Florida Asset Protection Attorney

What Asset Protection Actually Means in Florida

You spent a career building it, and one lawsuit, one bad guarantee, or one accident can put it all on the table. Florida is one of the most debtor-friendly states in the country, with an unlimited homestead, tenancy by the entireties for married couples, and deep exemptions for retirement accounts, life insurance, and annuities. Most Floridians are sitting on protections they do not know they have, along with a few easy mistakes that quietly throw those protections away.

Asset protection is legitimate planning that uses exemptions, the way you hold title, and business entities to make your assets hard for a future creditor to reach. A plan built this way hides nothing, and it does not dodge debts you already owe.

The rule that controls everything is that protection has to be in place before a claim arises. Once you are sued, or can reasonably see a claim coming, moving assets is a fraudulent transfer a court can unwind. The time to plan is when the sky is clear.

The Homestead Exemption: Florida’s Crown Jewel

Florida’s constitutional homestead exemption protects your primary residence from forced sale by most creditors, with no dollar limit on value, up to half an acre inside a municipality or 160 acres outside one. The exemption is self-executing and passes its protection to a surviving spouse and heirs.

Know the limits. Homestead does not stop property taxes and assessments, a purchase-money or improvement mortgage, or construction liens. The homestead also does not stop the IRS or a consensual mortgage you sign. In bankruptcy, equity in a home bought within about 40 months of filing is capped (the current cap is $214,000). Used correctly, the homestead is the strongest single shield Florida offers. How far the homestead shields you from creditors → · pass it without probate →

Tenancy by the Entireties: The Married-Couple Shield

Property a married couple holds jointly is presumed to be tenancy by the entireties (TBE), and that includes bank and brokerage accounts, not just real estate. A creditor of one spouse cannot reach TBE property. The protection is automatic and free, and it has three limits. The couple’s joint creditors can still reach the property. A federal tax lien can still reach it. The protection ends at divorce or the first spouse’s death, so tenancy by the entireties protects two living spouses and is not an estate plan.

What Assets Are Protected From Creditors in Florida?

A common question I hear is, “What assets are protected in Florida?” The homestead and the property a married couple holds together come first, and both are covered above. Beyond those two, Florida’s statutes shield a deep menu of assets from a creditor of yours, and each item on the list carries its own limit.

• Retirement accounts and IRAs. Unlimited exemption for qualified plans, IRAs, and Roths. Florida protects inherited IRAs too, but federal bankruptcy law does not, so an heir living outside Florida can lose that protection.
• Head-of-family wages. If you cover most of the support for a child or another dependent, Florida keeps your paycheck out of a creditor’s reach no matter its size. A $900-a-week paycheck and a $9,000-a-week paycheck are shielded the same way, unless you have signed that protection away in writing. Once the money lands in your bank account it holds that shield for another six months, as long as it can be traced.
• Life insurance and annuities. Cash value and proceeds are exempt from the owner’s creditors. Note that creditor-exempt is not the same as Medicaid-exempt.
• Disability income and 529, ABLE, and health-savings accounts.
• Motor vehicle. Up to $5,000 in one vehicle, plus a $4,000 wildcard if you do not claim the homestead exemption.

One guardrail applies. Converting non-exempt assets into exempt ones with intent to defraud a creditor can strip the exemption, so timing and intent matter.

LLCs and the Charging Order: the Single-Member Trap

A creditor of an LLC member is normally limited to a charging order (a lien on distributions). The creditor cannot seize the membership interest or run the company. But that protection does not apply to a single-member LLC. The Florida Supreme Court has held that a creditor can foreclose on and sell a single-member interest. Never rely on a single-member LLC for protection. Add a genuine second member, or use a limited partnership or LLLP, which keeps the charging order as the exclusive remedy with no single-member exception. For how the LLC choice interacts with your estate plan, our LLC vs trust for real estate guide runs the comparison.

Florida Is Not a “DAPT” State (the Clarification People Search For)

Florida has no domestic asset-protection-trust statute. A self-settled trust, where you create the trust and stay a beneficiary, gives you no protection from your own creditors here. Under Florida law, a creditor can reach whatever the trustee could distribute to you. Buying a Nevada or Delaware “asset-protection trust” online usually will not save a Florida resident either, because whether the funding transfer can be undone is judged under Florida’s fraudulent-transfer law, not the trust’s chosen state.

