Definition
A receiptor is a person who takes custody of goods seized by a sheriff under legal process — typically garnishment or attachment — by entering into a bond with the sheriff. The bond conditions the receiptor's obligation to return the goods on demand or, in some formulations, to satisfy the amount of any resulting execution with costs. In exchange for this undertaking, the goods are released from the sheriff's immediate hold and bailed to the receiptor.
The receiptor's role sits at the intersection of suretyship and bailment: the receiptor is both a bailee who holds the property and a surety who guarantees its availability to satisfy the judgment if one issues.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): One who receipts for property taken by the sheriff; one to whom property is delivered for storage or safekeeping, subject to a bond to produce it when litigation concludes.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who receipts; specifically (Law), one who receipts for property which has been taken by the sheriff.
The common usage tracks the legal meaning closely here, but the ordinary sense of "receiptor" as simply one who gives a receipt conceals the specific legal obligations attached to the role — bond, suretyship, and the conditional return of goods under judicial process. The legal receiptor is not merely an acknowledging party but a legally bound custodian.
Core Elements
The receiptor relationship requires three components:
1. Seizure by the sheriff. The goods must have been lawfully taken under process — typically a writ of attachment in trustee or garnishment proceedings. No seizure, no receiptor arrangement.
2. The receipt bond. The receiptor executes a bond to the sheriff, the condition of which is to produce the goods on demand or in time to respond to execution after judgment. This bond is the operative legal instrument; the receiptor's obligations are defined by its terms.
3. Delivery and bailment. Upon execution of the bond, the goods are bailed to the receiptor. The sheriff is relieved of physical custody, but the receiptor takes on liability for the property's availability when required.
Why It Matters in Research
Receiptor is a term of limited but specific geographic currency. Bouvier's explicitly identifies its use in New York, New Hampshire, and Maine; Black's situates it in "some of the states." Researchers working with 19th-century New England or New York civil procedure records will encounter it in the context of trustee process (the New England analog to garnishment), where it appears as a practical mechanism for avoiding the burden of keeping seized goods in the sheriff's physical custody throughout the pendency of litigation.
The term largely disappears from modern practice. Contemporary statutes governing attachment and garnishment have generally replaced the receiptor arrangement with statutory bond and replevin procedures that do not use the receiptor label. Researchers reading modern sources will not find the term; researchers reading 19th-century New Hampshire, Maine, or New York reports and practice manuals will encounter it frequently.
The relationship to bailment doctrine is important for researchers tracing the receiptor's liability. Because the goods are bailed to the receiptor rather than simply held under a naked bond, the receiptor's duties and liabilities for loss or damage to the goods implicate bailment law as well as suretyship law. Story's Bailments (§ 124) is the treatise reference consistently cited by the historical dictionaries and is the primary doctrinal authority linking this figure to the general law of bailment.
Researchers should also be careful not to conflate the receipt bond with the replevin bond. The replevin bond returns goods to the defendant (the original owner) by defeating the seizure; the receipt bond merely substitutes a private custodian for the sheriff without releasing the property from the court's reach.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Bouvier's, and Burrill's are in close agreement on the core definition, all citing Story's Bailments § 124 as the authoritative anchor. The three sources differ only in emphasis. Burrill specifies the alternative obligation most precisely — the receiptor must either deliver the goods to the sheriff on demand or pay the amount of the execution with costs — a formulation that clarifies the receiptor's exposure if goods are unavailable. Bouvier's is most explicit about the geographic scope of the term and its procedural context (trustee process), making it the most useful of the three for a researcher trying to understand when and where the receiptor mechanism was used. Black's is the most sparse, treating the receiptor as primarily a sheriff's-process figure without fully developing the bailment dimension.
None of the historical dictionaries address the receiptor's liability for deterioration or destruction of the goods during custody — a gap that Story's Bailments itself fills in more depth.
Jurisdictional Note
The receiptor was a recognized procedural figure primarily in New England states and New York during the 19th century, functioning within the trustee process and attachment systems of those jurisdictions. It is not a term of general common-law currency and is not found in uniform procedural codes. Researchers working in other jurisdictions should look instead to comparable figures under local attachment statutes.