Washington gives creditors six years to sue on a written contract or an account receivable, and since 2019 nothing can revive the debt once that period expires. Not a payment, not a signed promise. Washington pairs that with an outright prohibition on suing over time-barred debt and a penalty that can strip every dollar of interest and fees from the claim permanently.
The deadlines, and where each one is written
| What is being collected | Deadline to file suit | Statute |
|---|---|---|
| Contract in writing, or liability arising out of a written agreement | 6 years | RCW 4.16.040(1) |
| An account receivable | 6 years | RCW 4.16.040(2) |
| Contract or liability not in writing | 3 years | RCW 4.16.080(3) |
| Note payable at a definite time | 6 years | RCW 62A.3-118(a) |
| A judgment | 10 years | RCW 4.16.020(2) |
| Relief not otherwise provided for | 2 years | RCW 4.16.130 |
The account receivable provision is worth noting because it is broadly worded and it changes the default. Section 4.16.040(2) defines an account receivable as “any obligation for payment incurred in the ordinary course of the claimant’s business or profession, whether arising from one or more transactions and whether or not earned by performance.” The three-year oral contract period in § 4.16.080(3) then opens with “Except as provided in RCW 4.16.040(2),” which pulls qualifying unwritten obligations out of the short track and into the six-year one.
Washington’s code never names credit cards or revolving credit in a limitations provision, so whether a particular card balance is a written contract, an account receivable, or an unwritten obligation is decided by the courts rather than the statute.
What restarts the clock, and what cannot
Washington rewrote both of its revival provisions in 2019, and the change is the most consumer-favorable rule in this project. Section 4.16.270 governs payments:
When any payment has been or shall be made upon any existing contract prior to its applicable limitation period having expired… if the payment is made after it is due, the limitation period shall restart from the time the most recent payment was made. Any payment on the contract made after the limitation period has expired shall not restart, revive, or extend the limitation period.
Section 4.16.280 governs acknowledgments, requires them to be “contained in some writing signed by the party to be charged,” and then closes the same door: “an acknowledgment or promise made after the limitation period has expired shall not restart, revive, or extend the limitation period.”
What this means in practice: the timing is everything in Washington. A payment made while the six years is still running restarts the clock from that payment, and it needs no writing or signature to do so. A payment made after the six years has run does nothing at all. So the usual warning about never paying an old debt is right up to the deadline and irrelevant after it. Any source describing Washington as a state where a payment revives an expired debt is describing law that changed in 2019.
Washington debt collection statute of limitations: suing on old debt is prohibited
Washington’s Collection Agency Act makes it an unfair practice for a licensee to:
Bring an action or initiate an arbitration proceeding on a claim when the licensee knows, or reasonably should know, that such suit or arbitration is barred by the applicable statute of limitations.
That is RCW 19.16.250(23), and because the Act’s definition of a collection agency includes debt buyers, it reaches companies that purchased the account. A separate subsection, 19.16.250(16), prohibits threatening “any action against the debtor which the licensee cannot legally take at the time the threat is made,” though that provision is general and does not name limitations periods.
The consequence of violating either is unusually severe. Under RCW 19.16.450, where a prohibited act is committed in collecting a claim, neither the licensee, its client, “nor any other person who may thereafter legally seek to collect on such claim shall ever be allowed to recover any interest, service charge, attorneys’ fees, collection costs, delinquency charge, or any other fees or charges otherwise legally chargeable to the debtor on such claim.” The principal remains collectible; everything above it is forfeited permanently, and the forfeiture follows the claim to every later owner.
Washington also requires a collector’s first notice to include the date of the last payment to the creditor, under RCW 19.16.250(8)(e)(ii), which hands the consumer the date a limitations argument is built from. What Washington does not have is a consumer-facing warning notice telling you a debt is too old to sue on. The phrase “time-barred” appears nowhere in the chapters we searched; Washington legislates the concept as “barred by the applicable statute of limitations.”
A significant change arriving January 1, 2027
Washington’s existing rule requiring a debt buyer’s complaint to disclose “that the action is being commenced within, and is not barred by, an applicable statute of limitations” sits in RCW 19.16.260(2)(c)(vi), and that subsection is repealed effective January 1, 2027.
It is replaced by something broader. The new Chapter 4.74 RCW, the Uniform Consumer Debt Default Judgments Act, takes effect the same day and applies to any plaintiff seeking a default judgment on consumer debt, not only debt buyers. Under RCW 4.74.030(3)(l) the complaint must state “facts sufficient to demonstrate that the action is being commenced within the statute of limitation period applicable to the debt,” and RCW 4.74.030(1) provides that a default judgment “may be entered only if” the complaint complies. Pleading facts is a higher bar than reciting a conclusion. The chapter also mandates a plain-language consumer notice warning that a default judgment “could remain in effect for up to 20 years.”
