§ 34.043.Sale of Rural Property

The rural counterpart, and it hands the debtor a genuine measure of control.

Where real property taken in execution is not located in a city or town, the defendant in the writ who holds legal or equitable title may divide the property into lots of not less than 50 acres and designate the order in which those lots shall be sold.

Choosing the order is the valuable right. A landowner knows which acreage is least useful and which carries the house, the water, or the road frontage, and this lets the least valuable land go first.

Where the first lots cover the judgment, the rest are never sold — subsection (d) requires the officer to stop the sale once enough is realised.

The 50-acre floor prevents the right becoming an obstruction. Dividing land into unsaleable slivers would frustrate the sale entirely.

The price of the right is documentary and financial. The defendant must present to the executing officer a plat of the property as divided and as surveyed by the county surveyor, and field notes of each numbered lot with the county surveyor’s certificate that the notes are correct.

Requiring the county surveyor gives the officer a document that can be relied on, and gives a purchaser a description that can be conveyed and recorded.

Timing is the debtor’s responsibility: the plat and notes must be presented before the sale at a time that will not delay the sale as advertised.

So the right is lost by lateness. A survey commissioned when the notice appears will not be ready.

The defendant pays the expenses of the survey and the sale, and those do not constitute an additional cost in the case — so the debtor bears them personally rather than adding them to the judgment.