1, 2027 each limit in Sections 34-4 and 34-26 adjusts to the CPI-U and rounds to the nearest $25. We are a public-records research firm searching for what Title 34 does not reach. General legal information, not legal advice.
Watch: Virginia Exemptions, Creditor’s View
Watch Overview
The Writing That Has to Be Recorded Before Section 34-4 Exists
Code of Virginia section 34-4 entitles a householder to hold exempt from creditor process arising out of a debt real and personal property, or either, to be selected by the householder, including money and debts due him not exceeding $5,000 in value, or $10,000 at sixty-five or older, and in addition real or personal property used as the principal residence of the householder or his dependents not exceeding $50,000, plus $500 for each dependent. Section 34-4.1 adds $10,000 for a veteran residing in Virginia with a service-connected disability of forty percent or more as rated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Section 34-1 defines a householder as any resident of Virginia, so eligibility to claim turns on residency, not on dependants or marital status.
None of it is self-executing outside bankruptcy. Section 34-6 requires, for real estate, a writing signed by the householder and duly admitted to record, recorded as deeds are recorded, in the county or city where the land lies, describing the property with reasonable certainty and affixing the householder’s own cash valuation. Section 34-14 does the same for personal estate and sends it elsewhere: the county or city where the householder resides: a creditor who searches one index has searched half. In a bankruptcy case the Schedule of Property Claimed as Exempt is sufficient instead. Section 34-21 then charges what has already been set apart against the maximum for eight years, and the statutory forms collect exactly that: how many homestead deeds the householder has filed, the amount previously claimed, and where.
Recorded By When: Section 34-17’s Event Deadline
Section 34-17 sets an event, not a number of days. The estate a householder may hold as exempt can be set apart at any time before it is subjected by sale under creditor process or by a trustee in bankruptcy or, where the process does not require a sale, before it is turned over to the creditor. Garnished wages have their own rule: the claim may be filed after the garnishment summons is served on the employer but prior to or upon the return date, and the garnishing court shall consider it. The same deadline governs the Section 34-34 retirement exemption. You can start a Virginia asset search with the debtor’s name and last known address.
Section 34-26’s Automatic Thirteen: No Deed, No Deadline
Six limbs with no cap, seven with one, and five closing provisions at the end of the section.
Section 34-26 opens “in addition to the exemptions provided in Chapter 2” and enumerates thirteen items: 1, 1a, 2, 3, 4, 4a, 4b, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. Six carry no monetary limit at all: the family Bible; wedding and engagement rings; pets not kept or raised for sale or profit; medically prescribed health aids; the Child Tax Credit, Additional Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Credit portions of a tax refund or governmental payment; and unpaid spousal or child support. The capped limbs are portraits and heirlooms to $5,000, a burial lot with any preneed funeral contract to $5,000, apparel to $1,000, furnishings to $5,000, and firearms to a total of $3,000.
Subdivision 8 is the vehicle limb. It exempts motor vehicles, not held as exempt under subdivision 7, owned by the householder, not to exceed a total of $10,000 in value. There is no one-vehicle entitlement, and a second vehicle is not reachable as such: what is reachable is value above the $10,000 the vehicles share. Subdivision 7 covers tools, instruments, equipment and machines, expressly including motor vehicles, vessels and aircraft, necessary to the householder’s occupation or trade, to $10,000 – but a vehicle used to commute to and from a place of occupation, and not otherwise necessary in the course of it, is not exempt there, so it falls back into the shared vehicle total.
Five provisions close the section, in order. Value is fair market value less any prior security interest. Each monetary limit applies to the total value claimed under that subdivision, not to a single article. Buying an item claimed as exempt under Section 34-26 with nonexempt property, in contemplation of bankruptcy or creditor process, shall not be deemed to be in fraud of creditors. And no officer or other person shall levy or distrain upon, or attach, such articles, or otherwise seek to subject such articles to any lien or process. And no deed is required for any of it.
