Rule 85.06.How Directed and Executed.

Property subject to attachment does not always sit in one county, and a claimant may not know in advance where a defendant’s assets are located. Rule 85.06 addresses that reality by directing writs of attachment generically to any sheriff in the State of Missouri, instead of naming a particular county’s officer. Whichever sheriff has jurisdiction over the county where the property sits can execute it.

The rule also confirms that more than one writ of attachment can be outstanding against a defendant’s property at the same time. This matters because attachment is available to any party asserting a qualifying claim under Rule 85.02, and a defendant facing several claims — say, a counterclaim in the same suit and a separate action from another creditor — may have more than one writ in play simultaneously. Rule 85.06 makes clear that overlapping writs are not a problem the rule tries to prevent at the issuance stage.

Instead, the rule leaves the resolution of competing claims to attached property to Rule 85.18, which addresses priority when the same property is attached in several actions, and to Rule 85.19, which addresses what issues the different claimants may raise against one another. Rule 85.06 only clears the way for multiple writs to exist without conflict at the moment of issuance.