Florida Asset Protection: Titling, LLCs, and Homestead

How it works

Florida is one of the strongest debtor protection states in the country, and that reputation rests on specific statutes rather than a general impression. Florida asset protection runs on two separate mechanisms, and keeping them apart matters because they fail in different ways.

The first is a set of statutory and constitutional exemptions. Certain assets are simply unreachable by a money judgment creditor, regardless of how they happen to be titled. None of that depends on planning; it depends on the asset meeting the statute's definition. The second is entity and titling structure: assets that carry no exemption of their own get placed where pursuing them stops being worth a creditor's time, even though nothing stops a creditor from trying anyway. Both can be defeated by a mistake in how they were set up, and both can be strengthened by fixing that mistake before anyone needs to rely on it.

The table below maps each protection to what it covers and the law behind it.

What sits where

The logic tying this together is separation. Operating activity sits in its own entity. Real estate, a brokerage account, and other appreciating or passive assets sit in separate holding entities, not mixed into the operating entity or pooled together in one holding entity. An individual's own exempt assets, a homestead, retirement accounts, a tenancy-by-the-entireties account, sit outside any entity altogether, and a judgment against one piece of that structure is not supposed to reach the others.

What this is not

None of this changes an income tax bill, reduces what gets reported to the IRS or the state, or generates a deduction. The benefit is entirely about which assets a future creditor can reach if a lawsuit or a judgment ever shows up, a real benefit, just not a tax one. This page sits in the same library as the tax strategies because it is the same kind of work: reading exactly what a structure accomplishes and being straightforward about what it does not.

Who this applies to

Every protection here has its own gate, and none of them turn on income, filing status, or entity election. They turn on facts about the person and the asset.

• Homestead. A Florida domiciliary who owns the property and resides on it as a permanent residence, owned by a natural person or, handled carefully, a revocable living trust that preserves the residency character. No other entity keeps the exemption.
• Tenancy by the entireties. Legally married couples only, holding the asset jointly. An engaged couple or a domestic partnership does not qualify, and adding a third owner destroys the entireties estate for everyone on it.
• The wage exemption. A natural person providing more than half the support of a child or another dependent. Someone without a dependent relying on them does not get this exemption, regardless of income.
• Retirement and annuity money. The owner of a qualified plan, an IRA of any type including an inherited one, or an annuity or life insurance policy issued to a Florida resident.
• The LLC charging-order shield. Any member of a Florida LLC gets a charging order as the creditor's remedy by default. What that remedy is actually worth turns entirely on how many members the LLC has.

A single-member LLC does not lose this protection outright, but it loses the part that matters most, and that gap is common enough that it gets its own section below.

What it requires

For the exemptions that need no structure

Homestead protection, under Article X, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution, is unlimited in dollar value, but the property itself is capped at 160 contiguous acres outside a municipality, or half an acre inside one. Four things pierce it anyway: unpaid property taxes and assessments, a purchase-money mortgage, an obligation to improve or repair the property, and a construction or mechanic's lien for labor on it. A federal tax lien overrides it too.

Retirement and annuity money need the least setup. An IRA, including an inherited one, stays exempt simply by remaining in qualified form under Florida Statute 222.21, and Florida's version reaches further than federal law: Clark v. Rameker held an inherited IRA is not a retirement fund for federal bankruptcy purposes, but Florida's exemption covers it regardless, so a Florida resident in bankruptcy who elects state exemptions keeps a protection the federal one would not. An annuity or life-insurance policy needs only that a Florida citizen or resident as owner, insuring a Florida life or issued to a Florida resident, under Florida Statute 222.14.

The wage exemption, Florida Statute 222.11, protects all disposable earnings of a head of family at or under $750 a week outright; above that, it survives only if the person has not agreed in writing to give it up. An exempt paycheck stays exempt for six months after deposit if traceable, and mere commingling does not defeat that.

For a married couple's bank or brokerage account, Florida courts presume a joint account is held as tenants by the entireties unless the signature card offered that option and something else was chosen, a presumption from Beal Bank, SSB v. Almand & Associates. It does real work, but paperwork signed at account opening can waive it without either spouse realizing what it gave up.

For the one exemption that takes an active choice

Florida Statute 605.0503 makes a charging order the creditor's sole and exclusive remedy against a member's interest in an LLC, but that exclusivity has a hole. For a multi-member LLC, foreclosure of a member's interest cannot be ordered by a court, so a creditor with a charging order is stuck waiting on distributions the LLC controls. For a single-member LLC, if the creditor can show distributions will not satisfy the judgment within a reasonable time, the charging order stops being exclusive and a court can order a foreclosure sale of the entire membership interest, the buyer stepping into the member's shoes.

The gate here is not a form or a filing. It is having a genuine second member with a real, non-trivial interest before any claim exists, a spouse or a separate entity.

