Civil Asset Forfeiture: Filing a Claim and Innocent Owner Defenses

If a federal agency has seized your property, the way to contest civil asset forfeiture is to file a sworn claim with the seizing agency by the deadline printed on your notice letter, which can be as little as 35 days from the date the letter was mailed. Miss that window and the agency can keep your property through administrative forfeiture without any judge ever seeing the case. File the claim on time and the government is forced into federal court, where you get a hearing and the chance to raise defenses.

Everything else below assumes you act on that deadline first. The other tools, including petitions, hardship releases, and innocent owner defenses, work best alongside a timely claim, not instead of one.

Read the Notice Letter and Mark the Deadline

After a seizure, the agency has 60 days to send written notice to anyone who appears to have a legal interest in the property.¹ That letter tells you which agency took the property, the legal authority they used, and the deadline for filing a claim. The deadline cannot be set earlier than 35 days after the date of mailing. If no personal letter reaches you, the agency publishes notice at forfeiture.gov, and you then have 30 days from the final publication date to file.²

If you believe property has been seized and no letter has arrived, check forfeiture.gov directly. The deadlines are strict, and courts rarely excuse a late filing.

One early question matters more than it may seem: is your case being handled under federal law or state law? Local police often seize property and then hand it to a federal agency through the Department of Justice’s equitable sharing program, which routes the case under federal rules even though the original stop was local. State and local agencies must request federal adoption within 30 days of the seizure.³ The notice letter will tell you which track you are on. Roughly 16 states require a criminal conviction before permanent forfeiture, and some have raised the burden of proof above the federal preponderance standard, so a state-track case may give you stronger protections than federal law provides.

File the Claim

The claim is the one filing that stops administrative forfeiture and forces the case into federal district court. Without it, the seizing agency can keep the property by default, no judge involved. Property with an appraised value of $500,000 or less can be forfeited administratively by the agency itself if no one files a claim.⁴

Your claim must do three things:

Identify the specific property you are contesting.
State your interest in that property.
Be signed under oath, which means you need it notarized.

You do not have to prove ownership at the claim stage. You do have to show a legally recognizable interest.¹ Claim forms are available from the seizing agency or through the Department of Justice’s forfeiture division.

Send the claim by certified mail with a return receipt, to the address listed in the notice. Keep the receipt. If the government later says the filing never arrived, that receipt is your proof.

Once the agency receives your claim, the administrative forfeiture track ends. The government then has 90 days to file a judicial forfeiture complaint in federal district court. If prosecutors miss that 90-day window and have not obtained a criminal indictment with a forfeiture allegation in the meantime, they must return your property.¹ Mark that date on your calendar the moment you file.

While you prepare the claim, start pulling together supporting documentation: vehicle titles, bank statements, purchase receipts, tax returns, payroll records, anything that shows ownership and legitimate source of funds. You will need these later, and having them in order from the start strengthens every step that follows.

Also Consider a Petition for Remission or Mitigation

A claim takes you to court. A petition asks the seizing agency itself to give the property back without litigation. The two tracks are compatible, and in most cases filing both is the stronger approach: the petition offers a shot at a faster return, and the claim preserves your right to a hearing if the petition is denied.

Remission is a full return of the property. You qualify by showing a valid ownership interest and meeting the innocent owner standard.⁵ Mitigation is partial relief, where the agency returns the property with conditions. Mitigation can apply when losing the property would cause extreme hardship, or when the person involved in the underlying offense had no prior record, played a minor role, or cooperated with investigators.

The notice of seizure advises petitioners to file within 30 days to help processing, though the agency may consider a petition any time before the property is formally forfeited.⁶ A petition does not substitute for a claim. Only a claim stops administrative forfeiture.

Ask for Your Property Back While the Case Is Pending

Forfeiture cases often take months. If going without the property that long will cause real harm, federal law allows immediate release during the pendency of the case when continued government possession would cause substantial hardship, such as preventing you from working, running your business, or keeping housing.¹

To qualify, you need to show four things:

You have a possessory interest in the property.
You have sufficient ties to the community to ensure the property will be available for trial.
The hardship from continued seizure outweighs the risk of the property being hidden or destroyed.
The property is not in an excluded category.

Cash and monetary instruments are generally excluded unless they are assets of a legitimate business. Contraband, evidence of a crime, and property designed for illegal use are also excluded.

Start with a written request to the seizing agency. If the agency does not release the property within 15 days, you can file a petition in federal district court, and the court must rule within 30 days. For someone whose work vehicle or business equipment was taken, this is often the most urgent filing to make.

