Statute of Limitations on Debt by State

How the limitation clock works

A statute of limitations is a deadline on the lawsuit, not on the debt. When it expires the money is still owed. What changes is that the creditor can no longer force you to pay through a court.

Three things decide your answer, and people usually get the third one wrong:

Restarting and reviving are two different things

Almost every page on this subject blurs these together, and the difference decides whether a payment costs you years or costs you nothing.

• Restarting happens while the period is still running. This is widely allowed, and it is the risk the calculator warns about.
• Reviving means restarting a period that has already expired. Several states do not allow it. Wisconsin extinguishes the underlying right, not just the remedy, once the period runs (Wis. Stat. 893.05). New York bars revival of expired consumer debt outright: under CPLR 214-i a later payment or affirmation does not revive or extend it. California provides that a payment does not revive a barred cause of action (Cal. Civ. Proc. Code 360).
• Signed writing states. New York, California, Texas, Mississippi and Wisconsin all require an acknowledgement to be in writing and signed before it counts. A phone call agreeing you owe the money should not restart the clock in those states, though it can still be used against you in other ways.
• Louisiana is the opposite case. An acknowledgement interrupts prescription and the full period restarts from zero (La. Civ. Code art. 3464, 3466).

None of that is a reason to make a payment on an old debt without advice. It is a reason to find out which rule your state applies before you do.

Statute of limitations on debt, all 50 states and DC

Periods in years, by debt type, with the governing statute. Filter by state or sort the table by any column.

Compiled from the published state statutes cited in each row and reviewed October 2026. The October review corrected Arizona's open account period to 3 years (A.R.S. 12-543) and the small claims limits for Arizona, Utah and Michigan. Ohio and Montana were corrected in the August review: Ohio cut its written contract period from 8 years to 6 and its oral period from 6 to 4 in 2021, and Montana cut written contracts from 8 years to 6 in 2025. Limitation periods are amended by state legislatures and reinterpreted by state courts, sometimes with retroactive effect. Confirm the current text of the statute before relying on it.

States grouped by written contract period

The written contract period is the one most often quoted as "the" statute of limitations for a state, because it is the longest of the four in most places.

Statute of limitations on credit card debt

Credit card debt is the single most searched category here, and it is usually treated as an open account rather than a written contract, which in many states gives it the shorter period.

The shortest credit card periods in the country are the 3-year statutes in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington. The longest is Rhode Island at 10 years, with Wyoming next at 8.

New York is the change worth knowing about. The Consumer Credit Fairness Act cut the period on consumer credit debt from 6 years to 3 with effect from 2022, which moved a large volume of New York card debt out of reach of the courts.

What happens when the period runs out

A time-barred debt does not vanish. Four things stay true after the clock runs:

• You still owe it. The obligation survives. Only the court remedy is lost.
• A collector can still ask. Contacting you about a time-barred debt is lawful. Suing or threatening to sue on it is not, under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Regulation F states the same rule for consumer debt collectors in so many words (12 CFR 1006.26(b)).
• It is a defense you have to raise. The court will not notice the date for you. If you ignore the summons the creditor can take a default judgment on a debt that was unenforceable, and that judgment is then collectable for years.
• You can restart it. In most states a payment or a signed acknowledgement revives the whole period.

The other clock: 7 years on your credit report

These two are constantly mixed up, and they are unrelated.

So a debt can be off your credit report and still suable, which is the case in Wyoming and the nine 10-year written-contract states. It can equally be time-barred and still sitting on your report for another two years, which is the more common situation.

Small claims limits by state

Most consumer debt suits are small enough for small claims court, where the dollar cap decides the forum rather than the limitation period. The caps range from $2,500 in Kentucky to $25,000 in Tennessee.

Small claims thresholds change more often than limitation periods and several states set different caps by court or by claimant type. Check your local court before filing.

If you are the business owed the money

The same statutes apply when you are the creditor. An invoice against signed terms is normally a written contract, and an invoice against a running account is normally an open account, which in states like Louisiana, Washington and Virginia is a much shorter period.

In practice the limitation period is almost never what stops a business collecting. The realistic collection window closes long before the statute does: recovery rates fall steeply within the first year past due, so a debt that is still legally suable at year six is rarely worth suing over.

The useful response is earlier, not longer. Track DSO so the trend is visible, watch the aging buckets for balances drifting past 60 days, and put reminders on a fixed schedule instead of chasing when someone remembers. Net 30 terms and late payment interest are the levers that move the date you actually get paid.