Definition
Latin: "No goods." A formal return made by a sheriff or other executing officer to a writ of execution — most commonly a writ of fieri facias — reporting that no property belonging to the judgment debtor could be found within the officer's jurisdiction on which to levy. The nulla bona return is not a statement that the debtor owns nothing; it is a statement that the officer found nothing seizable within the territory searched. The return has both procedural and strategic significance: it typically exhausts one avenue of collection and opens others, such as supplementary proceedings, creditor's bills in equity, or judgment-lien enforcement in other jurisdictions.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "No goods; used to indicate that a search has found no seizable property."
The common usage tracks the legal meaning closely, but flattens an important procedural dimension. In law, nulla bona is not simply a factual finding — it is a formal officer's return that triggers specific legal consequences, including the creditor's right to pursue further remedies. Treating it as a mere factual report misses its function as a procedural event in the execution process.
Why It Matters in Research
Nulla bona is primarily encountered in older case law and equity practice. Researchers tracing judgment enforcement history should understand that a nulla bona return was, in many historical equity jurisdictions, a prerequisite to filing a creditor's bill — the equitable proceeding used to reach assets the sheriff could not find or seize at law. Without a nulla bona return in the record, the equity court often lacked jurisdiction to hear the creditor's bill. This procedural gate appears throughout 19th-century equity reporters and can easily be missed by researchers focused on the substantive claim rather than the enforcement posture.
Modern practice has largely replaced the creditor's bill with statutory supplementary proceedings and post-judgment discovery, so the term appears infrequently in contemporary opinions. When it does appear, it tends to surface in historical property disputes, fraudulent transfer litigation, or cases construing older judgment liens — contexts where the procedural history of an execution effort is legally material.
Researchers should also note that nulla bona returns were jurisdiction-specific: a return in one county or state said nothing about assets elsewhere. A creditor pursuing a multi-jurisdiction debtor might generate a chain of nulla bona returns across several courts, each a distinct procedural event. That chain can be significant evidence in fraudulent conveyance and preference litigation.
Do not conflate nulla bona with a finding of insolvency. The return is an officer's report of a search, bounded by geography and the nature of seizable property. Exempt property, real property in jurisdictions where fi. fa. ran only to chattels, and property held in another's name all fall outside what the return addresses.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Burrill agree on essentials: nulla bona is the sheriff's return to a writ of execution (characteristically fieri facias) stating that no goods of the defendant were found to levy upon. The three sources are consistent in derivation and meaning.
Rapalje & Lawrence usefully broadens the picture slightly, noting that the return applies not only to sheriffs but to sequestrators and other officers authorized to seize chattels — relevant for ecclesiastical and equity sequestration practice that Black's does not foreground. Burrill adds the helpful note that the phrase derives from "the emphatic words of the old return," pointing toward the formal Latin pleading tradition from which execution practice descended.
None of the three sources address the return's role as a procedural prerequisite in creditor's bill practice, which is the context most likely to matter in historical legal research. For that dimension, researchers should look to equity practice treatises — Mitford's Pleadings in Equity and Story's Equity Jurisprudence address the creditor's bill threshold in detail.
Jurisdictional Note
The procedural consequences of a nulla bona return varied by jurisdiction. In equity-practice states, the return was typically required before a creditor's bill could lie. States that merged law and equity early or adopted statutory supplementary proceedings displaced much of this doctrine, making the return's significance primarily historical in those jurisdictions.