No, a person cannot be an asset under U.S. law. The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits treating any human being as property, and the basic requirements of property law — exclusive ownership, the power to transfer, and control over future economic benefit — cannot be exercised over a human being. What the law does allow is narrower and worth understanding: courts assign dollar values to a life in wrongful death cases, a person’s name and likeness can be owned and sold, and businesses can insure the lives of key people. In each case, the law protects economic value connected to a person while refusing to treat the person as the thing owned.
Why a Person Fails the Legal Test for an Asset
Property law asks three questions of anything called an asset. Does someone hold a clear right of ownership that lets them exclude others? Can the owner transfer that interest through a sale, gift, or other transaction? And does the item provide a measurable future economic benefit the owner can predict and control?
A person fails all three. No individual or organization can hold legal title to another human being. Future labor cannot be guaranteed because a worker always retains the right to quit. And no one can sell a person to recover value the way a business might sell equipment. Assets need to function as predictable, enforceable units of value; human beings, who have their own legal personhood and autonomy, do not fit that frame.
The Thirteenth Amendment Rules Out Human Ownership
The Thirteenth Amendment states that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”1Legal Information Institute. U.S. Constitution – Thirteenth Amendment That provision permanently removed human beings from the commercial marketplace as a form of property. Any contract attempting to establish ownership of a person is void.
One practical consequence shows up in contract law. When someone breaches a personal service contract, courts award money damages but will not order the person back to work. Forcing labor against a person’s will would amount to involuntary servitude. An employer, team, or studio holds a contractual right to services for a set period; it never holds the person. The individual can walk away, even if walking away triggers financial penalties.
Attempting to hold a person as property carries serious federal consequences. A conviction under the forced labor statute can bring up to 20 years in prison, and life imprisonment if the victim dies or the offense involves kidnapping or sexual abuse.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1589 – Forced Labor Sex trafficking offenses carry a mandatory minimum of 15 years and a maximum of life when force, fraud, or coercion is involved or the victim is under 14.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1591 – Sex Trafficking of Children or by Force, Fraud, or Coercion
Putting a Dollar Value on a Life in Court
Civil courts regularly assign a monetary figure to a human life in wrongful death and personal injury cases, but the exercise is about measuring loss, not pricing a person. Economists and actuaries project the deceased or injured person’s future earnings based on age, education, occupation, and career path. A 35-year-old professional might have earned several million dollars over the rest of a working life, and that figure becomes part of the damages calculation.
The law recognizes other categories of harm as well. Loss of services compensates survivors for household contributions like childcare, home maintenance, and financial management. Loss of consortium addresses the deprivation of companionship, emotional support, and the personal relationship a spouse or family member provided.
Some states cap the non-economic portion of these awards; roughly half impose no statutory limit. Where caps exist, they typically range from several hundred thousand dollars to over two million dollars, and many are adjusted periodically for inflation. None of these figures represent a price on the person. They are financial remedies for a loss, not a purchase.
Federal tax rules follow the same logic. Compensatory damages received on account of personal physical injuries or physical sickness, including lost wages recovered as part of that claim, are excluded from gross income entirely.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 104 – Compensation for Injuries or Sickness Damages for emotional distress, defamation, or humiliation that do not originate from a physical injury are generally taxable as ordinary income, with a narrow exception for amounts reimbursing medical care for emotional distress.5Internal Revenue Service. 6Legal Information Institute. Publicity Upwards of 36 states recognize this right through statute or common law, and many treat it as a property right that can be transferred and passed to heirs after death.
Name, image, and likeness agreements, often called NIL deals, became especially prominent after college athletes gained the ability to monetize their personal brands. The IRS treats NIL income as taxable, including non-cash items such as free products or services. Student-athletes and other NIL earners are generally classified as independent contractors, receiving a Form 1099 if they earn more than $600 and reporting business income on Schedule C.7Taxpayer Advocate Service. Name, Image, and Likeness
Where a person’s identity functions as a trademark, such as a celebrity’s name on a product line, federal protection may also apply under the Lanham Act, which prevents others from falsely suggesting that a product is endorsed by or originates from the individual.6Legal Information Institute. Publicity The consistent line: the marketable asset is the commercial value of the persona, not the person.
Life Insurance and the Insurable Interest Rule
Life insurance is another area where the law places a financial value on a person’s continued existence without treating the person as property. Every state requires that anyone buying a life insurance policy on another person’s life have an insurable interest, meaning they would suffer a genuine financial loss if the insured person died. A spouse, business partner, or employer with a key employee generally satisfies this requirement. A stranger with no financial relationship does not.
The insurable interest doctrine exists specifically to prevent life insurance from becoming a speculative bet on someone else’s death. Requiring a legitimate financial stake preserves the insurance purpose of compensating for actual economic loss.
Businesses commonly buy key person insurance on executives or employees whose death would cause significant financial disruption. The policy is a company asset, but the person is not. The company owns a contractual right to a future payment from the insurer, contingent on the insured event. The employee remains free to leave, and the policy’s value reflects the projected business impact of losing that person, not ownership of the individual.
Why Employees Don’t Appear on the Balance Sheet
Companies routinely call employees their most valuable resource, but that language never appears on a balance sheet. Under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, human capital is not recognized as an asset. A business does not own its workforce and cannot control whether employees stay or leave. Because a worker can resign at any time, the future economic benefit of their labor is not guaranteed, and a guaranteed future benefit is one of the core requirements for asset recognition.
Wages, salaries, and training costs are recorded as expenses on the income statement. A $60,000 salary reduces revenue on the way to profit. Unlike equipment that gets depreciated over its useful life, there is no mechanism to recover the cost of a person by selling them later. The accounting treatment mirrors the legal reality: labor is a service purchased period by period, not a capital asset acquired and held.
The overall picture is consistent across constitutional law, contract law, tort law, insurance regulation, and accounting standards. The law protects and sometimes monetizes the value a person creates, holds, or projects into the future. It does not, and cannot, treat the person as the thing being owned.