This profile covers one thing only: money. Documents, amounts, dates, and whether anything was actually paid. The subject matter of the proceedings against Bill Cosby is not discussed here.
On that narrow question the record is unusually rich — because an insurer once filed his complete policies into a public court file.
Bill Cosby Net Worth: Why We Publish No Figure
- Estimates run $50m to $400m — a factor of eight, for a man whose finances were examined under oath in 2026
- One published figure is smaller than a single outstanding judgment against him
- Our take: no figure — but eight documented amounts no aggregator has. See our methodology.
An Insurer Filed His Policies Into the Public Record
In 2015 an insurance company went to court over whether it had to fund his legal defence. To make its case it attached the policies themselves as exhibits.
That is how a private client’s coverage schedule became a public document.
The personal excess liability policy for 2015 carried a limit of $35,000,000, plus $10m of excess uninsured-motorist cover and $1m for charitable board service.
The homeowners policy for 2014 is the more revealing document. It insures at least seven built locations on a guaranteed-rebuilding-cost basis:
| Component | Insured value |
|---|---|
| Main structures (seven) | $14,720,224 |
| Outbuildings | $5,946,963 |
| Contents | $3,680,047 |
| Total | $24,347,234 |
Six further locations carry liability cover only, at $1m each — the usual pattern for undeveloped parcels.
Read this correctly. Insured value is the cost to rebuild. It is not market value, and it says nothing about mortgages secured against those properties. It establishes the scale of the holdings in 2014, not their equity. The filer redacted the addresses; we would not publish them in any case.
The coverage dispute itself was resolved on 7 June 2018, when a federal appeals court held the insurer owed a duty to defend. The legal costs of those civil cases fell on the insurer, not on him personally — a fact absent from every published estimate.
The Manhattan Property, Documented End to End
New York City’s land records are fully public, and they carry the whole chain for one townhouse — with amounts to the dollar:
| Recorded | Transaction | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| 13 Sep 2005 | Transferred into a limited liability company | none stated |
| 23 Jul 2010 | Mortgage | $12,250,000 |
| 1 May 2014 | Second mortgage and consolidation | $5,250,000 |
| 14 Nov 2025 | Sold | $28,000,000 |
| 18 Nov 2025 | Mortgage discharged | — |
So: $17.5 million of debt against the property, and a $28 million sale four days before the discharge was recorded. The deed itself is public.
What is not there matters just as much. Across all 25 documents recorded against that lot there is no foreclosure, no notice of pending litigation and no judgment lien. The sale was ordinary, not forced.
A second Manhattan property follows the same structure — moved into a company in 2005, mortgaged for $4,200,000 in 2010 — but here no discharge and no sale has ever been recorded. That mortgage still stands.
Judgments: What Was Awarded, and What Was Paid
Two money judgments exist. We report them strictly as financial events.
$500,000, awarded by a California jury on 21 June 2022. An appeal was reportedly withdrawn. No payment and no enforcement step is on the record.
$59,250,000, awarded on 23 March 2026 — $17.5m for the past, $1.75m for the future, and $40m in punitive damages. A motion for a new trial, arguing among other things that the sum was excessive, was denied on 29 May 2026. An appeal was announced.
That judgment is therefore not final, and nothing indicates it has been collected. As shown above, New York’s land records contain no judgment lien against him at all — the most direct place such enforcement would appear.
Older and settled: a civil claim resolved in 2006 for $3,380,000, established as fact by a state supreme court decision. The same decision’s footnote records a further $20,000 paid by a magazine publisher — not by him. Aggregators routinely fold that $20,000 into his outgoings.
A procedural fact belongs here for completeness: a criminal judgment entered in September 2018 was vacated in full on 30 June 2021 by the same court decision cited above.
One further case is instructive for what it does not show. His own law firm sued him over fees in October 2018; the case was dismissed with prejudice on 4 February 2019 under the local rule courts use after a settlement. The amount is not in the public file.
The One Number Tested Under Cross-Examination
California law requires a claimant seeking punitive damages to prove the defendant’s financial condition. That produces something rare: a wealth figure examined adversarially, in a courtroom, in 2026.
An expert for the claimant put his net worth at about $128 million. In his own deposition in autumn 2025, Cosby said he had earned nothing but residuals for years, and described his finances as having “gone down like a submarine with no motor”.
Neither is a finding. The $128 million is one party’s expert opinion, contested by the other side, and the jury adopted no wealth figure at all. But it is the only estimate anywhere that was tested by an opponent with an incentive to break it — which makes it more than any aggregator offers, and still not a fact.
He Did Not Own the Series
Claims of “$300 million from syndication” appear everywhere without a source. The copyright recordation register shows a different legal relationship.
A 191-page instrument recorded on 30 January 1987 is a security agreement and mortgage of copyright in the series — running from the production company to Cosby. He held security over the copyright. The production company owned it.
A lien is not ownership, and the distinction is exactly what determines who collects syndication revenue. A comparable instrument was recorded in 1992 for a game show.
