What Is Civil Forfeiture: How Seizures Work and How to Contest Them

Civil forfeiture is a legal process that lets federal, state, and local authorities seize cash, vehicles, real estate, and other property they suspect is tied to criminal activity, and keep it permanently even if the owner is never charged or convicted of a crime. The lawsuit targets the property itself rather than a person, which is why owners can lose assets without a criminal case ever being filed against them. The federal Assets Forfeiture Fund alone took in roughly $2.4 billion in fiscal year 2024.¹

How Civil Forfeiture Works

Civil forfeiture runs on a doctrine called in rem jurisdiction. The government sues the property, treating the asset as the defendant and arguing it was either an instrument of crime or the direct proceeds of illegal activity.² That is why case names read like “United States v. $50,000 in U.S. Currency.”

Because the case targets the object, the owner’s personal guilt or innocence is not what the court decides. The government can proceed even when the owner is unknown, deceased, or living outside the country. A judge then decides whether the property’s connection to illegal conduct is strong enough to justify permanent forfeiture. The practical effect: the government can strip someone of their property without ever proving that person committed a crime.

Civil Forfeiture Compared to Criminal Forfeiture

Criminal forfeiture is a different process. It happens as part of a prosecution and only kicks in after a conviction, when a judge orders forfeiture of specific property during sentencing. Civil forfeiture requires no charges and no conviction, and uses a lower standard of proof. Most of the controversy around asset seizure centers on civil forfeiture for exactly that reason.

What Can Be Seized

Authorities can take almost any kind of asset once they claim a connection to suspected criminal activity. Cash is the most common target. Traffic stops, airport screening, and financial investigations routinely produce seizures of currency found in vehicles, luggage, or bank accounts. Vehicles, electronics, and jewelry are also frequent targets. Real estate, including homes, commercial buildings, and undeveloped land, can be seized when the government believes the property hosted or facilitated illegal operations.²

The government must show a nexus between the property and an alleged crime. A car used to transport drugs or a bank account used to launder money qualifies. If investigators cannot establish that link, the property should be returned. Most seizures in practice involve property that law enforcement ties to drug trafficking or money laundering.

Bank deposits deserve a specific warning. Federal law requires businesses to file a Form 8300 for any cash transaction over $10,000, and banks have a parallel reporting duty.³ Breaking deposits into smaller amounts to avoid the threshold is called structuring, a federal crime carrying up to five years in prison, or ten if the structuring is part of a broader pattern involving more than $100,000 over 12 months.⁴ Entire bank accounts have been seized based on deposit patterns alone. The IRS and DOJ have adopted internal policies limiting structuring-only seizures where no other criminal activity is suspected, but the legal authority remains on the books.

What Happens After a Seizure

A seizure usually begins during a traffic stop, at an airport, or after a search warrant is served. The officer must have probable cause to believe the property is connected to illegal activity. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 requires a magistrate judge to find probable cause before issuing a warrant to seize.⁵ Many seizures happen without a warrant during encounters where officers claim exigent circumstances or act incident to an arrest.

After the physical seizure, the agency has to send written notice to all known interested parties within 60 days. When a state or local agency turns property over to a federal agency for forfeiture, that deadline stretches to 90 days.⁶ During that window, the agency holds the property or freezes the account.

Most cases start as administrative forfeitures. The seizing agency processes the forfeiture itself without going to court, and if nobody files a claim contesting it, the property is forfeited by default. This is where owners lose assets most often. They either never receive notice, don’t understand it, or can’t afford to fight. If the owner does file a timely claim, the case moves into federal court for a judicial proceeding with a judge and formal rules of evidence.

The Proof the Government Needs

Two different standards apply at two different stages, and the gap between them is where most of the controversy lives.

To physically take property, law enforcement needs probable cause: a reasonable belief, based on specific facts, that the asset is connected to a crime. This is the same standard police need for an arrest warrant, and it is far below what would be needed to convict anyone of anything.

To keep the property permanently, the government must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the asset is subject to forfeiture, meaning it is more likely than not that the property was involved in or derived from criminal activity.⁶ Roughly a 51-percent certainty. That is well below the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard used in criminal trials.

State standards vary. Some apply the same preponderance standard. Others require clear and convincing evidence, a meaningfully higher bar. A few demand proof beyond a reasonable doubt, putting forfeiture on the same footing as a criminal conviction.

The Innocent Owner Defense

Federal law protects owners who had no involvement in the alleged crime. Under 18 U.S.C. § 983(d), the government cannot forfeit an innocent owner’s interest in property. The catch: the owner carries the burden of proving innocence by a preponderance of the evidence, not the other way around.⁶

To qualify, the owner must show either that they did not know about the conduct giving rise to the forfeiture, or that once they learned of it, they did everything reasonably possible to stop it, such as notifying law enforcement or revoking permission for the person to use the property. The law does not require owners to take steps they reasonably believe would put someone in physical danger, and a person is not expected to do the impossible. The defense can still be hard to prove, particularly when an owner lent a car or rented a house to someone who used it without their knowledge.

