Rule 69.Execution, proceedings supplemental to execution, foreclosure sales

Trial Rule 69(A) starts with the ordinary path for collecting a money judgment: a writ of execution, unless the court directs otherwise. Real estate can’t be sold to satisfy the judgment until six months pass from when the judgment, or the execution on it, first becomes a lien on the property — a built-in waiting period before a debtor can lose land. When the sale happens, it follows the same procedure the rule sets out for mortgage foreclosures in section (C), with one exception: unlike a mortgage or lien foreclosure sale, an execution sale of real estate leaves the debtor no right to redeem the property afterward. The debtor does keep the right to care for and remove crops that were already growing when the lien attached. The sheriff running the sale doesn’t have to follow a particular order, sell in parcels, or offer rents and profits first, but does have to sell real and personal property in separate sales. And levying on one piece of property doesn’t use up the creditor’s right to go after other property too.

Section (B) settles a priority fight that can arise when a debtor picks up new property after judgment or execution liens are already in place. Rather than letting whichever creditor levies first take priority, the rule has every existing lienholder share the newly acquired property pro rata, without needing a fresh levy to protect their claim.

Section (C) extends the mortgage-foreclosure procedure to judicial foreclosure of any lien on real estate — including redemption rights, how notice and the sale work, appointing a receiver if one is needed, and issuing the deed — without requiring an appraisal first. Unlike an execution sale, a foreclosure sale under this section keeps the redemption right built into mortgage-foreclosure procedure. The sale doesn’t have to happen at the courthouse door; the officer running it can hold it anywhere reasonable, as long as the notice of sale says where. And whenever a foreclosure or execution sale of real estate isn’t confirmed by the court, the officer who ran it has to record what happened, both in a return filed with the case and in the clerk’s execution docket. Section (D) then covers judicial sales that fall outside both categories — sales by trustees, guardians, receivers, assignees for creditors, and sales in partition cases — directing courts to run those, where practical, the way real estate is sold in the administration of decedents’ estates.

Section (E) covers proceedings supplemental to execution — the tool a judgment creditor reaches for when an ordinary levy won’t get the judgment paid. The creditor files a verified motion or affidavit in the court that entered the judgment, stating that it owns the judgment, that it has no reason to believe execution alone would satisfy it, and asking the court to order the debtor to appear and account for nonexempt property. If a garnishee — someone holding property or owing an obligation to the debtor — is named, the creditor can ask that the garnishee be ordered to appear and answer, or to answer written interrogatories instead. Once the motion checks those boxes, the court issues the order ex parte, without a hearing on the motion itself. The debtor is served under Rule 5; other parties and any garnishee are served under Rule 4. Whoever is ordered to appear or answer gets at least twenty days from service before that deadline arrives. No further pleadings are required, and the parties can use ordinary discovery tools to track down assets; writs of attachment, bench warrants, and body attachments used along the way are governed separately, under Rule 64(A).

Finally, section (F) lets a court, on motion and in its discretion, require the judgment creditor, the person seeking the sale, or the officer running it to obtain a title opinion or a title insurance policy before any judicial sale of land — whether that’s an execution sale, a mortgage or lien foreclosure, or a sale by a receiver, guardian, trustee, assignee, or in a partition case. That opinion or policy has to cover the purchase price, has to be open for inspection from the first notice of sale through the sale itself, and its cost gets taxed as a cost of the sale, paid out of the first proceeds. It won’t, however, cover a defect that arises from how the sale itself was conducted.