Which place’s debt rules apply—and who can help?

Texas Debt and Debt-Relief Law — SettleADebt.com Research Reference

Assigned area: A066 — State, local, territorial, and tribal rules

Jurisdiction investigated: Texas

Research baseline and actual check date: October 22, 2026, America/Los_Angeles

Purpose: Reusable publication/research reference; not individualized legal advice.

Status vocabulary: Answered means the controlling authority was located sufficiently to state the rule; Partial means a controlling source was located but an important application, subsection, contract, local rule, or current implementation point remains unverified; Unresolved means the proposition should not be published as a rule without additional primary-source work.

The most important Texas conclusions are these. Texas regulates consumer debt-management and settlement providers through Finance Code Chapter 394 and 7 TAC Chapter 88, with OCCC registration rather than a generic “debt settlement license.” Texas has unusually specific debt-management fee structures, including CPI-adjusted dollar caps for the July 1, 2026–June 30, 2027 period. Texas does not have a general collection-agency registration scheme at the Secretary of State, but third-party debt collectors and credit bureaus must file a $10,000 surety bond before collecting. Texas also has a broad state debt-collection statute that reaches more actors than the federal FDCPA in some respects. 1

Texas generally gives creditors four years to sue on a “debt” under Civil Practice and Remedies Code §16.004, while a qualifying negotiable note can carry a six-year UCC limitation under Business & Commerce Code §3.118. A special Texas rule prevents a debt buyer from reviving a time-barred debt by payment, written or oral reaffirmation, or other activity. These clocks must not be confused with federal credit-reporting periods, mortgage-lien foreclosure limitations, or judgment-enforcement clocks. 2

Texas strongly protects wages and homesteads from ordinary unsecured judgment collection. Current wages generally cannot be garnished, ordinary personal property is protected within statutory category/value limits, and Rule 679b now supplies a statewide expedited process for asserting personal-property exemptions after a freeze or seizure. Texas does not, on the authorities verified here, have a general statutory rule making the first fixed dollar amount in every ordinary bank account immune from a private judgment creditor. 3

Scope, legal hierarchy, and verified matrix

The applicable rule depends not only on “Texas law,” but on who owns and collects the debt, the purpose of the transaction, whether the obligation is secured, whether suit or judgment already exists, what property is being pursued, and whether a federal program or sovereign creditor is involved. A Texas consumer credit-card collection suit, a mortgage foreclosure, an IRS or child-support collection, a tribal lender dispute, and a municipal-utility shutoff are not interchangeable legal problems.

The current Texas Rules of Civil Procedure page says the rules in force were last amended October 1, 2026. Accordingly, litigation deadlines below use that current ruleset rather than a pre-October-2026 rule compilation. 4

A significant future-law caution concerns 7 TAC Chapter 88. In December 2025 the Finance Commission formally completed its Chapter 88 review, found the existing reasons for the rules continued, and readopted the chapter. It said amendments might be proposed in 2026, including an NMLS-registration transition and possible revisions to §88.107 fees. That statement was an anticipation, not an enacted future-effective rule. The operational OCCC debt-management page examined for this report still directs applicants to ALECS and publishes current 2026–27 fee ceilings. A search in this investigation did not locate a later Chapter 88 proposal/adoption, but absence from that search is not sufficient to declare that none exists; this remains a specific publication hold. 5

Debt relief providers and debt collection

Texas debt-management/settlement matrix

Current consumer fee limits. OCCC publishes CPI-adjusted maximum dollar amounts for July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027. These are current limits, unlike the dollar examples printed in the 2021 advisory bulletin, whose dollar table is explicitly historical. The bulletin remains useful for the statutory structure and percentages. 1

The current dollar values above come directly from OCCC's current provider page, which explains that the statutory dollar caps are adjusted for inflation and gives the December 2011 CPI reference of 225.672, December 2025 CPI of 324.000, a 43.5712% increase, and rounding to the nearest dollar. 1

For for-profit providers using interstate telemarketing to sell unsecured-debt relief, the federal Telemarketing Sales Rule adds an especially important timing restriction. OCCC's bulletin explains that the provider generally cannot charge/receive a settlement fee until at least one debt has been settled and the consumer has made at least one payment pursuant to the settlement; the fee then must use the prescribed proportional relationship or percentage-of-savings method. Merely relabeling the service does not defeat the rule. 17

Collection regulation. Texas collection regulation should not be summarized as “FDCPA only.” Chapter 392 is a separate Texas statute.

