Definition
A legal process by which a creditor causes the assets or effects of a debtor to be seized or attached while those assets are in the possession or control of a third party — rather than in the debtor's own hands. The third party holding the assets (the "factor" in this context) is restrained from releasing them to the debtor pending resolution of the creditor's claim.
The factorizing process is functionally identical to garnishment and the trustee process. All three mechanisms accomplish the same end: intercepting assets of a debtor that are held by a third party before those assets can be dissipated or returned to the debtor. The terminology is the distinguishing feature, not the underlying legal theory.
Common Confusion
FACTORIZING PROCESS vs. GARNISHMENT vs. TRUSTEE PROCESS: These three terms describe the same procedural mechanism. "Factorizing process" is the label used historically in Vermont and Connecticut. "Trustee process" is the New England variant name still encountered in some jurisdictions. "Garnishment" is the term used across most of the United States and is the standard modern label. A researcher encountering any of these three terms in historical sources should treat them as functional equivalents unless the source draws a specific procedural distinction. Conflating the term "factorizing process" with anything related to commercial factors (agents who sell goods on commission) or mathematical factoring is a serious misreading — the connection to "factor" here is the older agency sense of a third-party holder, not the commercial or mathematical sense.
Why It Matters in Research
The principal research trap with this term is geographic and temporal. "Factorizing process" appears almost exclusively in Vermont and Connecticut legal materials and in treatises referencing those states' practice. A researcher working in general American legal history who encounters this term needs to immediately recognize it as a regional label for what national sources call garnishment. Failing to make that connection risks treating the term as a distinct or exotic procedure when it is neither.
The historical dictionaries unanimously cite Drake on Attachments (§ 451) as the authority, making that treatise the critical primary source for understanding how the process functioned in practice. Any research into the procedural mechanics — service requirements, the third party's obligations, discharge of the factor — should begin there rather than relying on the dictionary entries alone, which describe the term but not the procedure in detail.
Black's 2nd Edition adds a Rhode Island case citation (Cross v. Brown) that is notable precisely because Rhode Island is not Vermont or Connecticut. This suggests the term had some currency beyond its two home jurisdictions, or at minimum that courts elsewhere were called upon to interpret it. Researchers working in New England appellate history should check whether the term appears in state reports beyond Vermont and Connecticut.
Because "factorizing process" has been largely absorbed into the modern vocabulary of garnishment, it will not appear in contemporary statutes or rules. It is a term of historical sources only. Researchers using Law Mind's corpus for pre-twentieth-century procedural history, debt collection practice, or New England legal history are the most likely to encounter it.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries are in complete agreement: factorizing process is a regional American term for the attachment of a debtor's assets held by a third party, synonymous with garnishment and trustee process, and peculiar to Vermont and Connecticut practice. The entries are nearly verbatim across sources, all tracing to Drake on Attachments as the common authority.
The one point of differentiation is that Black's 2nd Edition alone appends a case citation, lending at least one reported decision to anchor the definition. Bouvier adds the phrase "process by foreign attachment" as an additional synonym, which is useful — foreign attachment is the older common law ancestor of garnishment, and seeing Bouvier connect factorizing process to that lineage helps place the term in its historical procedural genealogy.
None of the dictionary entries address the procedural mechanics in any detail — there is no discussion of how the third party is served, what answer they must make, or how the fund is ultimately applied to the debt. For those questions, the Drake treatise is the only resource the dictionaries point toward.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is historically confined to Vermont and Connecticut. In all other American jurisdictions, the equivalent procedure is called garnishment or, in some New England states, trustee process. Modern statutes in Vermont and Connecticut have adopted standard garnishment terminology, making "factorizing process" effectively obsolete in current practice.