2025 Texas sessionsRegular and both called sessions have ended. This index covers House and Senate bills, not resolutions. Statuses come from official reports.

2025 · Regular session · House bill

HB4238

HB4238 bars a creditor or covered debt collector from collecting a consumer debt, or the affected portion, resulting from identity theft described in a qualifying court order.

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Official caption: Relating to the collection of consumer debt incurred by certain individuals as a result of identity theft.

Signed by governorSource-checked explanation published

Official report lists House author(s): Meyer, Plesa, Lambert. This does not identify sponsors or amendment drafters.

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Bill explanation published · Version and amendment review scope is stated below · Individual amendment records may not be separately annotated.

Bill highlights

Selected points from the published explanation. Follow each point to its source-linked context; conditions and limits may matter.

HB4238 bars a creditor or covered debt collector from collecting a consumer debt, or the affected portion, resulting from identity theft described in a qualifying court order.
After receiving that notice, the collector must stop collection efforts against the victim no later than the seventh business day.
There are important limits.
A police complaint or FTC identity-theft report alone does not trigger this new protection.
The law took effect September 1, 2025.

Read the full explanation ↓

What does it do?

HB4238 bars a creditor or covered debt collector from collecting a consumer debt, or the affected portion, resulting from identity theft described in a qualifying court order. The consumer must provide an order under Texas Business & Commerce Code Section 521.103, or a substantially similar federal or other state’s law, declaring the consumer a victim.

After receiving that notice, the collector must stop collection efforts against the victim no later than the seventh business day. It must notify everyone to whom it previously reported that debt that the debt is disputed and not collectible from the victim. It cannot sell or transfer the debt for payment except to collect from the alleged identity thief or another responsible person.

There are important limits. The new section does not cover home loans as defined by Finance Code Chapter 343, or collection of a judgment already obtained. That home-loan definition generally covers personal or household loans secured by the borrower’s principal residence, including qualifying manufactured homes. If a covered debt is secured by tangible personal property, the creditor can still enforce its security interest under Chapter 9, but cannot seek a remaining unpaid balance—the deficiency—from the victim. The law expressly permits pursuing the alleged identity thief.

A police complaint or FTC identity-theft report alone does not trigger this new protection. Texas’s existing court-order process requires notice and a hearing; the judge must be satisfied by a preponderance of the evidence. An order identifies the affected accounts or transactions. A criminal conviction is not stated as an absolute prerequisite to obtaining that order.

The law took effect September 1, 2025. It concerns consumer debts, generally alleged obligations primarily for personal, family or household purposes—not a blanket cancellation of every debt owed by someone who has experienced identity theft.

What changed along the way?

The introduced bill, unchanged in the House committee and engrossed versions, would have accepted a criminal complaint plus a statement identifying the debt, a qualifying court order, or an FTC identity-theft report. It required an immediate stop to collection and included a special procedure allowing a collector to sue over a good-faith belief that the victim claim was materially false.

The Senate substitute removed the complaint and FTC-report alternatives, retained the court-order route, set the seven-business-day deadline and removed that special false-claim suit and proof language. Those removed alternatives are not part of the enacted law.

The sole listed floor amendment, by Senator Zaffirini, was adopted May 19. It expressly tied the collection prohibition to debt resulting from identity theft described by the court order. That wording appears in the final act. The history records House concurrence and the governor’s June 20 signature.

For the full amendment record, open the official amendment index.

Official bill versions

Compare the published text versions in the official text index. A change is not attributed to a specific amendment here without a verified record.

Who could benefit—and who could bear the costs?

Identity-theft victims with qualifying orders gain a specific collection stop, correction notices to prior report recipients and protection against repeated paid transfers of the affected debt. Obtaining an order can require time and legal effort; victims with only a complaint or report do not receive the broader shortcut proposed in the original bill.

Creditors and collectors must process orders, stop affected collection and send notices, while retaining routes against responsible wrongdoers and qualifying collateral. The final fiscal note projected no significant state or local fiscal impact and assumed agency costs could fit existing resources. It did not quantify private compliance expenses or victims’ savings.

Review boundary: This describes the new statutory protection, not an individual ruling on whether an order or debt qualifies. Other legal remedies may apply, including existing Finance Code Chapter 392 remedies; the exclusions here should not be read as eliminating all protections for home-loan or judgment disputes.

Official sources

Catalog report retrieved 2026-10-25. Check the official record for corrections or later changes.