Title 34, Line by Line: Cap, Statute, and What Is Left
Every figure is the statute’s own. The Sections 34-4 and 34-26 limits index from April 1, 2027.
| Asset Class | What the Statute Exempts | Statute | What Is Left to a Creditor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Principal residence | Selected property used as the principal residence, to $50,000. | Sec. 34-4 | Value above the limb, and all of it where nothing was recorded before the Sec. 34-17 moment. |
| Selected other property | $5,000, or $10,000 at sixty-five or older, plus $500 per dependent. | Sec. 34-4 | Value beyond what the recorded writing claimed and valued. |
| Disabled-veteran add-on | A further $10,000 at forty percent or more service-connected disability. No adjustment clause. | Sec. 34-4.1 | Value above the combined figure; the same writings are required. |
| Motor vehicles | Aggregate across all the householder’s vehicles, $10,000 total, net of prior security interests. | Sec. 34-26(8) | Value above the shared $10,000. Not “a second vehicle” – the cap is one pool. |
| Tools of trade | $10,000, including vehicles, vessels and aircraft necessary in the occupation. | Sec. 34-26(7) | Value above the cap, and a commuting vehicle, which the subdivision excludes. |
| Household goods | Furnishings $5,000; apparel $1,000; firearms $3,000 total; heirlooms $5,000. | Sec. 34-26 | Value above each subdivision’s own total, less prior security interests. |
| Wages | The lesser of 25% of disposable earnings, or the excess over 40 times the federal or Virginia minimum wage, whichever is greater. | Sec. 34-29(A) | The garnishable slice, once the current employer is known. |
| Bank accounts | $1,000 minimum protected balance per institution, plus benefit payments a two-month review identifies. | Secs. 34-4.3, 34-4.4 | Everything above those two protected sums. |
| Retirement interests | Exempt to the same extent permitted under federal bankruptcy law. No Virginia dollar cap. | Sec. 34-34 | Little, unless never claimed within the Sec. 34-17 limits. |
| Value beyond the limbs | Nothing further: Section 34-4 exempts a stated value in property the householder selects and records, not a class of asset. | Sec. 34-4 | Equity above what was claimed and valued, in second parcels, investment property and non-exempt account funds.Our Focus |
Twenty-Five Percent, or Forty Times Whichever Is Greater
Section 34-29(A) has two limbs, and the second one has two rates.
Section 34-29(A) caps ordinary wage garnishment at the lesser of twenty-five percent of disposable earnings for the week, or the amount by which those earnings exceed forty times the federal minimum hourly wage under 29 U.S.C. Section 206(a)(1) or the Virginia minimum hourly wage under Section 40.1-28.10, whichever is greater, in effect when the earnings are payable. Both limbs are live law. Section 40.1-28.10 sets the Virginia rate at $12.77 an hour from January 1, 2026 until January 1, 2027, then $13.75 until January 1, 2028, then $15.00 until January 1, 2029. The weekly arithmetic moves twice in two years, and belongs on the page that owns it: Virginia wage garnishment laws.
The implementing regulation, 16VAC15-21, still computes the weekly floor as forty times the federal rate alone and carries no Virginia limb; its worked example is expressly based on a federal rate of $7.25 an hour. We report that conflict without resolving it: no Virginia decision and no Attorney General opinion on the two instruments was retrieved. From July 1, 2027 a debt due for any state tax leaves the exceptions in subsection B, so a Virginia state-tax garnishment becomes subject to subsection A’s caps. And subsection E defines earnings to include payments to an independent contractor and periodic pension or retirement payments, whether paid directly or deposited with another entity on behalf of and traceable to the individual, so a debtor paid on a 1099 is not outside the section.
What a Bank Levy Actually Meets in Virginia
Two sections enacted by 2026, cc. 637 and 638 changed the answer.
Under Section 34-4.3 a financial institution must, on receipt of a garnishment summons, examine all accounts for which the account holder is the named judgment debtor and hold exempt a minimum protected account balance in a combined total not to exceed $1,000, with full and customary access preserved. That $1,000 is a combined total in all of the debtor’s accounts held by that institution, so it is per institution, not per debtor.
