Rule 67-I.Recording Money Paid to or by Clerk

Rule 67-I is one sentence long, but it covers a job the clerk's office performs constantly behind the scenes. Money flows through the clerk's office in a civil case for all kinds of reasons: a defendant depositing funds into the registry of the court under Rule 67, a garnishee turning over attached wages or property under Rule 69-I, or a condemning authority depositing estimated compensation under Rule 71.1(j). Every one of those transactions has to be tracked, and Rule 67-I is the provision that makes tracking mandatory rather than optional.

The rule does two things. First, it obligates the clerk to receive and keep a proper account of all money that moves into or out of the clerk's office, whatever the source or purpose of the deposit. Second, it obligates the clerk to report on that money whenever a statute or a court order calls for a report. The rule does not spell out a reporting form or schedule of its own; it leaves that to whatever law or order applies to the particular deposit, which lets the same short rule cover the distinct recordkeeping needs of a garnishment case, an interpleader deposit, and a condemnation proceeding alike.

Rule 67-I is a purely local addition to the Superior Court rules — it has no numbered counterpart in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, unlike most of the rules surrounding it. It exists to make sure that whenever a party's money sits with the court rather than with a private party, someone is formally accountable for where that money is and where it came from.