A properly drafted trust for someone else you provide for (a spendthrift trust) can protect that beneficiary well, with one written-in edge worth knowing about, because a support or alimony order can still reach what the trustee actually pays out. We followed a published Florida case to the garnishment order in the trust that paid every bill. The one real self-settled exception is the inter-spousal carve-out for certain spousal trusts, expanded in 2022 to cover lifetime SLATs. What asset protection trusts actually work in Florida → · do you need an offshore trust? →

For deep dives on the exemptions and tools above, see retirement accounts (401k and IRA) · annuities and life insurance · LLCs and charging orders · the physician playbook · already being sued? the honest answer

Swipe the table sideways to see every tool and its limits.

The Rule on Top of Every Rule: Fraudulent Transfers

You cannot shield assets from a creditor whose claim already exists or is reasonably foreseeable. Under Florida’s fraudulent-transfer law, a transfer can be voided for actual fraud (shown by circumstances of intent), constructive fraud (giving away value while insolvent), or insider preferences, with a four-year reach-back. Courts have treated even meeting an asset-protection lawyer after a claim arose as a circumstance of intent. Plan while you are solvent and unthreatened, and document it.

The Medicaid and Relocation Crossovers

Long-term-care planning is a separate discipline. A Medicaid asset-protection trust is irrevocable and must be funded at least five years before you need nursing-home care. A creditor-exempt annuity can still be a Medicaid problem, and the homestead, though generally Medicaid-exempt, is exposed to estate recovery. See Medicaid planning and the home →

Separately, establishing Florida domicile is itself an upgrade. A married couple gains tenancy by the entireties and the unlimited homestead, but only once they are genuinely Floridians.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The physician. An OB/GYN with a paid-off Coral Gables home, a $1.4M 401(k), and a $600K brokerage account worries about a claim beyond her coverage. Before any incident, the home is already homestead-protected, the 401(k) is exempt under Florida law, and re-titling the brokerage account with her husband as tenants by the entireties shields it from a creditor of hers alone. No exotic trusts, just Florida’s own exemptions, used in time.

The landlord. A contractor owns four rentals through one single-member LLC and personally guaranteed a credit line. A tenant’s injury suit could pierce straight to the membership interest under Olmstead. The fix is structural and pre-claim. Separate the properties and bring real co-members or an LLLP into the ownership, before a suit arrives.

The new Floridian. A New Jersey couple retires to Naples. Establishing Florida domicile upgrades them automatically, with unlimited homestead, tenancy by the entireties, and no state income tax. But the upgrade only applies once they are truly Floridians, and their out-of-state will and trust have to be re-executed under Florida law.

Sources of Law

• Homestead: Fla. Const. Art. X §4; Havoco v. Hill, 790 So. 2d 1018 (Fla. 2001); bankruptcy cap 11 U.S.C. §522(p). TBE: Beal Bank v. Almand, 780 So. 2d 45 (Fla. 2001); United States v. Craft, 535 U.S. 274 (2002).
• Exemptions: Fla. Stat. §222.11, §§222.13 to 222.14, §222.18, §222.21, §222.22, §222.25, §§222.29 to 222.30; Clark v. Rameker, 573 U.S. 122 (2014). Entities: Olmstead v. FTC, 44 So. 3d 76 (Fla. 2010); §605.0503, §620.1703. Trusts: §736.0502 (annotated), §736.0505 (annotated). Fraudulent transfers: Ch. 726 (FUFTA), §222.30. (retrieved 2026-06-06)
• Timing in the cases: Cleveland v. Westport Recovery Corp., No. 4D20-2445 (Fla. 4th DCA Dec. 8, 2021) (a $100 sale of a non-homestead house to the debtor’s son nine days after summary judgment on a twenty-year-old debt; the creditor’s summary judgment under §726.105(1)(a) reversed for trial under the pre-May-2021 standard, with the transferee-damages claim under §726.109(2) sent back with it); Fla. Stat. §726.105(2) (the eleven circumstances of intent); 11 U.S.C. §522(o) (homestead equity reduced in bankruptcy for value moved in with intent to hinder within ten years). Read in full from the official opinion text (retrieved 2026-09-03).

