Arkansas gives creditors five years to sue on a written obligation and three years on an oral or implied one, and its written-contract statute contains a tolling sentence that treats a payment very differently from an acknowledgment. Arkansas medical debt is a separate and much shorter two years, and a 2021 act that would have extended it to five never took effect. That contingency expired for good on January 1, 2026.
The deadlines, and where each one is written
| What is being collected | Deadline to file suit | Statute |
|---|---|---|
| Written obligation, duty, or right | 5 years | Ark. Code § 16-56-111 |
| Contract not under seal and not in writing | 3 years | Ark. Code § 16-56-105(1) |
| Any contract or liability, expressed or implied | 3 years | Ark. Code § 16-56-105(3) |
| Medical services | 2 years | Ark. Code § 16-56-106(b) |
| Note payable at a definite time | 5 years | Ark. Code § 4-3-118(a) |
Note the promissory note figure. Arkansas is not on the uniform six years. Act 1164 of 1997 struck “six” and inserted “five” throughout § 4-3-118, so notes, demand notes, and certificates of deposit all run five years in Arkansas where most states run six. One subsection was missed in that sweep: an accepted draft payable on demand under (f)(ii) still carries six years, and subsection (e) still contains a stranded reference to “the six-year period” inside what is now a five-year rule.
Section 16-56-111’s own heading is “Notes and instruments in writing, and other writings,” and its internal carve-out points to § 4-4-111, which covers bank deposits and collections. Summaries frequently render that cross-reference as § 4-3-118. It is not.
What restarts the clock, and what the sentence actually says
The second sentence of § 16-56-111 is the whole of Arkansas’s statutory revival rule for written debt:
However, partial payment or written acknowledgment of default shall toll this statute of limitations.
Four things are worth reading out of one sentence. The word “written” attaches to acknowledgment and not to partial payment, so a payment needs no writing. No signature is required anywhere in the section, unlike the majority of states, which demand a writing signed by the party to be charged. There is no condition that the payment be made before the period expires. And the operative verb is “toll,” not “revive” or “restart,” which leaves open whether the clock pauses or begins again. The statute does not resolve that.
One limit that matters. This sentence lives in § 16-56-111, which governs written obligations. Section 16-56-105, the three-year provision covering oral and implied contracts, has no parallel tolling clause. On the face of the two statutes, the payment-tolling rule does not reach an oral or implied debt.
We are aware of a frequently cited § 16-56-122, described as making a verbal promise or acknowledgment insufficient. We could not confirm that section in any official Arkansas source, so we do not state it here. See the sourcing note below for why that verification is harder in Arkansas than in most states.
Arkansas medical debt: still two years, and now permanently so
Section 16-56-106(b) bars an action to recover charges for medical services “after the expiration of a period of two (2) years from the date the services were performed or provided or from the date of the most recent partial payment for the services, whichever is later.” That last clause is a payment-restart rule written directly into the accrual test, and it is the only account-specific accrual rule we could verify in Arkansas.
Act 1032 of 2021 would have changed that two years to five. It never took effect. Section 2 of the act, marked “DO NOT CODIFY,” made it contingent:
(b) This act shall not be effective if the Consumer Protection for Medical Debt Collections Practices Act, H.R. 5330, 116th Cong. (2019), does not become law on or before January 1, 2026.
H.R. 5330 did not become law. It was reported by the House Financial Services Committee and committed to the Committee of the Whole on December 15, 2020, but it never passed the House, and the 116th Congress ended on January 3, 2021. A bill does not carry over into a new Congress. The January 1, 2026 deadline has now passed, so the contingency has failed permanently and Act 1032 can never take effect. Any source stating that Arkansas extended its medical debt limitations period to five years in 2021 is wrong. The period is two years.
Arkansas debt collection statute of limitations: what we did not find
We found no Arkansas statute prohibiting suit on a time-barred debt, no bar on reviving one, and no requirement to disclose a debt’s age. The code does the opposite of prohibiting revival, since § 16-56-111 expressly tolls on partial payment or written acknowledgment.
The Deceptive Trade Practices Act at § 4-88-101 and following contains nothing on a debt’s age. Its enumerated practices, traced through Act 587 of 1993, Act 677 of 2019, and Act 1015 of 2021, end in a general catch-all at § 4-88-107(a)(9) covering “any other unconscionable, false or deceptive act or practice in business, commerce or trade.” A time-barred debt theory in Arkansas would have to run through that catch-all or through the omission provision at § 4-88-108, rather than through any express rule.
We should be careful about how strongly to state this particular negative, and the sourcing note explains why. Our searches were run against a targeted set of enrolled acts rather than against the codified text, which we could not read. The negative is consistent across every phrasing we tried, but it is not the exhaustive code-wide sweep we were able to run in most other states.
What the deadline does, and what it does not do
Arkansas bars the remedy rather than the debt. Sections 16-56-105 and 16-56-111 are worded as requirements that actions “shall be commenced within” a period, and § 4-3-118 uses “must be commenced within.” The only extinguishment language we located anywhere in Arkansas law is § 4-59-209, which is part of the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act and governs fraudulent transfer claims rather than consumer debt.