Texas distinguishes the broad term debt collector from the narrower third-party debt collector. Chapter 392's substantive collection restrictions can therefore reach an original creditor engaging in collection of its own consumer debt even though the federal FDCPA usually excludes an ordinary original creditor from the federal “debt collector” definition. The §392.101 bond requirement, however, is expressly directed to a third-party debt collector or credit bureau. 18

The Secretary of State is explicit that these entities are not required to “register” with SOS as debt collectors. Instead, before engaging in debt collection a third-party debt collector or credit bureau must file a $10,000 surety bond with the state. The bond is for the benefit of persons damaged by violations of Chapter 392, SOS charges no filing fee for the bond filing, and its public debt-collector search can be used to determine whether a bond is on file. SOS is a filing office, not the regulator that adjudicates collection-practice disputes. 19

Texas's prohibited-practice provisions are organized principally in Finance Code §§392.301–.304: threats/coercion, harassment/abuse, unfair or unconscionable means, and fraudulent/deceptive/misleading representations. Among the recurring issues are unauthorized interest/fees, false representations about the debt or legal status, prohibited threats, harassing contacts, and misleading collection communications. Exact liability remains tied to the subsection and facts; “rude” conduct is not automatically the same thing as a statutory violation. 20

State dispute rights and federal validation are different mechanisms. Finance Code §392.202 creates a Texas correction process for disputed information maintained by a third-party debt collector or credit bureau. Separately, federal Regulation F, 12 CFR §§1006.34 and 1006.38, requires covered federal debt collectors to provide specified validation information and gives consumers a validation-period dispute process; a timely qualifying dispute can require collection to cease until the collector supplies the required verification. 21

Federal Regulation F also supplies communication rules that should not be misrepresented as Texas rules. Among other things, it implements FDCPA restrictions on inconvenient communications and creates the familiar telephone-frequency presumption around seven calls in seven days and a seven-day period following a telephone conversation about the particular debt. The regulation also addresses harassment, unfair practices, electronic communications and time-barred-debt litigation. 22

Before furnishing collection information to a consumer reporting agency, a covered federal debt collector must satisfy Regulation F §1006.30's communication prerequisite. This federal furnishing rule is distinct from the FCRA's obsolescence period and distinct again from any voluntary Equifax/Experian/TransUnion medical-debt policy. 23

Texas Chapter 392 supplies meaningful private remedies. Section 392.403 authorizes injunctive relief and actual damages and contains fee/remedy provisions; §392.404 further designates violations as deceptive trade practices under Texas law. The precise DTPA damages multiplier or fee result depends on the pleaded claim and statutory predicates and should not be presented as automatic. 24

Limitation periods, lawsuits, arbitration, and judgments

Limitation matrix

Two publication traps deserve emphasis.

First, assignment or sale does not create a fresh cause of action merely because the debt changed hands. For a debt buyer, §392.307 makes this especially concrete: once the applicable limitation has run, the buyer cannot bring suit or initiate arbitration and cannot revive the claim through subsequent consumer activity. Texas also mandates time-barred-debt disclosures whose form varies based partly on whether credit-reporting consequences remain; a production system should pull the current statutory wording rather than paraphrase it casually. 27

Second, choice of law is not reducible to “the card agreement says Delaware, so Delaware's limitation applies.” Texas forum law, characterization of limitation rules, a contractual choice-of-law clause's wording, and potentially a statute that makes its own limitation substantive can matter. This investigation did not complete a current Texas Supreme Court opinion chain sufficient to turn that into a universal consumer-facing rule. Choice-of-law is therefore partial and is a publication hold for a dedicated case-law memorandum.

Service and answer deadlines. The current Texas Rules of Civil Procedure are critical because justice-court debt suits and county/district suits use different answer mechanics.

