The statute of limitations on debt is the deadline for a creditor to file a lawsuit, and each state sets its own. Across the states covered here it runs from two years to ten. What varies more than the deadline is everything around it: whether a payment restarts the clock, whether anything can revive an expired debt, and in two states whether the debt survives at all.
Deadlines by state
| State | Deadline on consumer debt | Does a payment restart it? | Statute |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | 3 years | No. Nothing revives an expired consumer debt | CPLR § 214-i |
| North Carolina | 3 years | Code declines to say; acknowledgment needs a signed writing | N.C.G.S. § 1-52(1) |
| South Carolina | 3 years | Yes. Any payment equals a written promise by statute | S.C. Code §§ 15-3-530, 15-3-120 |
| Mississippi | 3 years, then the right is extinguished | Only before expiry; nothing revives it after | Miss. Code §§ 15-1-29, 15-1-3 |
| Louisiana | 3 years on an open account | Acknowledgment interrupts, and needs no writing at all | La. Civ. Code arts. 3494, 3464 |
| Alabama | 3 years open account, 6 years otherwise | Payment works, but only before the bar is complete | Ala. Code §§ 6-2-37, 6-2-34, 6-2-16 |
| Texas | 4 years | Not for a debt buyer; acknowledgment must be signed | Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.004 |
| Pennsylvania | 4 years, written or oral | No statute on the question at all | 42 Pa.C.S. § 5525 |
| California | 4 years written, 2 years unwritten | Only by signed writing; payment rule limited to notes | Code Civ. Proc. §§ 337, 339 |
| Virginia | 5 years signed, 3 years unsigned | Effectively yes. Open accounts accrue from the last payment | Va. Code §§ 8.01-246, 8.01-249(8) |
| Florida | 5 years written, 4 years otherwise | Reviving a barred debt requires a signed writing | Fla. Stat. §§ 95.11, 95.04 |
| Oklahoma | 5 years written, 3 years not in writing | Yes. Payment sits outside the writing rule | 12 O.S. §§ 95, 101 |
| Arkansas | 5 years written, 3 years otherwise | Payment tolls it, and needs no writing or signature | Ark. Code §§ 16-56-111, 16-56-105 |
| Ohio | 6 years | Yes. A payment alone restarts it, no writing needed | R.C. §§ 2305.07, 2305.08 |
| Michigan | 6 years, written or oral | Code declines to say; acknowledgment needs a signed writing | MCL 600.5807(9) |
| Arizona | 6 years, credit cards named in the statute | No statute; acknowledgment must be a signed writing | A.R.S. § 12-548(A)(2) |
| Georgia | 6 years signed, 4 years on an open account | Only a payment entered on a written evidence of debt | O.C.G.A. §§ 9-3-24, 9-3-112 |
| New Jersey | 6 years, written or oral | Statute expressly declines to say | N.J.S.A. 2A:14-1 |
| Colorado | 6 years on a liquidated debt, 3 otherwise | Statute declines to say; acknowledgment needs a signed writing | C.R.S. § 13-80-103.5 |
| Washington | 6 years | Only before expiry. Nothing revives it afterward | RCW 4.16.040, 4.16.270 |
| Wisconsin | 6 years, then the right is extinguished | Code does not say, and the right is already gone | Wis. Stat. §§ 893.43, 893.05 |
| Nevada | 6 years written, 4 years otherwise | Only before expiry. Nothing revives it after | NRS 11.190, 11.200 |
| Oregon | 6 years, written or oral | Yes, and interest charges cannot move accrual | ORS 12.080, 12.090, 12.240 |
| Massachusetts | 6 years, 20 years on a sealed or residual contract | Yes. A regulation requires collectors to warn you | M.G.L. c. 260 §§ 2, 13, 14 |
| Minnesota | 6 years on consumer debt | No. Not even a signed reaffirmation revives it | Minn. Stat. §§ 541.053, 541.05 |
| Indiana | 6 years, written or unwritten alike | Exempt from the writing rule, but not provable from the creditor’s ledger | Ind. Code §§ 34-11-2-7, 34-11-2-9 |
| Utah | 6 years written, 4 years otherwise | Yes, with no writing needed, and a third party’s payment counts | Utah Code §§ 78B-2-309, 78B-2-307 |
| Missouri | 10 years on a writing, 5 otherwise | Payment is exempt from the signed-writing rule | RSMo §§ 516.110, 516.120 |
| Illinois | 10 years written, 5 years unwritten | Yes, if in writing, and even after the period expires | 735 ILCS 5/13-206 |
| Iowa | 10 years written, 5 years unwritten | Code declines to say; acknowledgment needs a signed writing | Iowa Code §§ 614.1, 614.11 |
| West Virginia | 10 years signed writing, 5 years otherwise | Code declines to say; acknowledgment needs a signed writing | W. Va. Code §§ 55-2-6, 55-2-8 |
We are building this state by state and quoting each figure from the state’s own published code, so the table covers the states completed so far rather than all fifty. We would rather publish thirty-one states whose statutes we have actually read than fifty we have not.
