RECEIVERS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

RECEIVERSAuthored

The Law Mind • 1356 words

Definition

A receiver is a person appointed by a court to take possession, manage, and preserve property or assets that are the subject of litigation or that belong to an insolvent or legally incapacitated party. The receiver acts as an officer of the court, not as an agent of either party, and holds the property in custodia legis — in the custody of the law — pending the court's further orders.

The term "receivers" is the plural form and is frequently encountered in legal sources referring to the class of court-appointed officials collectively, to co-receivers appointed jointly over a single estate, or to the body of doctrine governing such appointments.

1. Equity Receivers: Appointed in equity proceedings to protect assets at risk of waste, dissipation, or loss while litigation is pending. Common in disputes over partnerships, corporations, real property, and insolvent estates.

2. Statutory Receivers: Appointed pursuant to specific legislative authority — for example, in bankruptcy proceedings, corporate dissolution statutes, or insurance insolvency regimes. Their powers and duties are defined by statute rather than purely by the court's equitable discretion.

3. Receivers in Bankruptcy / Insolvency: Historically appointed to collect and distribute assets of an insolvent debtor before the modern trustee-in-bankruptcy model displaced much of this function. In some jurisdictions, the term "receiver" and "trustee in bankruptcy" were used interchangeably in older sources.

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Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of receiver — persons who receive something; also used in telecommunications and sports.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who receives; specifically, the official appointed to receive revenues or other funds; also, one who knowingly receives stolen goods.

The gap between common and legal meaning is significant on two fronts. First, in ordinary English, a receiver is simply someone who receives something — a passive role. In law, a court-appointed receiver holds active, fiduciary duties of management and accountability to the court. Second, the common historical usage conflated receivers (court officers) with receivers of stolen goods — an entirely distinct legal concept. Researchers must not carry that conflation into equity or insolvency research.

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Common Confusion

RECEIVERS vs. TRUSTEES IN BANKRUPTCY: In modern federal bankruptcy practice, the trustee has largely replaced the receiver as the manager of an insolvent estate. Historical sources — particularly pre-1898 and pre-1978 materials — use "receiver" where modern practitioners would say "trustee." Conflating the two in historical research distorts the procedural picture.

RECEIVERS vs. ASSIGNEES FOR THE BENEFIT OF CREDITORS: Before systematic bankruptcy legislation, voluntary assignments to assignees were common alternatives to court-appointed receivers. Bouvier's and other nineteenth-century dictionaries treat these as distinct mechanisms with different legal consequences, but the practical function overlaps enough to cause confusion in older case digests.

RECEIVERS vs. RECEIVERS OF STOLEN PROPERTY: The criminal law term "receiver" — one who knowingly receives stolen goods — shares vocabulary but is doctrinally unrelated to the equity or insolvency receiver. See the ENCYCLOPEDIA CROSS-REFERENCE below.

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Core Elements

Court appointment of a receiver typically requires:

A pending action or proceeding in which the court has jurisdiction over the property or parties.
A showing that appointment is necessary — typically that the property is in danger of loss, waste, dissipation, or that no other adequate legal remedy exists.
A bond or security filed by the receiver to protect parties against mismanagement.
Defined powers granted by the court's order — receivers act only within the scope of their appointment and may not exceed it without court authorization.
Accountability to the court — receivers must file accounts and are subject to removal, surcharge, or other sanctions for breach of duty.

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Recognized Forms

/SUBTYPES

General Receiver: Appointed over the entirety of a debtor's or litigant's estate.
Ancillary Receiver: Appointed in one jurisdiction to manage assets located there while a primary receivership proceeds elsewhere — common in multi-jurisdictional corporate insolvencies.
Pendente Lite Receiver: Appointed temporarily while litigation is pending, with limited powers to preserve the status quo.
Permanent Receiver: Appointed to wind up and distribute an estate upon final adjudication.
Receiver and Manager: A form more common in Commonwealth jurisdictions, where the receiver is also authorized to operate a going concern rather than merely preserve and collect assets.