The register otherwise shows rights moving away from him: a 1987 assignment to a film studio, a 1996 assignment to another, a 1997 composition assignment, and the animated franchise optioned in 2001 and assigned outright effective 1 April 2004.
His one trademark tells a small, precise story: assigned to him personally as an entire interest effective December 1999 — and then cancelled on 14 October 2022 because the required maintenance filing was never made. He appears as the transferring party in no trademark transaction at all: no sale, no pledge.
The Foundation Was Never a Vehicle for Wealth
A private foundation in his and his wife’s names, recognised in 1987, filed returns showing a pass-through operation of modest size:
| Tax year | Year-end assets | Income |
|---|---|---|
| 2011 | $4,340 | $82,796 |
| 2013 | $224 | $44,224 |
| 2015 | $300 | $10,000 |
Money in, money straight out, assets in the hundreds of dollars. The last filing covers a period ending in June 2018, and nothing has been filed since. It never held meaningful assets and cannot explain any part of his wealth.
$50 Million Against a $59 Million Judgment
Two figures dominate: $50 million and $400 million. Each fails on its own page.
The $50 million is smaller than one outstanding judgment against him — the site publishing it mentions that judgment and leaves the number standing. The same page then states that his property and art could be worth “north of $100 million”. Two irreconcilable claims, one page.
The $400 million is a historical peak sold as a present value. It matches the range another site explicitly labels as his maximum, years ago. That page also dates itself to 2025 in its title and 2026 in its listing.
And neither cites the $128 million that survived cross-examination, nor any of the recorded amounts above — the $28 million sale, the $17.5 million of discharged debt, the $4.2 million still outstanding, the $35 million policy limit.
Two Traps We Avoided
There are at least four unrelated bankruptcies filed under the same common name, in Alabama, Virginia and Oklahoma. None is him — the courts and states do not match, and no primary source bridges the identity. A search by name string alone would put a personal bankruptcy into this profile that never happened. He has no bankruptcy record.
Several copyright entries naming him are not his transactions. They are bulk security assignments over a publisher’s catalogue in which he appears only as a credited co-writer of a sampled work. Counting those as his dealings would be wrong, so we excluded them.
What Is Blocked, and What That Means
Honest limits. Massachusetts land records — the state where the insurance policy covers multiple properties — sit behind a bot barrier that blocked every method we tried. The Pennsylvania portal covers ten counties and not the relevant one. Two county and state court systems timed out entirely.
Blocked is not empty. We cannot say whether liens exist in those jurisdictions; we can only say we could not look. The New York finding — no liens, no foreclosure — holds for New York alone.
Also unresolved: the fee settlement with his law firm, the terms of several other resolved civil claims, and whether either money judgment has been collected.
What remains is a set of dated documents with identifiers anyone can pull. They do not add up to a net worth — and no honest reading of them produces one.
Money Timeline
| Date | Type | Event | Amount | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1987-01-30 | Deal | He held security over the series, not the series | A 191-page instrument recorded on this date is a security agreement and mortgage of copyright in the television series, running from the production company to Cosby. That makes him a secured creditor rather than an owner, and a lien is not ownership: the distinction determines who collects syndication revenue. The claims of at least $300 million in syndication earnings that circulate without any source rest on an ownership he did not have. A comparable instrument was recorded in 1992 for a game show. His other recorded dealings move rights away from him, including an animated franchise optioned in 2001 and assigned outright effective 1 April 2004. source | |
| 2006-11-08 | Settlement | $3,380,000 - and $20,000 that was not his | $3.4M | A civil claim resolved by settlement, established as fact years later by a state supreme court decision. A footnote in the same decision records a further $20,000 paid to the claimant by a magazine publisher, not by Cosby, which aggregators routinely fold into his outgoings. The decision is also the document that vacated a 2018 criminal judgment in full on 30 June 2021, a procedural fact noted here without any account of the underlying matter. source |
| 2010-07-23 | Deal | $12,250,000 borrowed against a townhouse | $12.3M | A mortgage recorded against a Manhattan property that had been transferred into a limited liability company in 2005. A second mortgage of $5,250,000 followed in May 2014, bringing recorded debt against the single lot to $17.5 million. A second Manhattan property of identical structure carries a $4,200,000 mortgage from the same month in 2010 for which no discharge and no sale has ever been recorded, so that debt still stands. source |
| 2015-08-20 | Deal | $35,000,000 - a policy limit filed into a public court file | $35M | An insurer litigating whether it had to fund his legal defence attached the complete policies as exhibits, which is how a private client's coverage schedule became public. The personal excess liability limit was this sum, alongside $10 million of excess uninsured-motorist cover. The accompanying homeowners policy insures at least seven built locations on a guaranteed-rebuilding-cost basis totalling $24,347,234, with six further locations carrying liability cover only. Insured value is the cost to rebuild, not market value, and says nothing about mortgages against those properties. The dispute ended on 7 June 2018 when a federal appeals court held the insurer owed a duty to defend, meaning the legal costs of those civil cases fell on the insurer rather than on him. source |
