§ 703.150.Adjustment of Dollar Amounts of Exemptions

Dollar-based exemptions lose value to inflation unless someone updates them, and this section assigns that job to the Judicial Council. On a three-year cycle — starting April 1, 2004 for the bankruptcy-specific exemptions in § 703.140(b), April 1, 2007 for the exempt-property amounts in Article 3 (commencing with § 704.010), and April 1, 2022 for the deposit-account amount in § 699.730(b)(7) — the Judicial Council recalculates each dollar figure.

The formula ties the adjustment to the change in the California Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers over the preceding three years, rounding each new figure to the nearest twenty-five dollars. Starting in 2004, the Judicial Council also has to publish the current list of amounts along with the date of the next scheduled adjustment, so debtors, creditors, and levying officers can look up the applicable figures.

Timing matters for which amount applies to a given case. Adjustments to the bankruptcy-specific exemptions don't reach bankruptcy cases already commenced before the adjustment, subject to any contrary bankruptcy-law rule. For the other adjustments, § 703.050's lien-timing rule decides which amount governs.