§ 488.300.Construction of Terms

Rather than writing an entirely separate set of levy mechanics for attachment, the Legislature reused the detailed execution-levy procedures already codified in Article 4 of Title 9 (starting at § 700.010). Section 488.300 is the translation key that makes that borrowing work: wherever those execution provisions say "judgment creditor," read "plaintiff"; wherever they say "judgment debtor," read "defendant"; "notice of levy" becomes "notice of attachment"; and "writ" becomes "writ of attachment."

Nearly every specific-property section that follows in this article — real property, tangible goods, chattel paper, instruments, and more — works by cross-referencing one of those execution-levy sections and letting this substitution rule do the rest. Understanding § 488.300 first makes the rest of Article 2 far easier to follow, since most of its sections are only a sentence or two long precisely because they lean on this incorporation.