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Why It Matters in Research

The historical record on receivers is scattered across equity practice manuals, chancery digests, insolvency treatises, and statutory compilations — none of which use fully consistent terminology. Researchers must track several moving targets:

Terminology shifts: Nineteenth-century sources use "receivers," "assignees," "sequestrators," and "trustees" in ways that do not map cleanly onto modern categories. Bouvier's, for example, treats receivers primarily through the lens of equity practice and railroad insolvency, reflecting the massive corporate receivership litigation of the Gilded Age. That context shapes the doctrine those sources describe.

Railroad receiverships: A disproportionate share of nineteenth-century receiver doctrine was generated by railroad insolvency cases. Bouvier's fragment in the source material above — addressing lien priority, mechanic's lien statutes, and mortgage bonds — reflects this. Researchers working on general commercial receivership should be alert to railroad-specific rules being stated as general doctrine in period sources.

Lien priority in receiverships: The Bouvier's excerpt addresses the relationship between tax liens, judicial costs, and other creditor claims in receivership contexts. This remains a trap: lien priority rules in receivership differ from lien priority rules in bankruptcy, and historical sources often state rules that were jurisdiction-specific or that have since been displaced by federal bankruptcy preemption.

Equity vs. statutory receivership: The shift from purely equitable to primarily statutory receivership is one of the major fault lines in this area. Pre-twentieth century sources describe a world where equity courts had broad discretion; modern sources describe a world of statutory procedure. Researchers must know which regime applies to the period and jurisdiction under study.

Federal vs. state receivership: Federal equity receiverships (common in corporate reorganizations before the Bankruptcy Act of 1898 and then again between the Acts of 1898 and 1938) operated under different rules than state court receiverships. This distinction is frequently blurred in secondary literature.

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Historical Dictionary Support

Bouvier's Law Dictionary treats receivers primarily in the context of insolvency and lien priority, with particular attention to the competing claims of tax authorities, secured creditors, and mechanics' lienors. The excerpt provided reflects Bouvier's characteristic method: dense citation to specific state and federal reports, with doctrinal propositions stated tersely and jurisdictional variations noted by case reference rather than systematic analysis.

Bouvier's is useful for identifying the leading authorities of the period but requires caution. Its statement that "taxes are prior in lien to all other liens except judicial costs" was not universally true across jurisdictions and was actively contested in the railroad insolvency cases of the era. The note that mechanic's lien statutes do not apply to railroads unless expressly declared to do so reflects a judicial policy protecting railroad bondholders that was itself controversial and has been substantially modified by statute in many states.

What Bouvier's does not address — and what researchers should not expect from historical dictionaries generally — is the procedural architecture of receivership: how receivers are appointed, the scope of their powers, their duties of accounting, or the mechanics of discharge. For that, period-specific equity practice manuals and chancery procedure treatises are the appropriate sources.

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Jurisdictional Note

Receivership law varies significantly between federal and state systems and among states. Some states have codified receivership procedure extensively; others rely primarily on inherited equity doctrine. In corporate insolvency, federal bankruptcy law has preempted much state receivership practice for entities qualifying as debtors under the Bankruptcy Code, but state court receiverships remain common for entities or asset classes outside federal bankruptcy jurisdiction.

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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

Receiving Stolen Property — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia. Note: this entry addresses the criminal law doctrine, not the equity or insolvency receiver. The connection is terminological only; the doctrines are distinct.

