Can I be arrested or charged with theft for not paying a rent-to-own agreement?

Two different questions hide inside “can I be arrested?” One is about owing money. The other is about keeping the item. They have different answers, and stores sometimes blur them on purpose.

Missing payments is a civil matter, not a crime

The United States does not jail people for owing money. When you fall behind on a rent-to-own agreement, you are in a contract dispute. The store’s remedy is to take the item back (peacefully) and, in some cases, pursue the unpaid balance in civil court. None of that is a criminal case, and none of it involves the police arresting you for nonpayment.

A threat to “send the police” or “press charges” because you missed a payment is a pressure tactic, not a description of how the law works. If a collector threatens arrest over a debt, that can itself cross the line into unlawful debt-collection conduct.

Keeping the item after a written demand is the part that can be criminal

Rent-to-own is a lease, and most states have a separate criminal law about leased or rented property. Keeping it, and not returning it after the company sends a formal written demand, can be charged as theft. Courts in many states are allowed to treat a failure to return the property within a set number of days of that written demand as evidence of an intent to keep it for good. The deadline, the form the demand has to take, and the level of the charge vary by state, and the value of the item usually decides whether it is a misdemeanor or a felony.

This is not about being behind and trying to catch up. It is about holding onto the item and ignoring a proper demand to give it back. A handful of states protect you here, and in eight of them a rent-to-own customer cannot be charged just for failing to return the goods. Some say so directly: their rental-purchase acts bar a lease-purchase agreement from treating a mere failure to return as probable cause for a criminal action — Ohio (Ohio Rev. Code §1351.03), Oregon (ORS 646A.128), New Mexico (NMSA 1978 §57-26-6), and Wyoming (Wyo. Stat. §40-19-108). Others write their failure-to-return crime so it does not reach rent-to-own at all: Connecticut (Conn. Gen. Stat. §53a-119(13)) and South Carolina (S.C. Code §16-13-420) exclude lease-purchase agreements from that offense, Virginia (Va. Code §18.2-118) excludes property covered by its Lease-Purchase Agreement Act, and Kentucky’s version (Ky. Rev. Stat. §514.070) reaches a lessee only when the lease has no option to buy — which a rent-to-own agreement, by definition, always has. A few more states have no specific failure-to-return statute, so only general theft law, which requires proof that you meant to keep the item for good, could ever apply. The table below, and your state’s page, show which group you are in.

What this means for you

• Being behind on payments, by itself, is not a crime, and a store generally cannot have you arrested for it.
• The exposure comes from keeping the item after a formal written demand to return it, which many states can treat as theft of leased property.
• Returning the item, or responding to a demand, is the step that removes that risk.
• If you have been threatened with arrest just for missing a payment, that is a red flag about the collector, not proof you have done something illegal.

Find your state below to see how it treats this question.