Definition
Receivable has two distinct legal meanings depending on context.
1. ACCOUNTING AND COMMERCIAL LAW: An amount owed to a person or entity, viewed from the creditor's perspective. A receivable is a recognized asset representing a right to receive payment — typically arising from the sale of goods, performance of services, or a loan. "Accounts receivable" is the most common form: the aggregate of debts owed to a business by its customers. The term functions both as a noun (the receivable itself) and as an adjective modifying the underlying instrument (a note receivable, a bill receivable).
2. LEGACY AND ESTATES: In the law of wills and legacies, receivable historically meant payable or vested — that is, a legacy was "receivable" when it had become due and the legatee was entitled to demand it. This sense closely tracked the term payable and was used to describe the moment at which a legacy could be collected rather than merely anticipated.
---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Capable of being received, especially of a debt, from the perspective of the creditor.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Capable of being received. Also used in the commercial phrase "bills receivable."
The common meaning is not far from the commercial legal meaning, but the gap is in specificity: ordinary usage treats receivable as a general adjective, while legal and accounting usage treats it as a term of art designating a class of assets with defined treatment in financial statements, transactions, and insolvency proceedings. A researcher encountering "receivable" in a contract, security agreement, or bankruptcy filing should read it as a precise asset category, not merely a description of capability.
---
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Accounts Receivable: The standard ledger category representing amounts owed by customers for goods or services already delivered. The most frequently litigated form in commercial disputes and insolvency proceedings.
Notes Receivable: Amounts owed and evidenced by a formal promissory note. Distinguished from accounts receivable by the existence of a written instrument.
Bills Receivable: A historical commercial term for negotiable instruments — drafts, acceptances, and similar paper — held by a party who is entitled to payment. Now largely superseded by "notes receivable" in modern usage, though the phrase persists in older legal documents and English commercial law sources.
Tax Receivable: In public finance, amounts owed to a governmental unit by taxpayers. Arises in municipal finance, tax lien proceedings, and government accounting.
---
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research trap with receivable is context collapse: the term means something meaningfully different in a legacy dispute than it does in a commercial financing transaction, and the two meanings share almost no legal infrastructure. A researcher who locates a legacy-law definition and applies it to a UCC-governed receivables transaction — or vice versa — will find the sources unhelpful or affirmatively misleading.
In commercial law research, receivables are heavily implicated in Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code, which governs the use of accounts receivable as collateral in secured transactions. Whether a particular receivable has been properly perfected as collateral, whether it has been assigned absolutely or as security, and whether it is subject to competing claims in bankruptcy are all questions that require understanding receivables as a defined asset category with specific transactional mechanics.
In bankruptcy research, the distinction between a debtor's accounts receivable (property of the estate) and receivables that have been sold outright in a true sale (not property of the estate) is one of the most contested issues in structured finance insolvency. The word receivable will appear frequently in both contexts, and the legal consequences turn on transactional characterization, not terminology.
In historical sources and English equity cases — the kind of sources Bouvier is drawing from — receivable in the legacy sense will appear in discussions of when a legatee's interest vests and when a personal representative can be compelled to pay. Researchers working in this vein should check the surrounding doctrinal context carefully before importing that meaning into a modern commercial dispute.
The Corpus also connects receivables to receivership: a receiver appointed by a court may be tasked with collecting receivables on behalf of a distressed entity. The terminological proximity between receivable and receiver is not coincidental — both derive from the same concept of collection — but they are distinct legal concepts.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's entry is minimal: "In a legacy, payable; vested." This accurately captures one historical usage but leaves the far more commercially significant meaning unaddressed. The two citations Bouvier provides (29 L.J. Ch. 822 and L.R. 6 Eq. 59) are English Chancery and equity reports, confirming that this definition was drawn from legacy and trust administration cases rather than from commercial practice.
The omission of the commercial accounting meaning from Bouvier is understandable given the era — formal accounts receivable as a recognized legal asset category, particularly in secured transactions law, is largely a twentieth-century development. Researchers should not treat Bouvier's silence on the commercial meaning as evidence that the term lacked that meaning historically; bills receivable and notes receivable were already established phrases in nineteenth-century commercial law. Bouvier simply organized the entry around its equity law application.
Webster's 1913 cross-references "bills receivable" as a commercial usage, confirming the term had currency in both legal and commercial contexts by the turn of the century.
---
Jurisdictional Note
In the United States, the commercial and secured transactions meaning of receivable is governed primarily by Article 9 of the UCC as enacted in each state, with important overlay from federal bankruptcy law. In England and other common law jurisdictions, the legacy meaning has deeper historical roots in Chancery practice and may appear more prominently in older treatises and case law. Researchers working across jurisdictions should be alert to which body of law is shaping the term's use in any given source.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Receiving Stolen Property — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia
(Relevant where receivables are implicated in fraud schemes, theft of negotiable instruments, or disputes over whether a party knowingly received property without good title.)
---