§ 34.044.Stock Shares Subject to Sale

One sentence settling a question that was once open.

Shares of stock in a corporation or joint-stock company that are owned by a defendant in execution may be sold on execution.

The difficulty this resolves is a conceptual one. Execution developed around tangible things an officer could seize and a buyer could carry away. A share is an intangible interest, and older law left it doubtful whether a sheriff could levy on one at all.

The section answers that shares are reachable, without needing to explain how.

Both corporate forms are named. A corporation and a joint-stock company — the latter an older unincorporated form whose inclusion shows the provision’s age.

Shares are among the more attractive assets to a judgment creditor. They are frequently valuable, often unencumbered, and unlike a business itself they can be sold without disrupting anything.

What the section does not do is address restrictions on transfer. Closely held companies routinely restrict who may hold shares, and a purchaser at an execution sale takes whatever the debtor had — which may be an interest subject to those restrictions.

That follows from the conveyance provision, under which the officer conveys all the right, title, interest, and claim that the defendant in execution had — no more.

The turnover statute is often the better route for intangibles, since it reaches present and future rights to property and can put a receiver in charge of realising them.