For an ordinary district or county court citation, current Rule 99 instructs the defendant to file the written answer on or before 10:00 a.m. on the Monday next following expiration of 20 days after service. The current October 2026 rule appears directly on the Supreme Court's rule PDF. 30

For a justice-court case, Rule 502.5(d) instead makes the answer due by the end of the 14th day after the day of service, with extension to the next qualifying business day if the 14th day is a Saturday, Sunday, legal holiday, or qualifying court-closure day. A general denial is sufficient to constitute an answer/appearance under Rule 502.5(b). 31

Service itself must be tested against the applicable current service rules, including Rules 106–107 in county/district court or the justice-court service provisions. A collector's phone call, letter, email, or demand is not a substitute for valid service of citation merely because the consumer learned that a lawsuit exists.

Justice-court debt claims. Rule 508 applies when the debt claim is brought by an assignee, financial institution, debt collector/collection agency, or person/entity primarily engaged in lending money at interest. A Rule 508 petition on a credit account must identify the account, masked number, origination date if known, charge-off/breach date if known, amount owed as of a date certain, and whether ongoing interest is sought. A personal/business loan petition requires corresponding loan, due-date, acceleration and amount information. If continuing interest is requested, the plaintiff must state the rate, its contractual/statutory basis and an amount as of a date certain. An assigned-debt petition must state that assignment occurred, the assignment date, prior holders and original creditor. 31

The debt-claim default rule is especially useful for standing/documentation analysis. Failure to answer does not mean the plaintiff can simply submit an unsupported number. Rule 508.3 requires proof that the account or loan was issued to the defendant and that the defendant is obligated, that the account was closed or breached, the amount after credits/offsets, and that the plaintiff owns the debt and, where applicable, how it acquired it. Documentary proof may be supported through the rule's sworn-business-record mechanism. 31

That creates a practical checklist for assigned-debt defense:

All of those points flow from current Rules 508.2–.3; they are not a guarantee that any particular debt buyer lacks evidence. 30

Default and setting aside a judgment. In justice court, current Rules 503/505 contain the default and new-trial procedures; in debt cases, Rule 508.3's special proof requirement controls the debt-claim default evidence. Justice-court post-judgment deadlines are substantially shorter than district-court deadlines. A justice-court motion for new trial is generally governed by Rule 505.3; a county/district motion for new trial is generally governed by Rule 329b. Because a motion to set aside, direct appeal, restricted appeal, and equitable bill of review have different predicates, a consumer-facing article should not simply say “you have X days to vacate every Texas default.” The precise path must be selected from the court and date facts. 32

The classic Texas merits test for a motion seeking relief from a no-answer default is associated with Craddock v. Sunshine Bus Lines, while Texas appellate rules also provide a restricted-appeal mechanism under separate conditions. Those decisions/rules were identified as relevant, but the controlling opinions themselves were not opened in this run; a publication-grade default-vacatur article should therefore complete that opinion review first.

Venue. Justice Rule 502.4 directs users to Civil Practice and Remedies Code Chapter 15, Subchapter E for justice-court venue. A federal FDCPA-covered debt collector is also subject to 15 U.S.C. §1692i's consumer-debt venue rule. Exact venue needs the plaintiff type, defendant residence, place of contracting/performance and court level. The current Texas rule was verified, but this investigation did not complete every Chapter 15 venue subsection, so a statewide “always sue where the consumer lives” statement is not approved. 31

Arbitration. An arbitration demand turns first on a valid arbitration agreement, its scope, assignment and applicable FAA/Texas Arbitration Act law; a creditor's mere assertion that “the account had arbitration” is not self-proving. Conversely, ordinary disagreement with the debt does not itself invalidate a valid arbitration clause. The unusually clear Texas debt-buyer rule is that, once the debt is time-barred under the periods referenced by §392.307, the buyer may not “commence an action” or initiate arbitration to collect it. 27

Judgment interest. Texas Finance Code Chapter 304 separates judgments based on a contract that specifies interest from those governed by the OCCC rate. For a judgment to which §304.003 applies, OCCC determines the rate on the 15th of a month for judgments rendered during the succeeding calendar month, with a statutory 5% floor and 15% ceiling around the referenced prime rate. OCCC's published rate for October 2026 judgments is 6.75%. Postjudgment interest accrues until satisfaction and Texas law provides annual compounding. A qualifying contract judgment can instead implicate §304.002's contract-rate rule and its statutory cap, so 6.75% must not be stated as the rate on every Texas judgment. 33

