Definition
"Money which he might have in the" is an archaic fragment of legal pleading language, not a standalone legal term. It appears as a clause within older forms of garnishment writs, attachment proceedings, and related creditor's remedy pleadings. The full phrase typically read something to the effect of "money, goods, chattels, credits, or effects which he might have in the hands of" a named third party — the garnishee. The clause operated to sweep within the reach of the writ any funds or property belonging to the judgment debtor that were held, owed, or controlled by the garnishee at the time of service.
As a clause of seizure and attachment, it performed two functions: it identified the subject matter of the garnishment (money or property), and it established the temporal and possessory scope of the garnishee's potential liability to answer. Courts construed the phrase broadly to include not only money actually in the garnishee's hands at the moment of service but also debts then owing and property then held for the debtor's benefit.
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Common Confusion
This phrase should not be read as a definition of garnishable property or as a legal standard for what a garnishee must hold. It is descriptive and operative within a specific writ form. Courts applying garnishment law did not derive the rule of what was attachable from this language alone — the rule came from statute or from the general law of garnishment. The phrase is evidence of scope in a particular proceeding, not a source of law.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter this phrase almost exclusively in one of two contexts: transcribed or reproduced historical writ forms (particularly from English practice and early American state court practice), and treatise discussions of the technical requirements of garnishment pleadings. It is not a term of art with independent legal content — its meaning is entirely contextual, derived from the writ or pleading in which it appears.
The phrase's practical significance lies in what it reveals about scope. In historical garnishment practice, the precise wording of the writ determined what property was captured. A writ reaching "money which he might have in the hands of" a garnishee was sometimes read more narrowly than one reaching "goods, effects, and credits," and courts occasionally turned on whether particular language was broad enough to attach contingent debts or property not yet reduced to possession. Researchers examining disputes over the reach of a garnishment in historical cases should attend closely to the exact wording of the writ as reproduced in the record.
This phrase also signals the period and jurisdiction of a document. Its presence is a reliable marker of pre-code pleading practice — particularly common in English ecclesiastical and common law courts and in American state courts before the procedural reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will not appear in modern federal practice or in states that have adopted notice pleading. When encountered in a corpus search, it should be treated as a structural artifact of the older writ form, not as a substantive legal standard.
Researchers working on the history of creditor's remedies, garnishment procedure, or the evolution of attachment law will find this phrase clustering around treatise discussions of writ forms and around early reported decisions construing the sufficiency of garnishment pleadings.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The source material provided under Rapalje & Lawrence does not contain a direct entry for this phrase; the supplied text addresses monitions in divorce and ecclesiastical practice and appears to be misattributed or misaligned with this term. This is itself a useful research signal: the phrase "money which he might have in the" was likely too procedurally routine — a mere writ fragment — to warrant independent dictionary treatment. Historical legal dictionaries generally indexed it, if at all, under GARNISHMENT, ATTACHMENT, or FOREIGN ATTACHMENT rather than as a headword in its own right.
Bouvier's Law Dictionary (various editions) and older English law dictionaries such as Tomlin's treat the operative language of garnishment writs at length without isolating this sub-phrase. The absence of dedicated treatment in historical dictionaries confirms the phrase's status as a clause of art within a larger form, not an independent legal concept.
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