Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Pennsylvania

What is the legal process a sheriffs office has to go through to Levy equipment? I realize to levy titled equipment they can simply do a search at Penndot to find out what equipment is owned. What about untitled equipment? Can they simply go off a list someone has given them (not the company owners) about what they think is owned? Dont they have to see the equipment and visually confirm serial numbers? What if the sheriffs office says they visually checked the serial number on the piece of equipment - when in fact they did not?


Asked on 4/07/11, 12:51 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Rachel Hunter

After a judgment is issued and a creditor directs the sheriff to execute, the sheriff is going to come out and make a visual inspection of the property to see what is owned by the business. I would not assume that a sheriff's department is going to lie. However, the sheriff is not going to check with PennDoT; that is the responsbility of the creditor to do that. The creditor will tell the sheriff what to levy upon. If an asset is not titled, then the creditor does not know about it unless there is a UCC-1 financing statement filed by another company or something like that.

I can't counsel you to hide assets, but if there is no record of what the business has or does not have, how will a creditor know? I would make sure that anything valuable is not around when the sheriff comes a calling.

However, its better to resolve your debts. Work out a payment arrangement so that you do not have to worry about the sheriff taking anything. Or try to settle the debt for a lump sum. If nothing works, have you considered bankruptcy?

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Answered on 4/07/11, 5:48 pm


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