Definition
Sequestrators are persons appointed by a court or competent authority to take possession of, manage, and preserve property that has been placed under sequestration — that is, property temporarily removed from the control of its owner pending resolution of a legal dispute, satisfaction of a judgment, or enforcement of a court order. They act as officers of the court, holding and administering the sequestered property in a neutral capacity until the court directs its return or disposition.
In equity practice, sequestrators were commonly appointed to enforce obedience to court decrees, particularly where a party defied an injunction or failed to comply with an order for payment. The sequestrators would seize and hold the contemnor's property — sometimes its rents and profits — until compliance was secured or the court ordered otherwise.
In ecclesiastical and administrative contexts, sequestrators have also been appointed to manage the revenues of a vacant or suspended benefice, collecting income on behalf of the church or creditors until a permanent arrangement is made.
Common Confusion
SEQUESTRATORS vs. RECEIVERS: These roles are often conflated because both involve court-appointed persons managing property on behalf of others. The distinction is functional and contextual. A receiver is typically appointed in ongoing or complex commercial situations — insolvency, partnership dissolution, contested estates — with broad management authority oriented toward preservation or liquidation of assets as a going concern. Sequestrators, by contrast, are classically appointed as an enforcement mechanism: their appointment is a consequence of contempt or non-compliance, and their authority terminates once the underlying order is obeyed or the court discharges them. In modern practice the roles have blurred, and some jurisdictions use the terms interchangeably, but researchers should not assume equivalence when reading historical sources.
Why It Matters in Research
The term "sequestrators" appears with particular frequency in equity practice materials from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, where sequestration was a standard tool for enforcing Chancery decrees against recalcitrant defendants. Researchers working in this period should understand that the appointment of sequestrators was a coercive, not remedial, device — it answered the question of how courts without sheriff's power over persons could nevertheless compel compliance.
In English practice, the office evolved significantly after the Judicature Acts of 1873–1875, which consolidated the court system and affected the procedural mechanisms through which sequestrators were appointed and supervised. Rapalje & Lawrence's truncated entry (apparently referencing the House of Lords and the Supreme Court) reflects this transitional moment — sources from this era may describe the office in terms of the old Chancery practice while gesturing toward modernized court structures. Researchers should triangulate with treatises on equity procedure when the applicable court structure is unclear from context alone.
In American practice, sequestration and the appointment of sequestrators is primarily a creature of state equity jurisdiction and, in some states, a statutory remedy. The procedural rules governing who qualifies as a sequestrator, what bond is required, and what powers they hold vary considerably across jurisdictions. Federal equity practice recognized sequestration, but the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938) displaced much prior equity procedure, and explicit references to sequestrators in federal contexts are rare in post-1938 materials.
Ecclesiastical use of the term — appointing sequestrators to administer vacant benefice revenues — is a distinct track that will appear in church law materials, English ecclesiastical court records, and colonial American religious property disputes. Do not assume the equity and ecclesiastical usages describe the same office or the same procedural context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence's entry is unfortunately fragmentary as preserved, referencing the House of Lords and what appears to be a successor court (the Supreme Court of Judicature), suggesting the entry was tracking the English procedural evolution of the office at the time of publication. This is consistent with the broader pattern in late nineteenth-century Anglo-American legal dictionaries, which were actively reconciling the older equity terminology with post-Judicature Act structures.
Other standard period dictionaries treat sequestrators as the human agents through whom the writ of sequestration operates — defined primarily by their function (seizing and holding property) and their status as officers accountable to the appointing court. The office is consistently described as one of limited and temporary authority, bounded by the court's order rather than by any general property management mandate.
What historical dictionaries tend to understate is the distinction between sequestrators appointed for contempt enforcement and those appointed in the ecclesiastical or administrative context. A researcher relying solely on a law dictionary entry may miss that the same word covers meaningfully different offices depending on the source of appointment and the legal system involved.
Jurisdictional Note
In English law, the office of sequestrator has a long history in Chancery and ecclesiastical practice and was formally recognized in court rules through successive procedural reforms. In the United States, sequestration is a recognized equitable remedy in most states, but the procedural details — including the appointment, qualification, and powers of sequestrators — are governed by state statute or court rule and vary significantly. Louisiana's civil law tradition gives sequestration a distinct procedural character derived from civilian sources.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See SEQUESTRATION; CONTEMPT; RECEIVERS AND RECEIVERSHIP