Translation:Shulchan Aruch/Choshen Mishpat/114

Paragraph 1- If a lender knows of third party buyers who acquired properties from the borrower after he lent to the borrower, he may go and seizes those properties from them in court. ''If he seized outside of court, however, the seizure is of no effect. The court would tear the authorization document and write a seizure document for the lender and they would write in the seizure document that they tore the authorization document.''

Paragraph 2- When the lender discovers the buyer, he can force him to litigate with him and the buyer cannot say go to the borrower and when he is found liable by law they will write you a document allowing you to seize and then I will pay you. Rather, the buyer must go to the borrower and force him to litigate. Nevertheless, in a case where the borrower is present we would inform him, such as where he is not more than one day’s distance away. If the buyer asks for time to go to the borrower, we would give him up to 30 days, so long as the purpose is to produce a truthful ruling and not as a form of circumvention.

Paragraph 3- If the purchaser wants to pay off the lender with money, he may do so and the creditor would leave the real property with the purchaser. The purchaser would then go and ask the seller to pay him the amount he paid to the lender on his behalf. If the borrower had explicitly designated this property to be collected from by stating “you shall only be paid back from this property,” the purchaser cannot pay off the lender. If the purchaser acquired two fields, one after the other, each at the cost of a maneh, and the loan was 200, and the lender seized the first field at the value of a maneh and when he comes to seize the second field for the remaining maneh, the purchaser brings 200 to the lender and says if you want to keep the first field you collected at the value of 200 you can, but otherwise take the 200 and be removed from both fields, the purchaser is in the right. If the lender agreed and accepted the field at 200, the purchaser can only go back to the seller to collect 100. ''There are those that say that once the court made an appraisal and announcement, the purchaser can no longer pay off the creditor because an appraised land cannot revert to the purchaser. See above 103:9. This is all in a case of one purchaser that purchased two fields. With respect to two purchasers, however, the second purchaser cannot demand the creditor accept one field for more than its value or pay him off because he has no privity with the creditor on this field.''

Paragraph 4- After they write the seizure document, three experts will go down to the field and evaluate the amount of the debt corresponding to the principle of the field and half of the appreciation to its current worth. They would announce its sale for 30 days in the same way they do for orphan-property, as was explained in Siman 109. They would then have the borrower swear, via a geonic regulation, that he has no property, assuming the borrower was with us in the country. They would then have the creditor swear while grasping a holy item that he did not collect the loan, waive the debt or sell it to someone else. He would include in the oath that he did not give the document on trust. If it was before the deadline for repayment, the lender can seize without an oath. They would then have the creditor go down to the purchaser’s properties with an appraisal, in the way that was described in Siman 103. The court would write that he went down and write in that document that they recognize that the field belongs to so and so the borrower and they would write that they tore the seizure document.

Paragraph 5- If the court appraised the buyer’s property for purposes of a seizure and made any kind of error, the sale is void. There are those that say that the rule would be the same as it would be in the case of orphan-property, discussed above in 109:3. If an individual comes and offers more money for the field than the court appraised it for, and the lender wants to take the field, he must take it at that higher value.

Paragraph 6- If the creditor and purchaser are outbidding each other, we give the field to whomever bids the most if the extra amount corresponds to the entire debt. If, however, the purchaser wants to add a little to the court’s appraisal but not enough to have the entire debt paid off, we would not listen to him.

Paragraph 7- If the lender says I will accept the property for the entire debt without the court’s appraisal, and the purchaser insists the court appraise the property and he will pay the value, we will not listen to the purchaser.