Section 34-4.4 adds a conditional layer. Where the institution finds the total in all the holder’s accounts exceeds the Section 34-4.3 minimum, it conducts an account review; and if that review determines one or more benefit payments were deposited in the two months immediately preceding the day before it commenced, it must immediately calculate the protected amount and establish it as automatically exempt. Subsection E is the creditor’s sentence: funds exceeding the minimum protected balance and the protected amount are subject to garnishment. Subsection H limits the scheme to payments the bank can identify from information transmitted by the payer, and subsection G switches it off where Section 34-5 forbids the exemption, as it does for purchase-money debt and for support.
The procedure rides on Section 8.01-512.4: no summons in garnishment may be issued or served unless a notice of exemptions and a claim for exemption form are attached, and a debtor who files a claim has a right to a hearing within seven business days. That notice now lists the minimum protected balance among the automatic exemptions, and warns in terms that receiving a listed benefit payment does not by itself mean the funds will be exempted, that a support debt may change the answer, and that there is no exemption solely because the debtor is having difficulty paying.
April 1, 2027: the Figures That Move and the Ones That Do Not
Sections 34-4 and 34-26 carry the same clause word for word: on April 1, 2027, and at each three-year interval ending on April 1 thereafter, each monetary limit in effect immediately before that April 1 is adjusted to the change in the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers over the most recent three-year period, and rounded to the nearest $25. Both add that the adjustments do not apply to bankruptcy cases commenced before April 1, 2027. Sections 34-4, 34-26 and 34-13 all end their histories at 2024, c. 656.
Three limbs behave differently. Section 34-4.3’s version adjusts “the monetary limit” – it has one – and carries no bankruptcy carve-out. Section 34-4.1’s $10,000 veteran limb has no adjustment clause at all; its history ends at 2009, c. 388, so it stays put while the Section 34-4 figures move. Nor does Section 34-4.2, which gives a parent supporting a dependent minor child residing with him an additional wage exemption of $34 a week for one child, $52 for two and $66 for three or more, available only where household gross income does not exceed $1,750 a month.
Docketing, and the Clock That Runs From the Entry Date
A Virginia money judgment becomes a lien on the debtor’s real estate under Section 8.01-458 from the time it is recorded on the judgment lien docket of the clerk’s office of the county or city where the land is situated, not from entry, and it reaches real estate the debtor becomes possessed of or entitled to after docketing. One docketing does not cover the Commonwealth, though a judgment properly docketed is deemed docketed in the proper office of an adjoining city where the land has since been annexed to or merged with it.
Section 8.01-251(A) fixes the enforcement period by entry date: twenty years for a judgment dated, extended or renewed before July 1, 2021, and ten years for one dated on or after it, except that a judgment created by nonpayment of child support keeps twenty. It is extended by recording a certificate in the subsection G form, before expiry, in the clerk’s office where the judgment is recorded; that recordation buys ten years from its own date, and the statute allows one additional extension, recorded before the first one runs out. Subsection D omits any time during which the right to sue out execution is suspended.
Subsection C bars any suit to enforce the lien against land the debtor has conveyed to a grantee for value unless it is brought within five years from the due recordation of that deed and a lis pendens has been recorded under Section 8.01-268 before that period expires; both conditions are cumulative. And a general district court judgment runs on its own clock: Section 16.1-94.1 allows no execution and no action after ten years from the date of judgment, which a plaintiff could escape, for a judgment entered before July 1, 2026, by paying the fees and docketing it in the circuit court. For one entered on or after July 1, 2026 whose enforcement is sought by a debt buyer that purchased it, Section 8.01-251(F) applies that ten-year limit regardless of circuit-court docketing. Interest runs at six percent under Section 6.2-302, or the contract rate if higher, fixed at entry. What a docketed judgment reaches is set out on Virginia judgment collection.
Fraudulent and Voluntary Conveyances: Virginia’s Own Chapter 4
Two separate rules, two different tests, and a five-year limitation that covers only one of them.
No chapter of Title 55.1 is a Uniform Voidable Transactions Act or a Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act. The subject lives instead in Chapter 4, “Fraudulent and Voluntary Conveyances”, Sections 55.1-400 through 55.1-414. Section 55.1-400 makes void, as to the creditors affected, every gift, conveyance, assignment or transfer, every action commenced or order, judgment or execution suffered or obtained, and every bond or other writing given with intent to delay, hinder, or defraud creditors, but it does not affect the title of a purchaser for valuable consideration without notice of the fraudulent intent.