Judgment dormancy, lien and satisfaction. CPRC §34.001 uses a 10-year execution/dormancy framework; CPRC §31.006 allows revival within the prescribed post-dormancy period. An abstracted judgment lien is a separate Property Code issue, as is clearing a lien from homestead property. A paid defendant should therefore obtain and record any required satisfaction/release rather than assuming payment automatically cleans every county real-property record. The §34.001/§31.006 clocks are verified; the complete Property Code §§52.001–.006 satisfaction/lien-release workflow is partial in this investigation and is a publication hold for an annotated post-judgment guide. 29

The Texas Judicial Branch's official self-represented-litigant page points users to statewide legal-information and e-filing resources. The current rules also require clerks to make the approved Statement of Inability to Afford Payment of Court Costs process available in justice court. For exemption seizures, the Supreme Court has its own Notice of Protected Property Rights and Protected Property Claim Form. 34

Garnishment, exemptions, secured debt, and special debt types

Ordinary collection exemptions

Texas's constitutional wage rule is unusually strong. Article XVI §28 says current wages for personal service are not subject to garnishment except for the constitutionally specified court-ordered obligations. CPRC §63.004 implements the ordinary garnishment protection. This makes a standard credit-card judgment materially different from child support, a federal tax levy, or another debt benefiting from a federal/state exception. 3

That protection should not be converted into the inaccurate statement that every dollar originally earned as wages remains forever immune after it reaches a bank. Texas authorities distinguish “current wages” from funds after payment/deposit; absent another exemption, ordinary deposited wages can become vulnerable in a bank garnishment. Federal benefits are different because separate federal statutes and Treasury garnishment-account-review rules can preserve protection after direct deposit. 35

Texas Property Code §42.001 protects listed personal property under an aggregate fair-market-value ceiling of $100,000 for a family and $50,000 for a single adult who is not a member of a family, exclusive of liens, subject to the statutory categories. The chapter also separately addresses current wages and capped unpaid commissions. The categories in §42.002 include specified household, occupational, vehicle, animal, clothing, jewelry, sporting and other property; the value cap is not a free-floating exemption for any property the debtor chooses. 36

Texas's homestead protection is governed principally by Property Code Chapter 41 and the Texas Constitution. A qualifying homestead is exempt from seizure for ordinary debts, subject to constitutionally/statutorily enumerated exceptions such as purchase-money, tax, certain work-and-material, partition/owelty and qualifying home-equity/reverse-mortgage claims. Texas homestead protection is therefore powerful but not an “all liens are impossible” rule. 37

For acreage, the traditional statutory distinction is up to 10 acres for an urban homestead and larger acreage limits for a rural homestead depending on family status. Those acreage details should always be paired with the statutory urban/rural definitions and actual use; this report does not treat “200 acres” as an automatic exemption for every Texas homeowner.

No verified universal minimum bank balance. The primary Texas exemption materials opened for this investigation establish wage, homestead and listed-personal-property protections but did not establish a general rule automatically exempting, for example, “the first $2,500” in every Texas bank account from an ordinary private judgment. Accordingly, SettleADebt.com should not publish a generic Texas minimum-bank-balance number without a later enacted statute being specifically identified. 38

Texas does now have a valuable procedural protection after property is frozen. Rule 679b requires the receiver or judgment creditor, after a post-judgment process freezes or seizes an individual debtor's personal property, to serve the Supreme Court-approved exemption notice, instructions and claim form generally within three business days after learning of the freeze/seizure. The receiver/officer generally may not sell property or distribute proceeds during the 14-day suspension period, extended to 17 days if service of the exemption materials was by mail. 31

If the debtor files the Protected Property Claim Form or equivalent sworn document, the court must hold a hearing; the debtor bears the burden of proving the exemption/value, the court generally must determine the claim within 10 days after filing absent good cause to extend, and exempt property must be ordered released within three business days after the court's determination. 31

