The End of a Claim Attachment: The Payment Prohibition Order, Collection, and Actual Payment

Abstract

This volume asks what conditions must be met, after an account has been frozen, before the money can be received. Attachment blocks disposition, while collection and assignment open the path to conversion into cash. Recovery is achieved only when the process passes through the third-party debtor's obligations, competing attachments, and the scope of exemption from attachment and reaches actual payment. The path to relief opens where the effect of the attachment through service and the conditions of the cash-conversion order are satisfied, the limits arising from protection and competing attachments are reflected, and records of actual payment are confirmed, and closes where there is only an attachment without the statutory conditions for collection or assignment or without actual payment, or where the relevant conversion into cash is restricted by exemption from attachment or competing attachments. The six sections address, in turn, the acts that attachment blocks, the service from which its effect begins, collection authority and actual receipt, the conditions of an assignment order, the livelihood that must be left untouched, and the separation of statement, deposit, and payment. The strongest counterargument is as follows. Debtor protection and competing-attachment procedures may effectively render the recovery of small claims meaningless. Proof of fund movements and the urgent choice of provisional attachment are not addressed in this volume.