Why the same advice is wrong in different states
Most general guidance about old debt gives one rule: never make a payment, because any payment restarts the clock. Across these states that advice is correct, wrong, conditional, or unanswerable depending entirely on where you are.
In Ohio and South Carolina it is right, and South Carolina is the bluntest about it: § 15-3-120 says “payment of any part of principal or interest is equivalent to a promise in writing,” so a bare payment does what a spoken admission cannot. In New York and Washington it is wrong once the period has run, because both states provide that nothing restarts, revives, or extends an expired period. In Texas it depends on who holds the debt. And in Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, and Colorado, the legislature deliberately declined to answer, leaving it to the courts.
What this means in practice: the question that determines your answer is not “how long is the statute of limitations on debt,” but “which state’s law applies, and who is holding this debt.” Those two facts change the deadline, change whether a payment is dangerous, change whether the collector may sue you at all, and in one state change whether the debt still exists.
In two states the debt actually dies
Every state here bars the lawsuit while leaving the balance alive, with two exceptions. Wisconsin‘s § 893.05 provides that when the period expires, “the right is extinguished as well as the remedy.” That is a difference in kind rather than degree.
Louisiana, the one civil law state in the country, reaches somewhere adjacent by a different route. A prescribed debt there becomes a natural obligation under Civil Code art. 1762, which art. 1761 defines as an obligation “not enforceable by judicial action” where “whatever has been freely performed… may not be reclaimed.” The creditor cannot sue, but a voluntary payment cannot be clawed back either.
Mississippi does the same thing and goes one step further. Section 15-1-3(1) provides that completing the period “shall defeat and extinguish the right as well as the remedy,” and its revival subsection then applies only where “the statute of limitations not having run.” So in Mississippi the right dies and the ordinary restart mechanism is unavailable afterward, leaving only the possibility of a fresh signed promise.
Neither protection is automatic, though. Wisconsin's § 893.01 provides that the objection “may only be taken by answer or motion to dismiss,” and Mississippi's Rule 8(c) lists the statute of limitations among defenses that must be pleaded, with no exception for extinguished claims. In both states a debtor who ignores a lawsuit can still lose by default on a debt that legally no longer exists.
Where suing on old debt is actually prohibited
Most states leave you with a defense you must raise. Eight of the thirty-one here go further, forbidding the lawsuit itself or the threat of one.
- Washington makes it an unfair practice to sue or arbitrate a claim the collector knows or should know is barred, and RCW 19.16.450 then permanently strips interest, fees, and collection costs from that claim for every future owner.
- Texas prohibits a debt buyer from suing or initiating arbitration once the period runs, and provides that payment does not revive the claim.
- California prohibits suit under both Code of Civil Procedure § 337(d) and Civil Code § 1788.56, and requires a specific written notice.
- North Carolina bars a debt buyer from suing or otherwise attempting to collect, and makes a non-compliant default judgment void and vacatable.
- Minnesota makes it a prohibited practice to “commence legal action to collect a debt outside the limitations period,” with a parallel rule for medical debt. It reaches commencing the action rather than threatening it.
- Oregon makes it unlawful for a debt collector to file suit once the period has run, and separately prevents interest charges from moving the accrual date forward.
- Nevada prohibits licensed agencies and debt buyers from suing on a debt they know or should know is past the deadline. On the statute’s own definitions that leaves a gap: it does not reach a bank suing on its own account.
- Oklahoma approaches it from the other end, making the threat to sue on an expired debt an unlawful practice under its consumer protection act.