Federal benefits require a separate layer. For an ordinary private garnishment, Social Security and various other federal benefits have federal protections; banks also have an automatic account-review regime for covered electronically deposited federal benefits. Exceptions can exist for obligations such as federal taxes and support. Because the governing federal statutes and 31 CFR Part 212 were not directly opened during this Texas-focused run, the detailed federal-benefit matrix is partial even though the existence of the protection is well established in the Texas legal-aid materials reviewed. 39

Bankruptcy is a different exemption system. Ordinary Texas collection exemptions do not answer what a Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 trustee can administer. Bankruptcy Code §522 controls the federal/state election and domicile rules, and federal bankruptcy provisions can impose special homestead limitations despite Texas's ordinary state-law homestead protection. No consumer-facing page should simply say “Texas has an unlimited homestead, so bankruptcy cannot reach it.” The exact indexed federal cap and domicile/acquisition rules need a bankruptcy-date-specific check.

Mortgages and foreclosure

Texas Property Code §51.002 supplies the core nonjudicial deed-of-trust sale process. The statutory sale notice generally must be given at least 21 days before the sale, with the prescribed courthouse posting, county-clerk filing and certified-mail notice. For covered property used as the debtor's residence, §51.002(d) requires a statutory opportunity to cure before notice of sale; the core Texas cure period is at least 20 days. 40

Those are Texas foreclosure minima, not a complete mortgage-servicing timeline. Federal mortgage-servicing rules, bankruptcy stays, servicemember protections, home-equity constitutional procedures, reverse mortgages, tax liens, HOA liens and contract provisions can alter the analysis. A home-equity foreclosure under Texas Constitution article XVI §50 is particularly unsuitable for treatment as an ordinary §51.002 foreclosure and merits its own investigation.

The limitation period for foreclosing a real-property lien is separately governed by CPRC §16.035, generally four years after accrual. On an installment mortgage containing optional acceleration, accrual can hinge on whether acceleration was validly exercised and later abandoned. This report identified that case-law issue but did not complete a publication-grade Texas Supreme Court/Fifth Circuit acceleration/abandonment opinion chain. 26

Vehicle repossession and deficiency

Under Texas's Article 9, after default a secured party may take possession of collateral pursuant to judicial process or may proceed without judicial process only if it can do so without breach of the peace. That is Texas Business & Commerce Code §9.609. 41

Repossession is not the end of the accounting. Article 9 §§9.610–.616 govern disposition, commercial reasonableness, notices, application of proceeds, surplus/deficiency and consumer explanations. Thus a vehicle borrower can potentially remain liable for a deficiency, but the legally collectible amount depends on the contract, payoff balance, disposition proceeds, allowed expenses/credits and compliance with the applicable Article 9 rules. A website should never state a standard “repo settlement percentage” or assume the auction balance is automatically conclusive.

Texas motor-vehicle retail installment statutes can add creditor-specific requirements beyond Article 9. Because this report did not separately trace Finance Code Chapter 348 against each Article 9 deficiency rule, auto deficiency is a narrower recommended follow-up, particularly for retail installment contracts, direct auto loans, title loans and voluntary surrender.

Rent and eviction arrears

Texas Property Code §24.005 provides the state notice-to-vacate framework. In the ordinary statutory case the landlord gives the required written notice before filing a forcible-detainer action; leases and specialized statutory/federal rules can change the timing. An eviction case determines possession and can intersect with a claim for unpaid rent, but “eviction debt” should not be treated as simply another credit-card collection. 42

Eviction procedure is governed by Rule 510, rather than ordinary justice-court Rules 500–507 where Rule 510 provides otherwise. The current 2026 rules also contain specialized trial, service and appeal/rent-registry provisions. Federal CARES Act coverage can be material for some properties, and that federal 30-day-notice question was not reverified in this run; any article advising the earliest lawful filing date for a specific rental property therefore needs a covered-property check. 32

Medical debt

Texas Health & Safety Code Chapter 185 contains an itemized-bill requirement when a health-care provider requests payment from a patient after furnishing covered services/supplies and restricts collection before statutory billing compliance. The controlling provision is §185.002. The statute should be checked against the presence/absence of third-party payment because its billing timing mechanics are not safely reducible to a single sentence for every claim. 43

Hospital financial assistance is a different issue from whether the medical bill is valid. Nonprofit-hospital federal §501(r) financial-assistance/extraordinary-collection rules, Texas hospital charity-care/community-benefit requirements, county/hospital-district indigent programs and an individual provider's written policy all can matter. There is no verified Texas rule in this investigation entitling every patient to a fixed settlement percentage or blanket medical-debt cancellation.

