Short answer. Once the affidavit is filed and the bond approved, the court issues an order and the corresponding writ of replevin, describing the personal property alleged to be wrongfully detained and directing the sheriff to take that property into custody immediately, without waiting for the underlying case to be tried and decided.
What the law says
Upon the filing of such affidavit and approval of the bond, the court shall issue an order and the corresponding writ of replevin describing the personal property alleged to be wrongfully detained and requiring the sheriff forthwith to take such property into his custody.
Rule 60, Section 3 — Order. Read the full provision →
Two preconditions trigger the order
Rule 60, Section 3 ties the issuance of the replevin order and writ to two specific steps having already happened: the filing of the affidavit required earlier in the Rule, and the court's approval of the bond. Only once both are satisfied does the court act, since the affidavit establishes the factual basis for the claim and the bond protects the party who will lose possession if the claim later turns out to be wrong.
The writ must describe the property
The section requires the writ of replevin to describe the personal property alleged to be wrongfully detained. This description is what gives the sheriff a concrete basis for identifying exactly what to seize, rather than leaving the scope of the seizure open-ended or ambiguous, and it protects the person holding the property from having more taken than what the applicant actually claims.
The sheriff is directed to act immediately
The order requires the sheriff forthwith to take the described property into custody. The word forthwith signals urgency — this is a provisional remedy meant to secure the property quickly, before it can be hidden, damaged, or disposed of while the underlying case over who is entitled to it is still being litigated. That urgency is precisely why the affidavit and bond have to be in place first, so the speed of execution does not come at the expense of basic safeguards.
Why both an order and a writ are issued
The order and the writ serve slightly different roles even though they are issued together: the order is the court's formal determination that the preconditions have been met and the remedy is warranted, while the writ is the actual instrument handed to the sheriff directing the seizure. Keeping both in the record documents both the court's decision and the concrete instruction carrying it out, which matters if the propriety of the seizure is ever later questioned. None of this changes the provisional nature of the remedy; the party who obtains the writ still has to prevail on the merits of the underlying claim for the seizure to become final, and a sheriff who executes the writ improperly, such as by seizing property beyond what the writ describes, can expose the applicant to liability on the bond.