§ 1314.Attaching creditor’s rights in personal property

Once a claiming authority has delivered an order of attachment to a claiming agent, section 1314 decides who wins when someone else also has a claim to the same debt or property. The claiming authority's rights come first, up to the amount specified in the attachment, ahead of any transferee who comes along afterward.

Two exceptions protect people who deal with the property in good faith for value. A transferee who acquired the debt or property before it was levied upon, paid fair consideration for it, and had no knowledge of the attachment order, keeps priority over the claiming authority. So does a transferee who acquired the property after the levy, paid fair consideration, and had no knowledge of the levy, so long as the property was not yet in the claiming agent's possession at the time.

This section connects directly to section 1310's definition of fair consideration and to the presumption in section 1311(3)(c)(i), under which a non-criminal defendant who did not pay fair consideration for tainted property is presumed to have known it was tainted. A buyer who paid a real price in genuine ignorance of the attachment has a shot at keeping the property; a buyer who paid little, or knew what was going on, does not.