Credit reporting also requires careful dating. The CFPB adopted a federal 2025 rule that would have restricted medical-debt reporting/use, but the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas vacated that rule on July 11, 2025. The CFPB's own current rule page expressly records the vacatur. It should therefore be labeled vacated, not “effective federal law.” 44

Separately, national credit bureaus have had voluntary medical-debt reporting policies. Those are credit-bureau policies, not Texas statutes, can change without a Texas legislative act, and were not re-audited as contracts/policies here. SettleADebt.com should keep voluntary bureau policy in a separately dated policy module rather than blending it with the FCRA or Texas law.

Utilities, support, fines, overpayments, and tax debt

Utilities — Partial and narrower follow-up required. Texas utility shutoff rights depend on the kind of service and provider. PUC retail-electric rules, water/sewer regulation, municipal utilities, electric cooperatives and provider tariffs do not share one universal shutoff rule. A discovery lead identified 16 TAC §25.483 as material to retail-electric disconnection, but the controlling current TAC text and representative tariffs were not opened before the research-tool limit was reached. This topic therefore remains a publication hold, not a finding that no protection exists.

Child/spousal support — Partial but materially distinct. The Texas constitutional wage exemption expressly contains court-ordered support exceptions. Family Code withholding and federal garnishment limits apply rather than ordinary unsecured-debt rules. No support withholding percentage is stated here because the current Family Code/federal interaction was not fully verified in this run. 3

Criminal fines and fees — narrower follow-up required. Municipal/justice criminal fines involve Code of Criminal Procedure ability-to-pay, payment-plan, waiver/community-service and enforcement provisions, not Chapter 392's ordinary private-creditor model. Court level and offense matter.

Government-benefit overpayments — narrower follow-up required by program. Texas Workforce Commission unemployment overpayments, HHSC benefits, federal Social Security/VA overpayments and other governmental claims have their own administrative reconsideration, waiver, offset and collection authority. There is no safe statewide “government overpayment settlement” rule.

State/local taxes — narrower follow-up required by tax. Texas does not have a single consumer tax-debt relief program substituting for federal IRS compromise rules. Property tax, Comptroller-administered state taxes, local taxes and federal taxes require separate statutes and taxing-authority processes. Older/disabled homeowner property-tax deferral is a material Texas topic, but Tax Code §33.06 and related current qualification/interest provisions were not independently opened in this run; publication should wait for that targeted pull.

Consumer remedies, identity issues, military protections, local and tribal boundaries

A Texas debtor confronting abusive collection can have overlapping remedies rather than a single complaint path. Chapter 392 provides private civil relief; §392.404 ties violations to the DTPA; qualifying third-party collectors can also be liable under the federal FDCPA. Which defendant fits which statute matters. 24

The Texas Secretary of State explains that it only receives the third-party-collector bond. It does not regulate or adjudicate collectors' business practices. Its guidance directs consumers with Chapter 392 concerns toward the Texas Attorney General and identifies the FTC as a federal complaint destination; the CFPB is another federal regulator for covered consumer-financial activity. OCCC is the relevant Texas regulator for registered debt-management providers. 19

For coercion, the first Texas-specific screen is §§392.301–.304. Threats of prohibited legal action, deceptive representations about arrest, legal authority, the debt, fees or creditor status should be tested against the exact subsection rather than characterized generically as “illegal harassment.” 20

Identity theft — Partial. Identity theft can create both a “not my debt” defense and federal credit-report blocking/dispute rights. Texas also has identity-theft statutes and an Attorney General identity-theft program, but the current AG workflow and Texas Business & Commerce Code identity-theft provisions were not opened sufficiently in this investigation. Accordingly, an identity-theft article should separately verify the current Identity Theft Report/FTC IdentityTheft.gov process, FCRA §605B blocking requirements, police-report alternatives, Texas security-freeze rules and the collector dispute. An identity-theft victim should not be told merely to “settle it for less” before ownership/liability is established.

