My husband's boat and trailer were seized to settle a judgement. The problem is, the debt wasn't ours. The magistrate just assumed that the property belonged to my brother in law. We are not being told (by the magistrate) that there is nothing we can do; that it is too late. What can we do?

I am unable to find an "edit" feature...

The above should read "We are NOW being told (by the magistrate)...

Sorry for the confusion.

Where are you located?

Southwestern PA... the incident occurred in NW PA, at our summer cottage.

How long ago did this happen?

It is very easy, the boat and trailer has a title, you file in court for the return of your property using the legal documents of the trailer title ( and where it is registered and licensed in your name) and the title to the boat and where it is registered in your name with its boat numbers

Well, we provided this information to the magistrate, who apparently did not care. I guess I need an attorney. We were hoping to avoid paying more legal fees than the boat/trailer are worth.

I think that sanctions against the magistrate and the constable should be filed, as they ultimately have the responsibility to verify that the property being levied actually belong to the debtor. But I suppose that, in upstate PA, in a little country town, the law really doesn't mean much.

This occurred at some point between October 23rd and January 16th. Since we received no notification, I am not quite sure.

Ok, here's the issue. Its very possible that the, by the time you were aware of it, the property has already been sold. That could be why the magistrate said nothing could be done, because the property could no longer be recovered.

The second issue is the mistake made. Without seeing what paperwork was filed by the plaintiff, the magistrate might have acted in good faith. The constable is probably out of the loop since he may have just been given an order for seizure and may not have been responsible for checking the ownership.

So, yes, I would say you need an attorney to check what actually happened and determine where responsibility lies.