§ 687.020.Instrument Payable to Judgment Debtor On Demand

Sometimes what a levying officer seizes isn't cash or goods but a negotiable instrument — a check, draft, money order, or other order for withdrawing money from a bank, the government, or another public entity — made payable to the judgment debtor on demand. Section 687.020 tells the officer what to do with it: endorse it promptly and present it for payment.

The endorsement itself follows a set format — the debtor's name, the officer's name and title, the court where the judgment was entered, and the entry date and record location — and that endorsement counts as valid as if the debtor had signed it. Neither the financial institution paying the instrument nor the officer who endorsed and presented it faces liability for that substitution.

One situation calls for caution. If the instrument's face shows it was tendered to the debtor to settle a claim, and that endorsing it would release that claim, the officer can't endorse it unless the debtor endorses it first. Absent the debtor's endorsement, the officer holds the instrument for thirty days without liability for the delay, then returns it to whoever issued it.