What a Palm Beach Fraudulent Transfer Case Shows About Timing

If the answer were as simple as it looks, I would not have a litigation practice built on it. The exemptions above are real, and most of my asset protection work is titling what a client already owns so that they apply. The rest of the practice is the family that reached for a transfer instead, and a 2021 decision from the Fourth District, on appeal from Palm Beach County, is the one I would show first.

Cases with this shape keep coming up, and it is usually a parent with an old judgment and an adult child who steps in to help. A mother bought a house in 2011 that was not her homestead, with a mortgage and $12,400 that her son put in as a gift toward the equity. A creditor holding a judgment against her that was almost twenty years old sued to renew it with the interest. While that suit was pending she listed the house for sale and bought a smaller home that qualified as her homestead, paid for with a loan from her son that came due when the first house sold. The son paid off the bank’s mortgage on the first house and spent $9,800 getting it ready to sell. The creditor moved for summary judgment on the old debt, and the mother did not oppose it. Nine days later she sold the first house to her son for $100. He sold it on, to buyers who knew nothing of any of this, for $95,000. When the creditor went to collect on its new judgment the house was gone, so it sued the mother and the son under Florida’s fraudulent transfer law and asked for money damages from the son personally, which the statute allows against the person who received the property. The trial court found a fraudulent transfer on the papers and entered judgment against both of them.

The appellate court reversed in December 2021 because the son and the mother had sworn in affidavits that he was helping her find housing while she was in financial trouble and that neither of them meant to cheat anyone, and under the summary judgment rule that applied in 2020, sworn statements like those were enough to require a trial. The court decided only that question. The case went back down for trial, and the opinion does not say who paid.

In reading that opinion against chapter 726, I have a few take-home points.

The first is the list. Florida’s fraudulent transfer statute names eleven circumstances a court may weigh in deciding whether a transfer was meant to hinder a creditor, and the sale in that case matched three of them on its face. The buyer was her son, which the statute calls an insider. The creditor’s suit was pending when the deed was signed. The price was $100 for a house that resold for $95,000. Practice pointer. Before any transfer to a family member, I read the eleven circumstances against the facts, because a judge will, and a transfer that matches three of them is one the family will be explaining under oath.

Second, the person who helps is the person who gets sued. The son put in $12,400 of equity, paid off a bank mortgage, spent $9,800 on repairs and lent his mother the money for her new home, and the creditor’s answer to all of that was a claim for money damages against him personally. Practice pointer. An adult child who wants to help a parent with a judgment against her does it with a written loan at a market rate, secured and recorded, or with a purchase at a documented fair price, because the statute treats reasonably equivalent value as the line between a helper and a defendant.

Third, the lawful move was standing next to the one that failed. Florida’s constitution protects a homestead from a judgment creditor, and the Florida Supreme Court held in 2001 that the protection holds even when the owner bought the homestead with money a creditor could otherwise have reached, unless the money itself came from fraud or similar conduct (the case is Havoco, cited above). The mother had bought a homestead. Sale proceeds paid into her own homestead, in her own name, would have sat inside that protection, with one federal limit, because in a bankruptcy filed within ten years the protected equity is reduced by the value moved in with that intent. A $100 deed to her son sat inside chapter 726. Practice pointer. The first question I ask a client with a judgment is which of the protections on this page already applies, because in most of these files the exemption the family needed was available, and the family reached for a transfer instead.

Avoid a transfer to a family member while a suit is pending, because the statute lists an insider, a pending suit and a nominal price among the signs of intent, and that one deed carried all three. What a plan would have done for that family is narrower than the word suggests, and I would rather say so here than in a deposition. A plan would have kept the son out of the lawsuit, kept the $95,000 sale in the mother’s name, and put the proceeds where the constitution protects them, subject to the bankruptcy limit above. A plan would not have erased a twenty-year-old judgment, and no plan does. An asset protection review and plan here is a flat fee quoted at consult, and the consult itself is free.

What the opinion cannot tell you is how the case ended. The appellate court decided one question, whether the family’s affidavits were enough to require a trial, and sent the rest back. The point that survives is the sequence, which was an old judgment, a pending suit, a $100 deed to a son, and five years of litigation over a house that sold for $95,000.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. Each case described above is a decision of a Florida court rather than a matter handled by this firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Updated September 3, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Asset protection reduces risk using lawful exemptions; it is not a guarantee that creditors can never reach assets, and it must be done before a claim arises. Outcomes depend on your specific facts.