§ 483.010.Generally

This is the threshold gate for the entire Attachment Law — no attachment issues unless the underlying claim clears every requirement in § 483.010. Subdivision (a) requires an action on a claim, or claims, for money based on a contract, express or implied, where the total is a fixed or readily ascertainable amount of at least $500, exclusive of costs, interest, and attorney’s fees. That excludes purely tort-based claims and claims whose amount cannot be pinned down without a separate, uncertain damages determination.

Subdivision (b) generally bars attachment on a claim secured by any interest in real property arising from agreement, statute, or other rule of law — a mortgage or deed of trust, or a statutory, common law, or equitable lien on real property — though it excludes a security interest in fixtures under the Commercial Code’s secured-transactions article from that bar. There is a narrow exception: if the claim was originally secured that way but the security has since become valueless, or has dropped in value below what is owed, without any act by the plaintiff or the person who received the security, an attachment may still issue, capped at the lesser of the amount of the decrease or the difference between the security’s value and the amount owed.

Subdivision (c) adds a consumer-protection limit that applies only when the defendant is a natural person: the claim must arise from the defendant’s conduct of a trade, business, or profession. Attachment is unavailable against an individual defendant on a claim based on the sale or lease of property, a license to use property, furnished services, or a loan of money, if what was sold, leased, licensed, furnished, or loaned was used by the defendant mainly for personal, family, or household purposes. Subdivision (d) confirms that attachment remains available under this section regardless of whether the plaintiff also demands other forms of relief in the same action.