What the deadline does, and what it does not do
Washington bars the remedy rather than the debt. Every limitations provision is phrased as a limit on commencing an action, no provision in the chapters we searched uses extinguishment language, and limitations remains a waivable affirmative defense. Credit reporting runs on a separate federal clock, generally seven years for most negative account information under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Note also that RCW 19.16.250 prohibits suing on a time-barred debt but does not prohibit contacting you about one.
How often Washington consumers report collection problems
Washington consumers filed 4,367 debt collection complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the 12 months ending August 26, 2026, which is 1.3% of the 323,584 filed nationwide and ranks 20th among reporting states.
Of those, 962, or 22% of the Washington 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
Limitations is an affirmative defense that must be pleaded. Both CR 8(c), the superior court rule, and CRLJ 8(c), the rule for courts of limited jurisdiction where most consumer collection cases are actually filed, list the statute of limitation among defenses a party “shall set forth affirmatively.” Not pleading it waives it, which is precisely why the defense is not self-executing even though suing on the debt was prohibited.
Two Washington-specific things to check. Whether the first notice you received included the date of your last payment, as RCW 19.16.250(8)(e)(ii) requires. And whether the suit itself violates RCW 19.16.250(23), because if it does, RCW 19.16.450 permanently strips interest, fees, and collection costs from the claim. Court deadlines are unforgiving, so this is a point at which speaking with a Washington attorney or a legal aid organization is worth the call.
How Washington compares
Three states worth reading next to Washington, because each shares or inverts one of its rules:
- Oregon: filing suit on an expired debt is unlawful there too
- Nevada: nothing revives it, and agencies may not sue
- Minnesota: nothing revives it, and commencing suit is prohibited
The full comparison table covers every state we have published.
Sources and verification
Statutes quoted from the Revised Code of Washington published by the Washington State Legislature, whose site states “Last update: July 15, 2026” and notes that the certified PDF publications in the Code Reviser’s RCW Archive, rather than the web pages, constitute the official publication. Provisions cited: RCW 4.16.005, 4.16.020, 4.16.040, 4.16.080, 4.16.130, 4.16.150, 4.16.170, 4.16.270, 4.16.280, 4.16.290; 62A.3-118; 19.16.250, 19.16.260, 19.16.440, 19.16.450; 19.52.010; 19.86.120; and Chapter 4.74 RCW at §§ 4.74.010 through 4.74.050 and 4.74.904. Sections 4.16.270 and 4.16.280 were amended by 2019 c 377; Chapter 4.74 and the repeal of RCW 19.16.260(2) come from 2026 c 107, effective January 1, 2027. Court rules CR 8(c) and CRLJ 8(c) are published by the Washington Courts. Text retrieved August 26, 2026. One scope note: our search for the phrase “time-barred” covered the ten chapters most likely to contain such a provision rather than the entire code, so we report that it was not found there rather than claiming it appears nowhere in Washington law. Complaint data: CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, filtered to the Debt collection product and the Washington 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.
This page explains what the Washington statutes say. It is general information, not legal advice, and it does not resolve which limitations category governs a particular credit card balance, because the code does not name that category.
Frequently asked questions
How long can a debt collector pursue an old debt in Washington?
The deadline to sue is six years on a written contract or an account receivable under RCW 4.16.040, and three years on an unwritten obligation under RCW 4.16.080(3). Once the period expires, RCW 19.16.250(23) makes it an unfair practice for a collection agency to bring an action or initiate arbitration when it knows or reasonably should know the claim is barred.
Does making a payment restart the statute of limitations in Washington?
Only before the period expires. RCW 4.16.270 restarts the period from the most recent payment where that payment was made before the limitation period expired and after the debt was due, and it requires no writing. A payment made after the period expired “shall not restart, revive, or extend the limitation period.” The same is true of a written acknowledgment under RCW 4.16.280.
Can a collector be penalized for suing on a time-barred debt in Washington?
Yes, and the penalty is severe. Suing when the claim is known to be barred violates RCW 19.16.250(23), and RCW 19.16.450 provides that no one who later seeks to collect that claim “shall ever be allowed to recover any interest, service charge, attorneys’ fees, collection costs, delinquency charge, or any other fees or charges.” Only the original principal remains collectible.
What changes in Washington on January 1, 2027?
The Uniform Consumer Debt Default Judgments Act, Chapter 4.74 RCW, takes effect. It applies to any plaintiff seeking a default judgment on consumer debt rather than only debt buyers, and RCW 4.74.030(3)(l) requires the complaint to state facts sufficient to demonstrate the action was commenced within the applicable limitation period. The existing debt-buyer disclosure in RCW 19.16.260(2) is repealed the same day.