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RECEIVERSmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

Taxes are prior in lien to all other liens except judicial costs; 8 Woods 484; 110 Ν. Υ. 250; 41 Ν. J. L. 285. In many states liens are given by statutes to certain favored creditors, who thus acquire priority over mortgage bonds prior to the inception of their claims. The or- dinary mechanic's lien statute does not apply to railroads unless expressly declared to do so. The contractor who constructs a railroad has no lien thereon as a matter of right. The fact that he has possession does not give him a lien; 1 Wall. 254; 11 id. 459. The courts construe such statutes strictly. Thus, a statute giving a lien for materials, supplies, and labor does not give a lien for money loaned to pay for them; 39 Fed. Rep. 436. And a lien for materials will be allowed only for such materials as pass into the permanent structure, and not for trucks, scales, etc.; 27 Fed. Rep. 178. A contractor's lien for work done will be limited to the embankments and structures actually made by him, as distinguished from the land and right of way; 83 Fed. Rep. 386. It has been held that a statute giving a lien to persons furnishing supplies necessary to the operation of a manufac- turing company prior to the lien of an earlier mortgage is not unconstitutional as special or class legislation; 90 Va. 126. Such "supplies" are only such things as contribute directly to carrying on the work in which the company is engaged and not, e. g., goods supplied to a "come pany store" maintained by a furnace com- pany; 81 Fed. Rep. 451. But, while the courts construe such statutes strictly in determining the kind of claims to be ad- mitted under their provisions, they con- strue them liberally as remedial statutes in determining the formalities to be ob- served under their provisions; 35 Fed. Rep. 442. A very common statutory lien of this class is the lien for labor, usually limited as to the duration of the labor for which a lien can be filed, and also as to the class of employes entitled to take advantage of the provisions of such a statute; 35 Fed Rep. 436; 81 id. 453. The "six months' rule," or as it is usually called, from the case in which it was adopted by the Supreme Court of the United States (99 U. S. 235), the rule in Fosdick v. Schall, allows parties who have furnished labor or supplies within six months ante- cedent to the receivership priority, at least so far as income received during the receivership is concerned, over mortgage bondholders. It has been held that the rule applies only to railroads; 128 U. S. 416; not to manufacturing corporations; 35 Fed, Rep. 436; 42 id. 372; nor to steamship lines; 50 id. 812; nor to a hotel company; 106 Ν. Υ. 423. But see, contra, an Alabama case discussing the authorities and extend- the rule to private corporations generally; 29 L. R. A. 623. See RECEIVERS. Mortgage or Lien. Where preferred stock is issued under a stipulation in the certificate that "no mortgage or lien of any nature" shall be placed upon the property of the company without the unanimous con- sent of the preferred stockholder, the words "mortgage or lien of any nature" do not include claims of general creditors. 148 Ky. 379, 146 S. W. 752. As to the right of a mortgagee to posses- sion, see 5 Harv. L. Rev. 245. See ROLLING STOCK; RECITALS; TRUSTEE; TRUST DEED; MERGER; LEASE; MAJORITY. Consult Kent; Washburn; Williams, Real Property; Story; Pomeroy, Equity; Jones, Mortgages and also Chattel Mortgages; Cook, Stock and Stockholders; Short, Railway Bonds; Thompson, Corporations. Mortgages in the civil law are of two kinds, conventional and legal. A conven- tional mortgage results from the direct act or covenant of the parties. A legal mort- gage arises by mere act of law. A mortgage may be acquired in three ways. First, with the consent of the debtor, by his agreement. Second, without the owner's consent, by the quality and bare effect of the engage ment, the nature of which is such that the law has annexed to it the security of a mortgage. Third, where a mortgage is acquired by the authority of justice: as where a cred- itor who had no mortgage obtains a decree of condemnation in his favor. When the creditor is put into possession of the thing, movable or immovable, he has a right to keep it until he is paid what is owing him; and the debtor cannot turn the creditor out of possession, nor make use of his own thing without the consent of the creditor. Effect of a mortgage. First, the cred- itor has a right to sell the thing pledged, whether the creditor has it in his posses- sion or not. Under the French law, it was a right to have it sold. Cushing's Domat, p. 647. Second, a right on the part of the cred- itor to follow the property, into whoseso- ever hands it has come, whether movable or immovable. Third, a preference of the first creditor to whom the property is mortgaged, and a right on his part to follow the property into the hands of the other creditors. Fourth, the mortgage is a security for all the consequences of the original deb

receiversnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

plural of receiver

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