§ 62.046.Liability for Fruit of Replevied Property

A rule about what a replevying party owes, and it distinguishes between the two sides.

In a suit for enforcement of a mortgage or lien on property, a defendant who replevies the property is not required to account for the fruits, hire, revenue, or rent of it.

The defendant in such a suit is ordinarily the owner. A borrower whose collateral has been sequestered replevies it, resumes using it, and this confirms that the use is theirs to keep.

The alternative would make replevy pointless for a productive asset. A defendant who took back a rental property or a piece of equipment and had to account for every dollar it earned would gain possession without gaining anything else.

The four categories cover the ways property produces value — fruits from land, hire from letting a chattel, revenue from operating it, and rent.

Subsection (b) is the limit: the section does not apply to a plaintiff who replevies the property.

The distinction turns on whose property it is. A plaintiff replevying property in a lien enforcement suit is holding an asset the defendant may still be entitled to, and allowing them to keep the income would let a lienholder profit from a seizure that may prove unjustified.

So the plaintiff who replevies accounts; the defendant does not.

The section is confined to mortgage and lien enforcement suits, which are the cases in which the parties’ positions are asymmetric in this way — one owns the property, the other holds security over it.

In a pure title dispute both parties claim ownership, and the section leaves that case alone.