Short answer. The officer may adjourn the sale to a date and time agreed upon by written consent of both the judgment obligor and obligee. Without such agreement, the officer may still adjourn the sale from day to day if there isn't enough time to complete it on the scheduled date.
What the law says
By written consent of the judgment obligor and obligee, or their duly authorized representatives, the officer may adjourn the sale to any date and time agreed upon by them. Without such agreement, he may adjourn the sale from day to day if it becomes necessary to do so for lack of time to complete the sale on the day fixed in the notice or the day to which it was adjourned.
Rule 39, Section 22 — Adjournment of sale. Read the full provision →
Adjournment by written agreement
Where the judgment obligor and the judgment obligee, or their duly authorized representatives, give their written consent, the officer may adjourn the sale to any date and time that they have agreed upon between themselves, giving the parties direct control over rescheduling when they can agree. Because this route depends entirely on both sides agreeing, it lets the parties reschedule for reasons of their own convenience, not just logistical necessity. Since the consent route requires both the obligor and the obligee to sign off, neither side can unilaterally force a postponement onto the other simply by asking; the written form also creates a clear record of exactly when and to what date the sale was moved.
Adjournment without agreement
Absent such an agreement, the officer is not simply stuck with the original schedule. He may still adjourn the sale from day to day, but only where doing so becomes necessary for lack of time to complete the sale on the day fixed in the original notice, or on whatever day the sale had already been adjourned to. This day-to-day adjournment is meant to address a purely practical problem — an auction that genuinely cannot be finished before the venue closes or the crowd disperses — not to hand the officer general discretion to delay the sale for the convenience of one side or the other.
The limits on the officer's unilateral power, and why the flexibility exists
Absent the parties' consent, then, the officer's authority to adjourn is confined to short, day-to-day postponements driven by a genuine lack of time, not an open-ended delay for other reasons. This flexibility matters because execution sales can involve multiple lots or bidders, and a rigid single-day schedule could otherwise force an incomplete or rushed sale that serves neither party well. It also protects both sides from prejudice: bidders who showed up on the scheduled date are not simply turned away for an unrelated reason, and the judgment obligor is not exposed to an auction conducted so hastily that the property fetches less than it should.
Related provisions
- Rule 39, Section 22 — Adjournment of sale
- Rule 39, Section 21 — Judgment obligee as purchaser
- Rule 39, Section 23 — Conveyance to purchaser of personal property capable of manual delivery