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What a Creditor Cannot Take — Including a Shield Built for Military Retirement Pay

Mississippi’s exemption section protects $10,000 of tangible personal property chosen by the debtor, a mobile home used as a primary residence up to $30,000, disability insurance income, retirement accounts, and a further $50,000 of property of any kind for a resident aged 70 or over. It also puts ALL property in the state beyond a judgment in favour of another state for unpaid income tax on retirement benefits — and it names military retirement pay administered by the United States in the definition.

Verified August 23, 2026

What this benefit is

Mississippi’s exemption section protects $10,000 of tangible personal property chosen by the debtor, a mobile home used as a primary residence up to $30,000, disability insurance income, retirement accounts, and a further $50,000 of property of any kind for a resident aged 70 or over. It also puts ALL property in the state beyond a judgment in favour of another state for unpaid income tax on retirement benefits — and it names military retirement pay administered by the United States in the definition.

What it's worth: $10,000 of tangible property, a $30,000 mobile home, $50,000 more at 70, and total protection against another state’s tax judgment on military retired pay

  • The tangible personal property figure is a CUMULATIVE $10,000 across household goods, vehicles, tools of the trade, cash on hand and prescribed health aids — not $10,000 per category.
  • The mobile home figure of $30,000 is net: existing encumbrances, including taxes and all other liens, are deducted from actual value first.
  • No single total is claimed because the limbs cover different property and a household will be inside some and outside others.

Who is entitled to it

  • The exemptions belong to the debtor whoever they are, so a survivor facing a collection is inside them.
  • You are in this state.

Not sure whether that describes you?

Answer a few questions about this benefit specifically — we only ask what this one actually depends on, and we stop as soon as we know.

How to claim it

Deadline: When the execution or attachment is served
  1. 1Choose deliberately. The $10,000 tangible limb is expressly property "selected by the debtor" — household goods, motor vehicles, implements and professional books or tools of the trade, cash on hand, professionally prescribed health aids, and any items worth less than $200 each. Select the most valuable qualifying items first.
  2. 2Know what "household goods" excludes, because the definition is narrow: works of art, electronic entertainment equipment beyond one television and one radio, jewellery other than wedding rings, and items acquired as antiques are all outside it.
  3. 3Raise the other-state tax shield if you have moved here carrying a retirement income tax assessment. Paragraph (c) exempts ALL property in this state, real, personal and mixed, from a judgment or claim in favour of another state or its political subdivision for failure to pay that state’s income tax on benefits from a pension or other retirement plan — and the definition names a military retirement pay plan administered by the United States alongside ordinary pensions and individual retirement accounts.
  4. 4Count your age. A resident aged 70 or over has an ADDITIONAL exemption of $50,000 of property of any type, real, personal or mixed, tangible or intangible, including deposits of money — on top of everything else in the section.
  5. 5Use the mobile home limb if that is where you live: one mobile home, trailer, manufactured housing or similar dwelling owned and occupied as the primary residence, up to $30,000 net of encumbrances. You cannot claim it as personal property and also claim the homestead exemption under §85-3-21.
  6. 6Do not overlook the smaller cash limbs: up to $5,000 each of earned income tax credit proceeds, federal tax refund proceeds and state tax refund proceeds, and income from disability insurance.
  7. 7Check what the section does not touch: the tangible limb does not apply to distress warrants for state taxes or to wages, and nothing in the section affects the rights of the holder of a statutory lien or a voluntary security interest you granted.
Form
Claim the exemption in the execution or attachment proceeding, selecting the property
File with
The court in which the execution or attachment is pending
No renewal
Once granted it does not need renewing.
CorrectionThe section contains NO veterans’ benefit exemption. It was read end to end and the words do not appear. VA compensation and pension are protected by federal law rather than by this section, and a veteran told that state law shields them here has been told something the statute does not say.
CorrectionThe homestead is not in this section either. §85-3-1 covers a mobile home used as a primary residence at $30,000, and it says in terms that a debtor claiming the homestead exemption under §85-3-21 cannot also claim the mobile home as personal property. The two are alternatives, not a stack.
Worth knowingParagraph (c) is the limb nobody expects and the one most likely to matter to a military retiree who has moved here. It does not cap the protection at a dollar figure: against a judgment in favour of another state for unpaid income tax on retirement benefits, all property in this state is exempt.
Known gapThe wage exemption sits in a different section, §85-3-4, which was not read this session, and the homestead exemption at §85-3-21 was not read either. Whether any session after 2020 amended §85-3-1 was not established.

Sources

This finder provides an informational match, not a government eligibility determination. The responsible agency decides your application.