A separate rule applies to people who bought property after the illegal conduct already occurred. Those buyers qualify as innocent owners if they paid fair value and had no reason to believe the property was subject to forfeiture.

How to Contest a Seizure

The timeline for responding is short and unforgiving. Miss a deadline and you usually lose the property permanently, regardless of the merits.

Filing a Claim

After receiving a personal notice letter in an administrative forfeiture, you must file a claim by the deadline stated in the letter, which cannot be earlier than 35 days after the letter was mailed. If you never received a personal letter and only learned of the seizure through a published notice, the deadline is 30 days after the final publication.⁶

The claim does not require a special form. It must be in writing, identify the specific property, state your interest in it, and be made under oath subject to penalty of perjury. No bond is required to file.⁷

Once you file, the government has 90 days to file a formal forfeiture complaint in court. If it misses that window, the property must be returned unless a judge grants an extension for good cause.⁶

The Right to a Lawyer

Because civil forfeiture is not a criminal case, there is generally no constitutional right to a court-appointed attorney. Federal law carves out one narrow exception. If the seized property is your primary residence and you cannot afford a lawyer, the court must ensure you are represented by an attorney from the Legal Services Corporation.⁶ For everything else, including your car, your savings, or your business equipment, you are on your own unless you can hire private counsel or find pro bono help.

Recovering Attorney Fees

If you fight the forfeiture and substantially prevail, meaning you win a dismissal with prejudice, summary judgment, or judgment on the merits, the government must reimburse your reasonable attorney fees and litigation costs.⁸ That reimbursement disappears if you are convicted of a related crime. A settlement or dismissal without prejudice does not count as substantially prevailing, so owners who negotiate their property back informally typically cannot recover what they spent on lawyers.

Constitutional Limits

The Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause is the most significant constitutional check on civil forfeiture. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Timbs v. Indiana that this protection applies to state and local governments, not just the federal government.⁹ The case involved a man whose $42,000 Land Rover was seized after he was convicted of selling a few hundred dollars’ worth of heroin. The Court held that civil forfeitures fall within the Excessive Fines Clause when they are at least partially punitive.

The test for whether a forfeiture is unconstitutionally excessive weighs the severity of the offense, the maximum fines the law could impose for it, and the value of the property seized. A $200,000 home forfeited over a minor drug sale is far more likely to be struck down than a luxury car seized in connection with large-scale trafficking. Courts are still working out exactly where the line falls.

Why State Protections May Not Save You: Equitable Sharing

Local and state police often partner with federal agencies through a program called equitable sharing. A local department seizes property, turns it over to a federal agency like the DEA for forfeiture under federal law, and the federal government shares the proceeds back with the local agency. The authority traces to the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, with the forfeiture provisions for drug-related property codified at 21 U.S.C. § 881.¹⁰

Under Department of Justice guidelines, the minimum federal share is 20 percent. The remaining proceeds, up to 80 percent, go to the state and local agencies that participated, with the split based on each agency’s level of direct participation in the investigation.¹¹ The statute requires that each agency’s share bear a “reasonable relationship to the degree of direct participation” in the law enforcement effort.¹⁰

Critics say the arrangement creates a financial incentive to seize property, because forfeiture income flows back into the agency’s own budget for equipment, training, and operations. It also lets local agencies bypass stricter state forfeiture laws by routing seizures through the federal system, where the standards may be more favorable to the government.

Where State Law Is Stronger

Civil forfeiture law varies widely from state to state, and the trend over the past decade has been toward tighter restrictions. Roughly 16 states now require a criminal conviction before the government can permanently forfeit most types of property. Three states, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Maine, have abolished civil forfeiture entirely and require the government to use criminal forfeiture, which can only follow a conviction. Other states have raised the burden of proof, required more detailed reporting of seizure activity, or redirected forfeiture proceeds away from law enforcement budgets.

These reforms do not apply to federal forfeiture actions, which is why equitable sharing remains a flashpoint. A state can pass strict protections, but if a local agency routes the seizure through a federal partner, state protections may not apply. Federal reform bills have been introduced in Congress but have not become law.

1
U.S. Department of Justice. 2024 Trend Information with Narratives
2
Legal Information Institute (LII) / Cornell Law School. Civil Forfeiture
3
eCFR. Reports Relating to Currency in Excess of $10,000 Received in a Trade or Business
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 31 U.S. Code 5324 – Structuring Transactions to Evade Reporting Requirement Prohibited
5
Legal Information Institute (LII) / Cornell Law School. Rule 41 – Search and Seizure
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S.C. 983 – General Rules for Civil Forfeiture Proceedings
7
eCFR. Filing of a Claim for Seized Property
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2465 – Return of Property to Claimant; Liability
9
Supreme Court of the United States. Timbs v. Indiana (2019)
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 21 U.S.C. 881 – Forfeitures
11
U.S. Department of Justice. Guide to Equitable Sharing for State, Local, and Tribal Law Enforcement Agencies