13.3.8.1 General

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In general, a court can execute upon assets only if they are located within the reach of its service of process.¹²⁷ The Restatement of Conflict of Laws provides that a state has the power to garnish a debtor’s chattel if the court has jurisdiction over the garnishee and the chattel is located in the state.¹²⁸ Thus, the first question to examine in any interstate execution is where the asset at issue is located.

It is easy to tell whether a tangible asset such as land or a vehicle is located within the jurisdiction of the court issuing the judgment or outside that court’s jurisdiction. For those types of tangible assets, the creditor must go to the state where the asset is located and institute execution there. If the asset is located in a state other than the one that rendered the judgment, the creditor can use the procedures of the Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act, discussed in § 13.3.8.2, infra.

The question becomes more complex when an intangible asset, such as a bank account or the right to payment of wages, is at issue.¹²⁹ These two cases are examined in §§ 13.3.8.3 and 13.3.8.4, infra.

Footnotes

127 See Baker v. Bennett, 644 So. 2d 901 (Ala. 1994) (Alabama courts do not have jurisdiction to issue garnishment orders to reach assets outside its territorial jurisdiction); Desert Wide Cabling & Installation v. Wells Fargo & Co., 958 P.2d 457 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1998) (Arizona writ of garnishment cannot be served on California bank); Sargeant v. Al-Saleh, 137 So. 3d 432 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2014) (Florida court does not have jurisdiction to order judgment debtor to turn over out-of-state assets—here, stock certificates for companies located in foreign countries; there may be competing claims to those assets, and they should be resolved by a court in jurisdiction where asset is located); Gryphon Domestic VI, L.L.C. v. APP Int’l Fin. Co., 836 N.Y.S.2d 4, 9 (N.Y. App. Div. 2007) (it would violate sovereignty of another state if New York sheriff tried to attach property there, but New York court can direct defendant over whom it has jurisdiction to bring property into New York). See also Currier v. PDL Recovery Grp., L.L.C., 2018 WL 4057394 (E.D. Mich. Aug. 27, 2018) (quashing writ of garnishment; per statute, Michigan courts can issue garnishment only if personal property is located in the state and situs of an intangible asset—here, a crypto-currency account—is the domicile of the owner). See generally Gary Clifford Korn, Attachment of Bank Deposits in the Electronic Age: The Doctrine of Digitrex, 100 Banking L.J. 607 (Aug.–Sept. 1983).
128 Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws § 67.
129 See Hanson v. Denckla, 357 U.S. 235, 246–247, 78 S. Ct. 1228, 2 L. Ed. 2d 1283 (1958) (tangible property poses no problem for application of rule that basis for in rem jurisdiction is presence of property within territorial jurisdiction of the forum state, but situs of intangibles is often a matter of controversy; Florida has no jurisdiction to determine who has rights to a trust when trust company has no office or assets in Florida and transacts no business there, even though settlor moved to Florida after establishing the trust and most beneficiaries now live there). Cf. Koh v. Inno-Pacific Holdings, Ltd., 54 P.3d 1270 (Wash. Ct. App. 2002) (corporation’s interest in partnership is located where partnership is formally organized).