Military — federal baseline, Texas-specific overlay partial. The federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act can affect pre-service interest, default judgments, certain vehicle repossessions and mortgage foreclosures. Those protections are status-, timing- and transaction-dependent; “active duty erases debt” is false. Texas also has state servicemember provisions, including foreclosure-related law, but the current Texas-specific overlay was not primary-source completed here. This is a dedicated publication hold.

Older adults. Age does not itself create a blanket Texas exemption from ordinary credit-card liability. Older Texans may, however, intersect with homestead protection, protected retirement/Social Security income, exploitation laws, and property-tax deferral programs. Those protections should be described by the actual asset/program rather than through a nonexistent universal “senior debt exemption.” The property-tax component requires the narrower Tax Code follow-up identified above.

County and local limits. Statewide civil procedure controls much of ordinary debt litigation, but counties can have local administrative/standing rules consistent with statewide rules; filing/service costs and court logistics vary. Municipal utility policies, local hospital programs and taxing-unit relief are also inherently local. This investigation did not verify 254 county-level rule sets and should not imply that a statewide answer substitutes for the relevant court's current local instructions.

Tribal boundaries — unresolved for a universal Texas rule. A claim involving a federally recognized tribe, tribal arm, tribal lender, reservation activity or tribal-court judgment raises federal Indian-law questions including sovereign immunity, entity status, waiver, congressional authorization, subject-matter jurisdiction and potentially tribal law. Texas Chapter 392 or Chapter 394 cannot simply be assumed to bind a tribal sovereign/entity in the same way as an ordinary Texas corporation. Conversely, calling a company “tribal” does not by itself decide immunity or governing law. No tribe-specific consumer-debt code, sovereign-immunity waiver, tribal-court rule or complete federal jurisdiction analysis was opened in this run. Any tribal-lender content is therefore on publication hold pending tribe/entity-specific research.

Pending/future-effective law watch. The concrete current signal is the December 26, 2025 Chapter 88 rule review. It readopted Chapter 88 and said OCCC/Finance Commission anticipated possible 2026 amendments involving NMLS transition and §88.107 fees. Because that notice itself did not enact those changes and no later Chapter 88 adoption was verified here, those possible amendments must be labeled “anticipated/proposed possibility,” not current or future-effective law. 5

Worked examples, comparisons, publication opportunities, and gap register

Worked example — traditional DMP fees. Assume a Texas consumer has four enrolled accounts and stays in a qualifying §394.210(f) DMP for six months. Current July 2026–June 2027 limits are a $144 setup fee and a monthly fee equal to the lesser of $14 per account or $72. Four accounts × $14 = $56, which is below $72. Six months × $56 = $336. Adding the maximum setup fee produces $480 maximum provider fees under those two fee components over the assumed six-month period. This excludes payments to creditors and any separately lawful dishonored-payment charge. 1

Worked example — settlement structure percentage caps. Assume $20,000 of principal debt enters the §394.210(g) structure. A 17% total-fee ceiling corresponds to $3,400 under the flat-fee path. Under the alternative structure whose total-fee cap is 20% of principal, the ceiling is $4,000. If one $12,000 debt settles for $7,000, the savings are $5,000; 30% of that savings is $1,500. The provider cannot simply charge every calculated number on top of every other number: setup, monthly and percentage limits must be reconciled under the selected statutory structure and the overall cap. 45

Worked example — limitations and a debt sale. Assume, solely for illustration, that a cause of action subject to CPRC §16.004 accrued on November 15, 2022, with no tolling or different accrual rule. Four years gives November 15, 2026. Selling the debt to a debt buyer on June 1, 2025 does not create a new four-year period. Once the referenced period has expired, §392.307 prevents that debt buyer from filing suit or initiating arbitration and prevents revival through a later payment, oral/written reaffirmation or other activity. The example changes if Article 3's six-year note limitation, another statute, tolling, a different accrual date, or a non-debt-buyer plaintiff controls. 2

