Section 17 Sequestration

• Library: Remedies 2006

In practice, sequestration is used almost exclusively to collect a judgment by levying on the wages or salaries of government employees under Rule 90.16 and § 525.310, RSMo 2000.

After a decree or temporary decree is issued by a court, the person favored by the decree may satisfy it by:

• executing on property of the person against whom the decree was made

• obtaining a garnishment against money, wages, or salary due the person against whom the decree was made; or

• if property other than money is held by another, obtaining a writ of sequestration against the person holding that property

A writ of sequestration originally had great power in English chancery courts:

Formerly sequestration had its chief importance as a chancery remedy, a “species of grand distress,” whereby the property of a party, or of a corporation, was seized by officers of the court of chancery to punish contempts or to compel obedience to the order or decree of the court, final or interlocutory. Thus it issued to compel an appearance or an answer, especially against corporations, after fruitless resorts to writ of distringas. Before the use of the writ was authorized it had to be shown that imprisonment had failed to break the spirit of the party in contempt or, by a return of non est inventus, upon an attachment, that he could not be found. The court commonly named the...