Most state codes never mention credit cards
The most common question about this topic is which deadline applies to a credit card balance. In twenty-nine of the thirty-one states here, the code does not say. The statutes describe written contracts, unwritten contracts, accounts stated, liquidated debts, and promissory notes, and leave courts to decide where a card balance belongs. In Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, and West Virginia that unresolved question is worth five years; in Louisiana it is worth seven.
Two states are exceptions. Arizona names credit cards outright in A.R.S. § 12-548(A)(2). Ohio reaches the same clarity from the other direction, giving consumer transactions their own provision that applies “whether or not reduced to writing or signed by the party to be charged.” Wisconsin is the only state we have found that defines when a credit card claim accrues, at § 425.103: failure to pay when due on two occasions within any twelve-month period.
A protection six states share, and almost nobody mentions
Reading these codes side by side surfaces things a single state page never would. Six of them, drafted in different centuries and different traditions, contain the same rule: a creditor’s own record of a payment is not sufficient proof that the payment happened. New Jersey, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Massachusetts, and Indiana all provide that an endorsement or memorandum of a payment, written by or on behalf of the party receiving it, is not sufficient to take the case out of the limitations statute. If a collector claims your clock restarted because of a payment, its own ledger entry is not enough in those states.
What a limitations period does not do
Except in Wisconsin, the deadline bars the lawsuit rather than erasing the balance. A collector may keep contacting you, and the account may keep appearing on your credit reports, because credit reporting runs on a separate federal clock, generally seven years for most negative account information under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. A debt can be too old to sue on while still on your reports, and it can fall off your reports while a collector still calls.
The defense is also never automatic. In every state here, including the ones that prohibit the lawsuit outright, the person being sued has to raise it. A defendant who ignores the papers can have a default judgment entered on a debt no one was entitled to sue over, and that judgment carries its own collection powers and a much longer life.
The national picture
Consumers filed 323,584 debt collection complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the 12 months ending August 26, 2026. Of those, 81,495, or 25%, were categorized as a collector taking or threatening to take negative or legal action — the category covering threats to sue, and the conduct these deadlines govern.
That share varies widely. Arizona is the outlier at 57% of its complaints, more than double the national rate, while South Carolina sits at 12% despite ranking 6th nationally in total complaints. Each state page carries its own figures alongside its statutes. These are raw complaint counts, not rates, and are not adjusted for population. A complaint is an allegation the CFPB has published, not a finding that a company broke the law. The figures refresh weekly.
How we source these pages
Every limitations period, revival rule, and collection restriction on these pages is quoted from the state’s own published code: the legislature’s statute site or the publisher the state designates as official. We do not cite legal directories, law firm summaries, or other guides. Where a state’s code does not answer a question, we say so instead of filling the gap, which happens more often than most guides admit.
Where a state publishes a currency date for its code, we cite it. Several do not, including California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Virginia, and in those cases we identify each provision by its own amendment history and give the date we retrieved the text. Where a state tells us its website is not the official version, as South Carolina and Washington both do, we say that too.
These pages explain what the statutes say. They are general information, not legal advice, and they cannot establish when a particular debt accrued or how a court would read a disputed provision. If you have been sued, the deadline on the papers is short, and speaking with an attorney or a legal aid organization in your state is worth the call.
Related
- Dispute letter builder for reporting errors on your credit file, which is a separate process from a limitations defense
- Current average credit card APR, updated from Federal Reserve data
Frequently asked questions
What is the statute of limitations on debt?
It is the deadline for a creditor or collector to file a lawsuit to collect a debt. It is set by state law and, among the states covered here, ranges from two years to ten. After it expires the debt itself normally still exists; what changes is the ability to win a lawsuit over it. Wisconsin is the exception, where the right itself is extinguished.
Which state’s statute of limitations applies to my debt?
That depends on the facts, and it is not always the state you live in. Several states apply a borrowing statute that uses the law of the place where the claim accrued when that period is shorter, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Washington, and Wisconsin. Arizona runs the other way, providing in A.R.S. § 12-548(B) that its own section applies where another jurisdiction’s law conflicts.
Does the statute of limitations erase the debt?
In twenty-nine of the thirty-one states here, no: the statute bars the lawsuit rather than extinguishing the obligation. Wisconsin is the exception, where § 893.05 extinguishes the right as well as the remedy. Louisiana converts a prescribed debt into a natural obligation, which cannot be enforced in court but which supports a voluntary payment that cannot then be reclaimed.