Worked example — Texas answer deadlines. Assume personal service occurs Thursday, October 22, 2026. In a justice-court debt claim, day 14 after the day of service is Thursday, November 5, 2026, so the answer is due by the end of that day absent another qualifying rule. In an ordinary county/district citation, 20 days expire Wednesday, November 11, and Rule 99 points to 10:00 a.m. Monday, November 16, 2026. The examples assume ordinary personal service and no publication-service rule or court closure. 30

Worked example — October 2026 judgment interest. Assume a Texas noncontract-rate judgment governed by §304.003 is rendered October 22, 2026 for exactly $10,000 and remains wholly unpaid. OCCC's October rate is 6.75%. First-year interest is $10,000 × .0675 = $675, producing $10,675 at the first annual compounding point. A second full year's interest on $10,675 is approximately $720.56, producing about $11,395.56 after two assumed full years. Actual calculations must account for exact satisfaction/payment dates, credits, the judgment's specified rate and whether §304.002 rather than §304.003 controls. 33

Worked example — bank freeze with federal benefits. Assume an ordinary private-credit-card judgment, a $4,000 bank balance at garnishment review, and $1,800 of qualifying electronically deposited federal benefits during the federal lookback period, with the remaining $2,200 consisting of already-paid wages. Federal benefit-protection rules may automatically protect the qualifying benefit amount, while Texas's “current wages” exemption should not automatically be assumed to protect the already-deposited $2,200. If the garnishment nonetheless freezes exempt property, Rule 679b supplies the Texas exemption-claim procedure. The example does not apply unchanged to child support, federal tax collection, federal-government garnishments, or accounts containing other exempt funds. 39

Worked example — Texas residential foreclosure timing floor. Assume §51.002(d) applies, a residential cure notice is sent October 22, 2026, and no federal, bankruptcy, SCRA, contract or home-equity rule adds time. A 20-day cure period necessarily runs into November. A sale notice sent only after that cure period would be too late to give 21 full days before the December 1, 2026 first-Tuesday sale in this example, so January 5, 2027 is the first ordinary first-Tuesday date that could satisfy both sequential assumptions. This is a timing illustration, not a conclusion about any real mortgage. 40

Useful publication/tool opportunities

Gap register and publication holds

Source register

All entries were checked on 2026-10-22 unless a source's own publication/effective date is separately listed. “Opened” means the content itself or the relevant PDF page was rendered/read during this investigation; “discovery-only” means the authority was identified but not sufficiently opened to support a finished rule.

Claim/evidence register, granular coverage, and researcher self-check

Claim/evidence register

Granular coverage table

Researcher self-check. This investigation actually opened or rendered: the Texas Finance Code Chapter 394 and Chapter 392 authorities; OCCC's current debt-management provider page, fee schedule and public lookup; OCCC's fee advisory PDF; the Texas Register Chapter 88 rule-review notice and its PDF page; current Texas Rules of Civil Procedure and screenshots of Rules 99, 502.5 and 508; the Texas SOS debt-collector bond guidance and 2026 Form 2901; Texas limitation, garnishment, homestead/personal-property, foreclosure, repossession and medical-billing statutes; OCCC's current judgment-interest page; and the CFPB's current page recording vacatur of the medical-debt rule. 57

The current-court-rule check was date-sensitive: the Texas Judicial Branch identifies the Rules of Civil Procedure used here as last amended October 1, 2026. The OCCC fee check was likewise date-sensitive: the provider amounts used here are the stated July 1, 2026–June 30, 2027 limits, while the percentage architecture in Bulletin B21-4 was separated from that bulletin's obsolete 2021–22 dollar table. 4

The investigation did not independently complete every Texas appellate decision implicated by accrual, choice of law, mortgage acceleration, default vacatur, arbitration formation or deposited-wage tracing; every county/local court rule; utility tariff; hospital financial-assistance policy; government-overpayment program; tax-relief program; tribe/tribal entity; or creditor's complete account agreement. Those are identified above as partial/unresolved rather than silently treated as nonexistent. No creditor settlement percentage, voluntary credit-bureau policy, tax consequence, or universal credit-score outcome has been inferred.

No private borrower information was accessed or used. No creditor was contacted, no account was changed, no publication was made, and no local/shared-library write is represented by this report. The self-check is a description of the source and coverage checks actually performed; it is not an independent legal review or quality-control opinion by separate counsel.