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Civ. Code, § 3440 · Chapter 2. Conveyance of Personal Property Without Delivery

Civ. Code, § 3440

Verbatim from the official edition

Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, every transfer of personal property made by a person having at the time the possession of the property, and not accompanied by an immediate delivery followed by an actual and continued change of possession of the property, is void as against the transferor’s creditors (secured or unsecured) at the time of the transfer and those who become creditors while the transferor remains in possession and the successors in interest of those creditors, and as against buyers from the transferor for value in good faith subsequent to the transfer.

(b) As used in this chapter, “creditor” means a person who has a claim, as defined in Section 3439.01, and includes an assignee of a general assignment for the benefit of creditors, as defined in Section 493.010 of the Code of Civil Procedure, of a debtor. “Creditor” also includes any person to whom the transferor’s estate devolves in trust for the benefit of persons other than the transferor. Any such assignee or trustee may exercise any and all the rights and remedies specified in this chapter, if they are available to any one or more creditors of the assignor or transferor who are beneficiaries of the assignment or trust, and, in that event (1) only to the extent the rights or remedies are so available and (2) only for the benefit of those creditors whose rights are asserted by the assignee or trustee.

Notes and commentary — not statutory text

History

Amended by Stats. 1987, Ch. 40, Sec. 3. Effective June 8, 1987.

Source of truth

Edition
As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
Official file
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CIV&sectionNum=3440.
Text hash
sha256 7d2e55bd1018b70b344ae7cb8369811a9a58ef5305a35b86466e37f8a1025bc9
Composed by
compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section

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