How often Arkansas consumers report collection problems
Arkansas consumers filed 2,252 debt collection complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the 12 months ending August 26, 2026, which is 0.7% of the 323,584 filed nationwide and ranks 27th among reporting states.
Of those, 423, or 19% of the Arkansas total, were categorized as a collector taking or threatening to take negative or legal action, against 25% nationally.
These are raw complaint counts, not rates. They are not adjusted for population, and a complaint is an allegation the CFPB has published, not a finding that a company broke the law. The figures refresh weekly from the CFPB’s public database.
If you are sued on a debt you believe is too old
A limitations defense is not self-executing anywhere, and Arkansas is no exception. It must be raised, and a court will not raise it for you. Arkansas Rule of Civil Procedure 8(c) governs affirmative defenses, and we cite it here without quoting it, because the Arkansas Judiciary publishes its rules through a viewer we could not read. We would rather name the rule than reproduce text we have not seen.
Two Arkansas-specific points are worth raising with a lawyer. If the claim is for medical services, the period is two years and runs from the later of the service date or the most recent partial payment. And if the debt is oral or implied rather than written, § 16-56-111’s payment-tolling sentence sits in a statute that does not govern your claim. Court deadlines are unforgiving, so this is a point at which speaking with an Arkansas attorney or a legal aid organization is worth the call.
How Arkansas compares
How Arkansas lines up against states with a related rule:
- Oklahoma: the same five-and-three split, and payment sits outside the writing rule
- Utah: payment also restarts the clock with no writing required
- Virginia: five years on a signed writing, three without one
The full comparison table covers every state we have published.
Sources and verification
Arkansas is one of a small number of states whose official code we cannot read directly. The General Assembly designates LexisNexis as the official publisher, and that publisher serves the code through an application that returns no readable text to anything but an interactive browser. The legislature’s own site does not host code text. We do not solve or bypass access controls, so we sourced this page differently.
Every statutory quotation above comes from enrolled Acts published by the Arkansas General Assembly on its own server. Enrolled acts are primary law, and they reproduce the affected code sections in full with struck and underlined text showing exactly what changed. Because text rendering discards strikethrough formatting, we verified each amendment geometrically from the position of the rule lines in the source documents rather than inferring it from reading order. Acts relied on: Act 1164 of 1997 for § 16-56-111 and § 4-3-118; Act 572 of 1991 for the original § 4-3-118; Act 1032 of 2021 for § 16-56-106(b); and Acts 587 of 1993, 677 of 2019, and 1015 of 2021 for § 4-88-107. The text of § 16-56-105 is quoted as it appeared as present law in a 2003 House amendment; note that the amendment’s proposed subsection lettering and long-term-care carve-out were never enacted, since that bill did not become law.
The federal status of H.R. 5330 was checked against the congressional record for the 116th Congress, including House Report 116-653, which shows the bill committed to the Committee of the Whole on December 15, 2020 and no further action. Complaint data: CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, filtered to the Debt collection product and the Arkansas state field over a rolling 12-month window, re-queried weekly by this site. Our data sources and update policy lists every figure on this site that refreshes automatically and how often. Text retrieved August 26, 2026.
What this sourcing method cannot give us, stated plainly: we cannot confirm the current codified wording of any section that has not been amended since the 1987 codification, because no act text exists to quote. That is why we do not publish § 16-56-122, why we do not state a residual catch-all period for Arkansas, and why we do not quote Rule 8(c). We could not obtain a currency statement for the Arkansas Code itself. If you need certainty on an Arkansas deadline, the official code through a law library or an attorney is the right source, and this page is a starting point rather than a substitute.
This page explains what the Arkansas statutes say. It is general information, not legal advice, and it does not resolve whether a particular credit card account is a written obligation under § 16-56-111 or an implied contract under § 16-56-105, because that question is decided by case law rather than by the text.
Frequently asked questions
How long can a debt collector pursue an old debt in Arkansas?
Five years on a written obligation under Ark. Code § 16-56-111, and three years on a contract not in writing or on any contract or liability expressed or implied under § 16-56-105. Medical debt is two years under § 16-56-106(b). A note payable at a definite time runs five years under § 4-3-118(a), which is shorter than the six years most states apply.
Does making a payment restart the statute of limitations in Arkansas?
For written obligations, § 16-56-111 provides that “partial payment or written acknowledgment of default shall toll this statute of limitations.” The word “written” modifies acknowledgment and not partial payment, so a payment requires no writing and no signature. The statute says “toll” rather than revive or restart, and it does not say whether the clock pauses or begins again. The clause sits in the written-obligation statute and has no counterpart in the three-year provision for oral and implied contracts.
Is the Arkansas statute of limitations on medical debt two years or five?
Two years. Act 1032 of 2021 would have extended § 16-56-106(b) to five years, but the act was contingent on a federal bill, H.R. 5330 of the 116th Congress, becoming law on or before January 1, 2026. That bill never passed the House and the 116th Congress ended in January 2021. The deadline has now passed, so the amendment can never take effect.
Can a collector sue me on an expired debt in Arkansas?
We found no Arkansas statute prohibiting suit on a time-barred debt, barring revival, or requiring disclosure of a debt’s age. The Deceptive Trade Practices Act contains no provision on a debt’s age, so a claim would have to run through its general catch-all at § 4-88-107(a)(9) rather than through an express rule.