Notice of Seizure: Deadlines, Verified Claims, and Innocent Owner Defense

A Notice of Seizure from a federal agency means the government has taken your property and started the legal process to keep it permanently. You generally have 35 days from the date the notice was mailed to file a written challenge, and letting that window close can cost you the property for good.¹ The notice itself is not a final decision. It is the opening move in a forfeiture proceeding, and what you do in the next few weeks determines whether you have any realistic chance of getting your property back.

Read Every Line and Find the Deadline

Open the envelope and read the notice carefully. It identifies the agency that seized the property (DEA, Customs and Border Protection, IRS, FBI, or another federal body), describes the property, and cites the statute the government says connects the asset to illegal activity. Check the description against what was actually taken, including serial numbers, account numbers, and VINs. Errors here matter later.

The deadline is the most important line on the page. Under federal law, the date stated in a personal notice letter cannot be earlier than 35 days after the letter was mailed. If you did not get a personal letter and only saw a published notice, you have 30 days from the date of the final publication.¹ Put the date on your calendar the day you read the notice. If it passes without a claim on file, the seizing agency can forfeit the property administratively, without ever going before a judge.

The notice names a contact person, usually an asset forfeiture specialist at the seizing agency, and lists the address where any claim or petition must be sent. Use that exact address.

Which Track You Are On

Most Notices of Seizure are for administrative forfeiture, which applies to personal property valued at $500,000 or less, including cash and vehicles. The seizing agency handles the whole thing in-house unless someone files a claim.² Filing a verified claim forces the matter out of the agency and into civil judicial forfeiture, where the government must sue the property in federal court and prove its case by a preponderance of the evidence.

Two situations work differently. Real property (your home or land) cannot be taken administratively at all; by law it must go through a judicial proceeding, and in most cases the government cannot seize or evict before the court rules.³ Criminal forfeiture is separate again: it rides along with a criminal prosecution and is resolved as part of sentencing, so if you have been charged, the forfeiture belongs with your criminal defense.

File a Verified Claim Before the Deadline

The single most important step is filing a verified claim with the seizing agency before the date on the notice expires. The claim is what strips the agency of its power to forfeit the property on paper and forces the government into court.

Federal law requires the claim to do three things: identify the specific property you are claiming, state your interest in it (owner, lienholder, secured creditor, and so on), and be signed under oath subject to the penalty of perjury. “Under oath” means either a notarized signature or a declaration under penalty of perjury. You do not need to post a bond. That barrier was removed by the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act.¹

Send the claim by certified mail with return receipt requested, to the address on the notice. If timing ever becomes an issue, the receipt is your proof. Regular mail is a risk you cannot afford here.

Get a lawyer who handles federal asset forfeiture involved before you file anything. The rules are procedurally unforgiving, and a defective claim can waive rights you did not know you had. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers maintains a public directory that lets you search by practice area, including forfeiture.

Petition for Remission: The Softer Route

Instead of (or in addition to) a verified claim, you can file a Petition for Remission or Mitigation. This is an administrative request asking the seizing agency to return the property voluntarily, submitted to the agency’s forfeiture counsel or the Attorney General’s designee when the Department of Justice is involved.

A petition is not the same thing as a claim. Filing one does not force the case into court and does not, by itself, preserve your right to a judicial hearing. You are asking the agency for discretion. That makes sense when litigation costs would exceed the value of the property, or when the facts don’t support a strong legal defense but do support an argument that the seizure was disproportionate or that you weren’t involved in the conduct.

Because a denied petition can leave you with no court option if the claim deadline has already run, many attorneys file a verified claim first to preserve rights, then pursue remission in parallel.

Getting the Property Back While the Case Is Pending

If going without the property causes real harm, you can request a hardship release. This is available when all of the following apply:

You have a recognized ownership or possessory interest in the property.
You have enough ties to the community that the property will still be available at trial.
Keeping the property in government hands will stop your business from operating, prevent you from working, or leave you homeless.⁴
That hardship outweighs the risk that the property will be destroyed, hidden, or transferred if returned.

Hardship release is not available for contraband, currency, property that will be used as evidence, or items particularly suited to illegal activity.⁴ You must file a verified claim alongside the hardship request. If the agency does not act within 15 days, you can take the request to a federal district court, which must rule within 30 days.¹

What Happens After You File a Claim

Once your verified claim is in, the seizing agency refers the case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the district where the property was seized. The government then has 90 days to either file a civil forfeiture complaint in federal court or return the property, though a court can extend that period for good cause or by agreement.¹

If a complaint is filed, it names the property as the defendant and lays out the government’s theory. You have 21 days after being served to file an answer that responds to each allegation and raises your defenses.⁵

From there the case moves into discovery. Documents, depositions, written questions. This is where you demand the evidence connecting your property to a crime and build the record for trial or settlement. The government carries the initial burden of showing by a preponderance of the evidence that the property is subject to forfeiture. If it meets that burden, the focus turns to your defenses.