What you need to document

Proof of Florida domicile and residency

For homestead, this is the whole case: domicile, and actually living on the property as a permanent residence. Filing the homestead property tax exemption is a separate filing, but it corroborates the same intent.

The signature card or account-opening paperwork

For a married couple's joint account, this is what proves tenancy by the entireties was chosen rather than disclaimed. If the form offered the option and something else was picked instead, no amount of later intent fixes it.

An operating agreement naming a real second member

For an LLC, the document has to show an actual economic interest for that member, not a nominal one added to satisfy a headcount. Distributions that actually flow to that member, or a clear record of why none have been made, back up that the interest is genuine.

A dated paper trail that predates any dispute

Every structure here is judged by when it was put in place relative to a claim, a demand letter, or a lawsuit a reasonable person could see coming. Dated formation documents, account records, and correspondence are what establish the structure existed before there was anything to protect against.

Where it goes wrong

The single-member LLC mistake

This is the single most common Florida asset-protection mistake, and it survives because the statute sounds absolute: a charging order as the creditor's exclusive remedy, full stop, without reaching the subsection carving out single-member LLCs. An LLC with one owner is exposed to a foreclosure sale of the entire membership interest the moment a creditor shows the LLC is not distributing enough to pay the judgment, a showing made at the same hearing where the creditor asks for the charging order.

The fix, a real second member added well before any claim exists, is not a loophole; it is what the statute is built around. Adding one after a lawsuit is filed, or after a demand letter arrives, does not work: a last-minute member with no genuine economic interest invites both a fraudulent-transfer challenge and a sham-transaction argument, either of which can unwind the protection along with whatever else it touches. A newer option, the protected series LLC, pitches the same asset-by-asset separation inside one entity. I want its inter-series wall tested in an actual case before I treat it as equivalent to a separate LLC.

Where the titling itself fails

• An unmarried co-owner. Tenancy by the entireties requires a legal marriage; an engaged couple, a domestic partnership, or any other unmarried joint owner does not get it, no matter how the deed reads.
• A third name on the account or the deed. Adding anyone other than the spouse destroys the entireties estate entirely.
• The disclaimer trap. A couple offered tenancy by the entireties on a signature card who chose a different form of ownership is treated as having given it up, whether or not they remember choosing it.
• A joint creditor. Tenancy by the entireties defeats a creditor of one spouse. It does nothing against a creditor both spouses owe together.
• Equity acquired close to a bankruptcy filing. Homestead protection carries no dollar cap outside bankruptcy. Inside a bankruptcy filed on or after April 1, 2025, 11 U.S.C. § 522(p) caps equity acquired in the preceding 1,215 days at $214,000; equity in a home owned longer is uncapped, and the rule applies only in bankruptcy.

The fatal timing error

Every structure above only works if it existed before there was a reason to build it. A transfer made with actual intent to hinder, delay, or defraud a creditor is voidable under Florida Statute 726.105, and Florida courts infer that intent from eleven circumstances, among them a transfer to an insider, retained control of the asset, timing after a lawsuit was threatened, and a transfer of substantially all the debtor's assets. A present creditor does not even need to prove intent: under Florida Statute 726.106, a transfer for less than reasonably equivalent value made while insolvent is voidable on its own. A claim resting on actual intent must be brought within four years of the transfer, or, if later, within one year of discovery, under Florida Statute 726.110.

Converting reachable cash into an exempt homestead, annuity, or retirement account carries a separate rule under Florida Statute 222.30, which voids the conversion where the debtor acted with intent to hinder, delay, or defraud the creditor. Those are three separate states of mind and any one of them is enough, so a creditor never has to prove intent to defraud specifically. A legitimate retirement or tax-deferral motive helps, but it answers only the last of the three. None of this is IRS exam risk; it is civil litigation, run on the same discipline: real, contemporaneous, and pre-claim. Adversarial creditor defense, moving assets after a demand letter arrives, is the practice of law, not accounting, and belongs with an attorney rather than a same-week fix from a CPA.

A situation where this comes up

The version I see most often is a client who formed a single-member LLC years ago to hold a rental property, purely for liability separation between a tenant and personal assets, with no thought given to an unrelated creditor coming after them personally. The LLC itself is fine; what is missing is the second member. Once a spouse or another real partner can take a genuine interest, adding that person converts a structure a creditor could foreclose into one a creditor mostly cannot touch.

What usually has to change alongside that is paperwork everyone assumed was fine. A joint brokerage account opened years ago with no thought to tenancy by the entireties, an operating agreement never updated when the second member came on, no record of a distribution ever being made. None of that felt urgent while nothing was wrong, which is exactly why it has to get fixed before something is.

The version that worries me is the phone call that comes in after a demand letter, or after someone has already been served. At that point nothing can be restructured without creating the exact fact pattern chapter 726 exists to catch, and saying that out loud to a client is not a pleasant conversation. Asset protection done in advance is ordinary planning. The same moves made once a claim exists are evidence against the person who made them.