Section 55.1-401 needs no intent at all: a transfer not upon consideration deemed valuable in law, or upon consideration of marriage by an insolvent transferor, is void as to creditors whose debts were contracted when it was made, though not on that ground alone as to later creditors or purchasers. Insolvency appears there only in the marriage limb, so it is not a general Virginia test. Section 55.1-402 lets a creditor bring the avoidance action before judgment and whether or not the claim is due, with a lien on the debtor’s estate from the time it is brought. Section 8.01-253 gives five years from the conveyance’s recordation, or from when it was or should have been discovered if unrecorded – and by its own words that limitation governs conveyances void under Section 55.1-401 only. No limitation period for a Section 55.1-400 claim is stated here, because none was retrieved; nor are “badges of fraud”, which appear nowhere in the retrieved statutory text. None of this cuts across Section 34-26’s safe harbour, confined by its own words to an item claimed as exempt under that section. What moved, when and for what consideration is a records question: see how to find hidden assets.
Retirement Money, VRS, and Property Held by Both Spouses
An individual’s interest under a retirement plan – one intended to satisfy Internal Revenue Code Sections 401, 403(a), 403(b), 408, 408A, 409 or 457 – is exempt from creditor process under Section 34-34 to the same extent permitted under federal bankruptcy law. There is no Virginia dollar figure in the section. The real limits are elsewhere in it: no protection against an alternate payee or against the Commonwealth in support enforcement; an aggregate ceiling where two spouses claim under the same plan for a joint marital debt; and subsection E, which requires the exemption to be claimed within the Section 34-17 time limits. Virginia Retirement System money has its own statute: Section 51.1-124.4 puts benefits accrued or accruing under Title 51.1, and the retirement systems’ assets, beyond execution, attachment, garnishment or any other process whatsoever, subject to three carve-outs – process for a debt to an employer who has employed the person; administrative actions under Chapter 19 of Title 63.2 and any court process to enforce a child or child-and-spousal support obligation; and division as marital property by direct assignment to a spouse or former spouse under Section 20-107.3.
Section 55.1-136 lets spouses own real or personal property as tenants by the entirety for as long as they are married, whether or not the personalty represents proceeds of a sale of real property, so a levy can meet an entireties bank account. The Code speaks of that property’s immunity from the claims of their separate creditors and preserves it where the property is conveyed to their trusts. What a creditor holding a judgment against both spouses may do is a question of Virginia case law this page does not answer.
LLC and LP Interests: the Charging Order Is the Exclusive Remedy
The route to a membership interest in a Virginia limited liability company is set by Section 13.1-1041.1. On the application of a judgment creditor a court may charge a member’s transferable interest; to the extent charged, the creditor has only the right to receive distributions the debtor would otherwise have been entitled to, and the order is a lien on that interest. Subsection D calls it the exclusive remedy by which a judgment creditor of a member or of a member’s assignee may satisfy a judgment out of that transferable interest, and subsection E says no creditor of a member has any right to obtain possession of, or exercise legal or equitable remedies against, the property of the company. Subsection C runs the other way: the chapter does not deprive a member or a member’s assignee of a right under exemption laws with respect to the judgment debtor’s interest, so a charging order does not settle the exemption question. Section 50-73.46:1 states the same rule for a partner’s transferable interest in a limited partnership. The bankruptcy side of the same figures, where the Section 34-3.1 opt-out applies, is on Virginia bankruptcy exemptions.
Two Virginia Gaps Worth Searching For
A Stale Cash Valuation
Section 34-19 lets a creditor file a bill in equity alleging the estate set apart was worth more than the householder could exempt. Section 34-18 shelters ordinary appreciation, not permanent improvements funded from non-exempt sources.
Residence, Then Removal
Section 34-24 ends the right to claim or hold any estate as exempt when a person ceases to be a householder or removes from the Commonwealth, and the judgment lien then attaches to the real estate held at that time.