Build an Innocent Owner Defense

The innocent owner defense is the strongest substantive argument available in most cases. Even when the government proves the property is connected to a crime, you can still get it back by showing you had no involvement in or knowledge of the illegal conduct. You carry the burden of proof.¹

The standard depends on when you acquired the property.

If you owned it when the illegal conduct occurred, you must show either that you did not know about the conduct, or that once you learned about it, you did everything reasonably possible to stop it. Reasonable steps include notifying law enforcement and revoking the user’s permission to use the property. The law does not require steps that would put anyone in physical danger.

If you acquired your interest after the illegal conduct, you must show you were a good-faith purchaser for value who had no reason to believe the property was subject to forfeiture. Spouses and legal dependents who received property through marriage, divorce, or inheritance get additional protection: they can assert the defense even without having paid value, as long as the property is not traceable to criminal proceeds and losing it would leave them without reasonable shelter.

Evidence that supports the defense includes tax records, communications showing you were unaware of the activity, proof that you reported concerns to police, and documentation of steps you took to protect the property. Cases are won or lost on this evidence, so gathering it should begin the day the notice arrives.

Challenge an Oversized Forfeiture as an Excessive Fine

The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines limits how much the government can take relative to the offense. In Timbs v. Indiana, the Supreme Court unanimously held that this protection applies to state and local governments and confirmed that civil forfeitures qualify as fines when at least partially punitive.⁷ A forfeiture that is grossly disproportionate to the underlying conduct can be struck down on that basis. A $50,000 vehicle seized over a minor drug possession charge is the kind of mismatch an excessive fines argument is built for.

Lawyers, Fees, and What the Government Pays If You Win

There is no court-appointed attorney in civil forfeiture, because the case is technically against property rather than against you. Two narrow exceptions exist. If you already have a court-appointed attorney in a related criminal case, the court can authorize that lawyer to represent you in the forfeiture matter too. And if the seized property is real estate you use as your primary residence, the court must provide an attorney through the Legal Services Corporation.¹ Otherwise, you hire a lawyer or represent yourself.

The cost barrier is real, especially when the property is worth less than the legal fees. CAFRA addresses this by making the government liable for reasonable attorney fees and litigation costs when a claimant substantially prevails, which generally means a dismissal with prejudice, summary judgment, or a favorable verdict at trial.⁸ A settlement or voluntary dismissal without prejudice typically does not count. Fee recovery is also unavailable if you were convicted of a crime related to the forfeiture.

If the seized property was cash, you may be entitled to interest when it is returned: actual interest earned while the government held the funds, plus imputed interest at the 30-day Treasury Bill rate for any period when the government did not invest the money, running from 15 days after seizure.

Where These Rules Do Not Apply

CAFRA’s protections, including the innocent owner defense and the fee-shifting provision, do not cover every federal seizure. Property taken under customs and tariff laws (Title 19), the Internal Revenue Code, or the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act is governed by its own procedures.¹ If Customs and Border Protection took your property at a port of entry, you are operating under a different rulebook, and the specific deadlines and defenses on your notice letter control.

Separately, the fugitive disentitlement doctrine lets a court bar you from contesting a forfeiture if you are evading criminal prosecution by leaving the country, refusing to return, or otherwise dodging the court’s jurisdiction. It also applies to corporations whose majority shareholder or claim-filer is a fugitive.⁹

For every other case, the sequence is the same. Read the notice. File the claim before the deadline. Consider a petition and a hardship release in parallel. Gather the evidence that supports an innocent owner defense. Those four moves, done on time, are what keeps a seizure from becoming a permanent loss.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S.C. 983 – General Rules for Civil Forfeiture Proceedings
2
Forfeiture.gov. Forfeiture.gov Home
3
United States Department of Justice. JM 9-116.000 – Equitable Sharing and Federal Adoption
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 19 U.S.C. 1607 – Seizure; Value $500,000 or Less
5
Forfeiture.gov. 28 CFR Part 9 – Regulations Governing the Remission or Mitigation of Administrative, Civil, and Criminal Forfeitures
6
eCFR. 28 CFR 9.3 – Petitions in Administrative Forfeiture Cases
7
Supreme Court of the United States. Timbs v. Indiana, 586 U.S. 146 (2019)
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S.C. 2465 – Return of Property and Certain Costs
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S.C. 2466 – Fugitive Disentitlement