| 2022-06-21 | Lawsuit | $500,000 awarded, with no payment on record | $500K | A California jury award. An appeal was reportedly withdrawn. No payment and no enforcement step appears anywhere in the public record, and New York City's land records contain no judgment lien against him, which is the most direct place such enforcement would show. Reported strictly as a financial event: the subject matter of the proceeding is outside the scope of this profile. source |
| 2025-11-14 | Deal | $28,000,000 - sold four days before the debt was cleared | $28M | The Manhattan townhouse sold, with the $17.5 million of mortgage debt discharged on 18 November 2025. What is absent from the record matters as much as what is in it: across all 25 documents recorded against that lot there is no foreclosure, no notice of pending litigation and no judgment lien, so this was an ordinary sale rather than a forced one. No aggregator cites this figure, or the debt behind it. source |
| 2026-03-23 | Lawsuit | $59,250,000 - awarded, confirmed, not final | $59.3M | A California jury award comprising $17.5 million for the past, $1.75 million for the future and $40 million in punitive damages. A motion for a new trial arguing the sum was excessive was denied on 29 May 2026, and an appeal was announced, so the judgment is not final and nothing indicates it has been collected. In the punitive phase an expert for the claimant put his net worth at about $128 million, contested by the other side, and the jury adopted no wealth figure at all. It remains the only wealth estimate anywhere that was tested by an opponent with an incentive to break it, which makes it more than any aggregator offers and still not a finding. source |
| 2026-08-05 | Deal | $50 million - smaller than one judgment against him | Published estimates run from $50 million to $400 million, a factor of eight for a man whose finances were examined under oath in 2026. The site publishing $50 million mentions the outstanding judgment that exceeds it and leaves the figure standing, then states on the same page that his property and art could be worth north of $100 million. The $400 million is a historical peak sold as a present value, matching the range another site explicitly labels as his maximum years ago, on a page that dates itself to 2025 in its title and 2026 in its listing. Neither cites the $128 million tested in court, nor any recorded amount: the $28 million sale, the $17.5 million discharged, the $4.2 million still outstanding, the $35 million policy limit. source |
Key financial events, aggregated from the sources cited above. See our methodology.
Frequently Asked Questions
Short answers to the most common questions about this profile. For our sourcing and update method, see our Methodology page.
How much is Bill Cosby worth?
There is no verifiable figure. The only value ever presented with evidence came in the punitive damages phase of a California civil trial in March 2026, where an expert for the claimant put his net worth at about $128 million. That is one party's expert opinion, contested by the other side, and the jury adopted no wealth figure at all. In his own deposition in autumn 2025, Cosby said he had earned nothing but residuals for years. What can be documented instead are individual amounts: a $35 million policy limit, $24.3 million of insured property value in 2014, a $28 million property sale in 2025, and $17.5 million of mortgage debt discharged after it.
What money judgments exist against him, and were they paid?
Two. A California jury awarded $500,000 on 21 June 2022, and an appeal was reportedly withdrawn. A second California jury awarded $59,250,000 on 23 March 2026, comprising $17.5 million for the past, $1.75 million for the future and $40 million in punitive damages; a motion for a new trial arguing the sum was excessive was denied on 29 May 2026 and an appeal was announced, so that judgment is not final. For neither amount is any payment or enforcement step on the public record, and New York City's land records contain no judgment lien against him, which is the most direct place enforcement would appear.
Did he own The Cosby Show?
No. The copyright recordation register holds a 191-page instrument recorded on 30 January 1987 described as a security agreement and mortgage of copyright in the series, running from the production company to Cosby. He held security over the copyright; the production company owned it. A lien is not ownership, and the distinction determines who collects syndication revenue, which is why the widely repeated claims of $300 million in syndication earnings have no basis in the register. A comparable instrument was recorded in 1992 for a game show. His other recorded dealings move rights away from him, including the animated franchise assigned outright effective 1 April 2004.
What happened to his Manhattan property?
New York City land records carry the full chain. The townhouse was transferred into a limited liability company in 2005, mortgaged for $12,250,000 in July 2010 and for a further $5,250,000 in May 2014, then sold on 14 November 2025 for $28,000,000, with the mortgage discharged four days later. Across all 25 documents recorded against that lot there is no foreclosure, no notice of pending litigation and no judgment lien, so the sale was ordinary rather than forced. A second Manhattan property follows the same structure and carries a $4,200,000 mortgage from 2010 with no discharge and no sale ever recorded.
Has Bill Cosby ever been bankrupt?
No. There are at least four unrelated bankruptcy filings under the same common name, in Alabama, Virginia and Oklahoma, and none of them is him: the courts and states do not match and no primary source bridges the identity. Searching by name string alone would place a personal bankruptcy into his profile that never happened. Separately, several copyright entries naming him are also not his transactions, being bulk security assignments over a publisher's catalogue in which he appears only as a credited co-writer of a sampled work.
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