What We Do and Do Not Do
People Locator Skip Tracing is a public-records research firm. For a creditor who holds a valid Virginia judgment and a permissible purpose under GLBA and DPPA, we search public records and investigative-grade databases for what Title 34 does not reach: real estate and how title is held, the circuit-court books where a homestead writing would sit, the judgment lien dockets, current employment, bank relationships, titled property and entity filings. Our core service is skip tracing and asset research, and for a legitimate matter a first read typically comes back within 24 hours.
We are not a law firm and we do not give legal advice; how to enforce a Virginia judgment is for you and your Virginia attorney. We are not a collection agency, and we do not contact debtors or attempt to collect on anyone’s behalf. We are not a consumer reporting agency, and our asset research is not a consumer report for credit, employment, or tenant-screening decisions. Where a request looks like an attempt to locate a person who has left a household because of abuse, or someone protected by a protective order, we decline it and point instead to the court and the police, who can compel what a private party cannot.
Related work: finding someone in Virginia if the debtor has not been located, the Virginia debt-collection statute of limitations if the debt may be time-barred, Kentucky’s asset exemption rules for creditors, and Tennessee asset exemptions.
Our Commitment
We read Title 34 against the debtor’s actual holdings and search the records that decide it. Lawful, public-records research under GLBA and DPPA, for legitimate purposes only, since 2004.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to record a homestead deed in Virginia, or is the exemption automatic?
Both, depending on the section. Outside bankruptcy the Section 34-4 and Section 34-4.1 exemptions attach only through a writing signed by the householder and admitted to record: Section 34-6 for real estate, where the land lies, and Section 34-14 for personal estate, where the householder resides. Section 34-26 requires no deed at all.
When must a Virginia homestead deed be recorded?
Section 34-17 sets an event, not a day count: the estate may be set apart at any time before it is subjected by sale under creditor process or by a trustee in bankruptcy or, where no sale is required, before it is turned over to the creditor. A wage claim may be filed up to the garnishment return date.
How much is Virginia’s homestead exemption?
Section 34-4 lets a householder hold exempt property he selects, to $5,000 in value, or $10,000 at sixty-five or older, plus real or personal property used as the principal residence to $50,000, plus $500 for each dependent. Section 34-4.1 adds $10,000 for a veteran rated at forty percent or more service-connected disability.
How much of a paycheck can a Virginia judgment garnish?
Section 34-29(A) caps ordinary garnishment at the lesser of twenty-five percent of disposable earnings for the week, or the excess over forty times the federal minimum hourly wage under 29 U.S.C. Section 206(a)(1) or the Virginia minimum hourly wage under Section 40.1-28.10, whichever is greater.
Is the debtor’s car protected in Virginia?
Section 34-26(8) exempts motor vehicles owned by the householder and not held as exempt under subdivision 7, not to exceed a total of $10,000 in value. That is an aggregate across all of them, not a one-vehicle entitlement, so what a creditor reaches is value above the shared cap, measured net of any prior security interest.
What does the poor debtor’s exemption cover, and how is the value measured?
Section 34-26 lists thirteen enumerated items. Six carry no monetary limit, among them the family Bible, wedding and engagement rings, pets, medically prescribed health aids and unpaid spousal or child support. The capped limbs run from apparel at $1,000 to tools of trade and motor vehicles at $10,000, and value is fair market value less any prior security interest.
What happens to Virginia’s exemption amounts on April 1, 2027?
Sections 34-4 and 34-26 both provide that on April 1, 2027, and at each three-year interval thereafter, each monetary limit adjusts to the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers and rounds to the nearest $25, with no adjustment for bankruptcy cases commenced before that date. Section 34-4.1’s veteran limb has no adjustment clause at all.
Do you collect the debt or give legal advice?
No. We are a public-records research firm, not a law firm, not a collection agency, and not a consumer reporting agency; our asset research is not a consumer report for credit, employment, or tenant-screening decisions. We search for a creditor holding a valid judgment and a permissible purpose under GLBA and DPPA.
The Deed, the Docket, and the Records That Decide It
For a creditor with a valid Virginia judgment and a permissible purpose, we search the records that decide what Title 34 leaves reachable. Contact us to get started.
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