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SEQUESTRATION Definition & Legal Meaning

Definition & Citations:

In equity practice. A writ authorizing the taking into the custody of the law of the real and personal estate (or rents, issues, and profits) of a defendant who is in contempt, and holding the same until he shall comply. It is sometimes directed to the sheriff, but more commonly to four commissioners nominated by the complainant. 3 Bl. Comm. 444; Byan v. Kings- bery, 88 Ga. 301, 14 S. E. 500. In Louisiana. A mandate of the court, ordering the sheriff, in certain cases, to take in his possession, and to keep, a thing of which another person has the possession, un- til after the decision of a suit, in order that it be delivered to him who shall be adjudged entitled to have the property or possession of that thing. This is what is properly called a “judicial sequestration.” Code Prac. La. art. 209; American Nat. Bank v. Childs, 49 La. Ann. 1359, 22 South. 384. In contracts. A species of deposit which two or more persons, engaged in litigation about anything, make of the thing in contest with an indifferent person who binds himself to restore it, when .the issue is decided, to the party to whom it is adjudged to belong. Civ. Code La. art. 2973. In English ecclesiastical law. The act of the ordinary in disposing of the goods and chattels of one deceased, whose estate no one will meddle with. Cowell. Or, iu other words, the taking possession of the property of a deceased person, where there is no one to claim it. Also, where a benefice becomes vacant, a sequestratiou is usually granted by the bishop to the church-wardens, who manage all the profits and expenses of the benefice, plow and sow the glebe, receive tithes, and provide for the necessary cure of souls. Sweet. In international law. The seizure Of the property of an individual, and the appropria- tion of it to the use of the government. Mayor’s court. In the mayor’s court of London, “a sequestration is au attachment of the property of a person in a warehouse or other place belonging to and abandoned by him. It has the same object as the ordinary attachment, viz., to compel the appearance of the defendant to an action,” and, in default, to satisfy the plaintiff’s debt by ap- praisement and execution.

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