§ 64.002.Persons Not Entitled to Appointment

A prohibition and three exceptions, and the prohibition is the notable rule.

A court may not appoint a receiver for a corporation, partnership, or individual on the petition of the same corporation, partnership, or individual.

No self-receivership. A company in difficulty cannot place itself in the hands of a receiver of its own choosing.

The reasoning is about who a receivership serves. A receiver takes property out of the owner’s control for the benefit of creditors and other claimants, and an owner petitioning for one is asking a court to protect them from those claimants.

That is what bankruptcy is for, and federal bankruptcy law provides the debtor-initiated route with its own protections for creditors.

A court may appoint a receiver for a corporation on the petition of one or more stockholders.

That is not an exception so much as a clarification. A shareholder is not the corporation, and a receivership sought by owners against the management running the company is a different thing from the company appointing its own receiver.

Two further situations are preserved. A receiver for a partnership in an action arising between partners, and a receiver over all or part of the marital estate in a Family Code suit.

Both involve co-owners in dispute rather than an owner protecting itself. A partner suing a partner, or a spouse in a divorce, is adverse to the other co-owner — which is the adversity the general prohibition looks for.

The marital estate exception matters in practice, since a receiver appointed in a divorce is a common way of preserving a business or investments while the case is tried.