The Innocent Owner Defense

Federal law protects an innocent owner’s interest from forfeiture, but you carry the burden of proving your innocence by a preponderance of the evidence.¹ How you prove it depends on when you came to own the property.

If you owned the property when the alleged conduct happened, you must show either that you did not know about the illegal use, or that you took all reasonable steps to stop it once you learned. The standard acknowledges that you may not have been able to physically prevent someone else from misusing your property; it asks what a reasonable person would have done.

If you acquired the property after the conduct, you qualify as an innocent owner by showing you were a good-faith buyer who paid fair value and had no knowledge or reasonable cause to believe the property was subject to forfeiture.¹

There is a carve-out for family members who received property through marriage, divorce, or inheritance rather than a purchase. Not paying fair value would normally disqualify you, but if the property is your primary residence, losing it would leave you and your dependents without reasonable shelter, and the property is not traceable to criminal proceeds, the court can recognize your interest up to the value needed to keep a roof over your household.¹

Challenging the Forfeiture as an Excessive Fine

Even when the government can prove the property is connected to illegal activity, the forfeiture may be unconstitutional if what the government takes is grossly disproportionate to the seriousness of the offense. The Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause limits government power to impose economic penalties as punishment, and the Supreme Court in Timbs v. Indiana confirmed that civil forfeitures fall within this protection when they are at least partly punitive, and that the clause applies to the states as well as the federal government.⁶

Courts assessing proportionality look at the seriousness of the offense, the maximum penalties available for it, and the relationship between the property and the crime. The argument is strongest when the asset is worth far more than the statutory fines the offense carries, and when the property had a primarily lawful use.

Settlement

Many forfeiture cases settle. A settlement might mean the government returns part of the property in exchange for you dropping your challenge to the rest. The Department of Justice actively encourages settlements that conserve resources on both sides.⁷ Negotiations usually open after discovery exposes the strengths and weaknesses of each side’s case.

One rule to know: a civil forfeiture settlement cannot be used to gain leverage in a separate criminal case.⁷ If anyone on the other side suggests a trade across those lines, your attorney should push back immediately.

If You Win, the Government May Pay Your Legal Bills

When a claimant “substantially prevails” in a civil forfeiture proceeding, the United States is liable for reasonable attorney fees and other litigation costs. If seized cash was not held in an interest-bearing account, you are also owed imputed interest at the 30-day Treasury Bill rate, starting 15 days after seizure.⁸

The main exception: you cannot recover fees or costs if you are convicted of a crime for which your interest in the property was subject to forfeiture under federal criminal law.⁸ The fee-shift matters strategically: the government knows a weak case may cost it, and that pressure sometimes produces a return of property without trial.

If You Already Missed the Deadline

A missed deadline is serious, but not always fatal. If you were entitled to written notice and never received it, you can file a motion to set aside the forfeiture. The court must grant the motion if the government knew or should have known of your interest and failed to take reasonable steps to notify you, and you did not learn of the seizure in time to file a claim.¹

The motion must be filed within five years of the date the notice of seizure was last published. If it is granted, the original forfeiture is set aside as to your interest, and the government has a fresh window to start over: 60 days for an administrative action or six months for a judicial one. If the property has already been disposed of, the government may owe you the value of your interest in cash.¹

This remedy exists because defective notice is a due process problem the government cannot paper over. It will not help if you received proper notice and simply did not act. That is why the filing deadline on the first page of the notice deserves to be treated as an emergency from the moment you open the envelope.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 983 – General Rules for Civil Forfeiture Proceedings
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 19 USC 1607 – Seizure; Value $500,000 or Less, Prohibited Merchandise, Transporting Conveyances
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 985 – Civil Forfeiture of Real Property
4
eCFR. 28 CFR 8.15 – Requests for Hardship Release of Seized Property
5
Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 12 – Defenses and Objections
6
Supreme Court of the United States. Timbs v. Indiana, 586 U.S. ___ (2019)
7
United States Department of Justice. Justice Manual 9-113.000 – Forfeiture Settlements
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2465 – Return of Property to Claimant; Liability for Wrongful Seizure; Attorney Fees, Costs, and Interest